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Stanford University Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI)

As far as the rest of the list goes, I found many of the terms were absurd. I think the so called overly woke among us seem to be looking for a reason to condemn others based on the words that they use, even when some of those words and expressions have never had any negative meaning in our lifetimes.I used the word guys as one example. I also mentioned Latinx because earlier in the day I read that only 3% of people who identify as Hispanic or Latino want to be addressed as Latinx.
If you want to know why Latinx matters to some folks and not others, perhaps instead of reading a poll of Times readers, you should consider asking a trans Latinx person why they might favor this reform of the language. They might agree or disagree with the change. If it is truly an unpopular usage, it will drift away on its own, like "differently abled" did in the 90s.
Oh, that is one area where I have faith that common sense will prevail, even in America. "Latinx" is literally nothing but the quintessence of white leftist linguistic colonialism, attempting to impose a term on someone else's culture and language. It will stagger off somewhere, looking vainly for a place to die.
Funny story about that. "Latino" itself is white linguistic colonialism. It's short for "latinoamericano", which comes from the Spanish translation of "Amérique latine", which was a pro-French propaganda term popularized by Emperor Napoleon III's government, when French colonialists were screwing around in Mexico because the Spanish colonialists had thrown in the towel and recognized Mexican independence. The idea behind calling the region "Latin" was to emphasize France's shared Roman Empire heritage with the Spanish and Portuguese speaking people of the Americas and thereby induce "Latin Americans" to see the French as "us" instead of as "them". What a surprise that "Latin America" and "Latino" and their derivatives are mostly used in the U.S. -- they never really caught on in Latin America.
Oh, my dude. All Spanish words (and all English words) used in the Americas are "white linguistic colonialism". Every single one of them. Except insofar as "White" was not a concept that existed at all when the Conquista began - it is a modern term that is imposed on history very inconsistently. But English and Spanish are certainly European languages, violently and forcibly imposed on the Americas.

Start here:

And you, like, Metaphor, seem to have some very weird and inaccurate ideas about the racial makeup of the Latin American world.
What ideas do I have about them?
You keep talking about "white liberals" and "hispanics" as though they were separable groups with opposing interests, rather than overlapping, non-homogenous groups with a complex nest of relationships and opinions.
No group is homogeneous; even cishet white men, who are united only by their common quality of being evil ;-p

Among white people in America without any Hispanic/Latino ethnic heritage, the use of the term 'Latinx' seems to be favoured among the leftist, Democrat-party liberals, and precious few others.

Among Hispanic/Latino people of any race or national background, in America, "Latinx" seems to be quite unpopular, except with Democrats. (I don't recall hearing AOC ever write or say 'Latinx' but I am certain she is the exact kind of person who would). I suspect it is even more unpopular within primarily Spanish-speaking countries than it is among Spanish-speaking people in America.
I don't know what to say except that you simply aren't correct about that. Latinx is definitely a controversial styling, both in and out of Hispanic communities. It is used by a small number of people, this is also a fact. And having originated in queer online communities, it is offensive to a lot of older folks. This is true. But the idea that only members of the Democratic party might use it is not true, and silly. I've not heard of anyone outside of the US using it, which is to be expected since almost no one uses "Latino" outside the US either. Like "Asian" or "Native American", it's not a word that would make sense to anyone unfamiliar with the peculiar racial politics of the Anglophone world.
 
As far as the rest of the list goes, I found many of the terms were absurd. I think the so called overly woke among us seem to be looking for a reason to condemn others based on the words that they use, even when some of those words and expressions have never had any negative meaning in our lifetimes.I used the word guys as one example. I also mentioned Latinx because earlier in the day I read that only 3% of people who identify as Hispanic or Latino want to be addressed as Latinx.
If you want to know why Latinx matters to some folks and not others, perhaps instead of reading a poll of Times readers, you should consider asking a trans Latinx person why they might favor this reform of the language. They might agree or disagree with the change. If it is truly an unpopular usage, it will drift away on its own, like "differently abled" did in the 90s.
Oh, that is one area where I have faith that common sense will prevail, even in America. "Latinx" is literally nothing but the quintessence of white leftist linguistic colonialism, attempting to impose a term on someone else's culture and language. It will stagger off somewhere, looking vainly for a place to die.
It is a little amusing that people are told to use the preferred pronouns of trans people (be it they, xir, ze and about 94 other names I can't remember), but even though 97% of Latinos/Hispanics prefer the term Latinx not be used for them, the attitude among the progressive left seems to be, "sorry no, we'll keep using Latinx. We know better than you what is right for your people."

Is it really any surprise that Hispanics are leaving the Democrat Party in droves?
You seem to be simultaneously acknowledging and denying that plenty of Latino/a/x folks are progressives themselves...
They're Latinos. That's the term for a mixed-sex group of Latino people. Die mad about it.
Do you even speak Spanish.???

No. But I know enough about it to know that it is gendered, and enough about it to know that 'Latinx' is an imperialist assault waged by white leftist imperialists (and some Latino academics).
The debate over gendered language is fairly similar among English and Spanish-speaking Americans, which is not surprising considering we are all neighbors and to a large extent share in a common culture. Yes, those who advocate for gender-neutral language are a minority in the US regardless of one's primary language.

Yes, they're a minority in the U.S., but that hasn't stopped their colonial assault on someone else's language.

The church has deep roots in both Anglophone and Hispanic America, and her social policies remain influential.
I guarantee you that Spanish is older than 'the church'.
Dafuck you say.

I often find your opinions based in splen rather than logic, much less reality but here you’re playing really fast and pose with actual historical data

The Catholic Church is a couple of thousand years old and predates Spanish by about 1300 years.
Dafuq you say.

Like the other Romance languages, the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which here was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC.

Spanish has gendered language because its predecessors did.

EDIT: The very idea that the Catholic Church is somehow responsible for gendered language is just so preposterous it's yet another leftist nonsense that I can barely believe is a sincere belief.
It EVOLVED from Latin as did French, Portuguese, Roman, Catalan others. Having its roots in Latin doesn’t mean it existed when Latin was first spoken.
The Catholic Church didn't exist when Latin was first spoken, either. Yet Spanish's gendered language clearly and unambiguously owes its gendered language to Latin and not The Catholic Church.
So what? That does not detract at all from the fact that Spanish was first spoken about 700 years ago.

The Catholic Church is nearly 2000 years old.

The Catholic Church is older than the Spanish language.
When Spanish was "first" spoken is not a fixed date. Languages evolve; they do not spring, fully formed, from committee.

Spanish has gendered language because it evolved from a language that is gendered.

I suppose you think "The Catholic Church" is an institution that has also not evolved, and has existed exactly as "The Catholic Church" is right now, unchanged, for 2000 years.

When Politesse said:
The church has deep roots in both Anglophone and Hispanic America, and her social policies remain influential.
I challenged the utterly nonsensical implication that the Catholic Church's "social policies" somehow generated or kept alive Spanish's gendered language. It's absurd. Gendered language existed long before the Catholic Church.
My only point was in addressing your incorrect assertion that Spanish is older than the church. Which church was not specified so I simply compared the start of the Catholic Church abd the beginning is Spanish as it’s own language. Politesse has far more expertise than you or I and is correct in all of his responses.

Moreover he has much more exposure to students of Hispanic languages and cultures than either of us. On a practical, experience basis, he has first hand knowledge while you seem to be blowing hot air out of some orifice or another.
 
I would not be inclined to put a specific calendar date on either the Catholic Church or the Spanish language. Both emerged from the relative chaos that attended the degradations of the late Roman Empire as permutations of various degrees from a Latinized past.

Certainly, however, both Catholicism and the Spanish language arrived on the San Francisco Bay at the exact same moment: the 4th of November, Anno Domini 1769. Relatively recent news, but profound in its implications.
 
If you can say that the masses are stupid and prejudiced an need to to be slowly educated and directed, then having a transition from suggestions to mandates for language is a moral tactic to have a concerted zeitgeist shift.

This is a literal interview quote by MLK that I saw him say with my own eyes, that I don't believe he thought was true at the time he said it.

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law. Martin Luther King, Jr. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools..

MLK concealing his philosophical non opposition to interracial marriage...

So are there many things on this list EHLI list that the majority of people are not ready for now but SHOULD be ready for in a decade or two?
 
Scrutonlanguage.jpg
 
Do you really think that this started with communists?
You maybe right. The push to change language use and understanding has a long history of bad actors.


But in our modern times, the Soviet Union was the first instance of a highly centralized state manipulating language for a political agenda.
 
Ah, trying to bring back the ol' Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, eh?

And what would be the long term consequence of making the language less racist, sexist, and so forth? If you are correct and language equals mind control, that would necessarily create a less racist and sexist society, yes? As it will become impossible to have a racist or sexist thought?
 
Bring it back? Did it go somewhere
Well, frequently disavowed by formal linguists, post-Chomsky. I'm agnostic, myself.

It rather depends, doesn't it, on who is doing the deciding.
Linguistic trends are seldom "decided". Attempts to engineer language fail unless they answer a need or desire already present in the speech community.
 
Bring it back? Did it go somewhere
Well, frequently disavowed by formal linguists, post-Chomsky. I'm agnostic, myself.

It rather depends, doesn't it, on who is doing the deciding.
Linguistic trends are seldom "decided". Attempts to engineer language fail unless they answer a need or desire already present in the speech community.
Governments don't decide linguistic trends, but they certainly can and do enforce their prescribed language under threat of State force.
 
Bring it back? Did it go somewhere
Well, frequently disavowed by formal linguists, post-Chomsky. I'm agnostic, myself.

It rather depends, doesn't it, on who is doing the deciding.
Linguistic trends are seldom "decided". Attempts to engineer language fail unless they answer a need or desire already present in the speech community.
Governments don't decide linguistic trends, but they certainly can and do enforce their prescribed language under threat of State force.
That is much less an issue in the US than I think a lot of mass media has given you to believe.

Universities are generally self-governing as far as expectations of faculty and students go. Yes, public universities will use the full weight of state and federal law to attempt to suppress especially bigoted language and behavior. In my liberal state, I have not heard of even one instance of anyone in academia being terminated or even receiving official discipline over 'language' used in classrooms or with colleagues or students. Of course faculty members are as likely as nearly anyone to make stupid, bigoted statements and to be stupid bigots. But I can't think of any time it's actually happened, and I've read some pretty questionable statements in letters to the editor from faculty at other campuses. It may happen that people do get disciplined but it's a pretty rare thing (which might be why it makes media). I DO know that administration is usually really, really bad about being forthright and transparent about what issue they DO want to discipline faculty for doing. I've known of faculty who were 'disciplined' because of some silly, trivial issue when the real issue is that everyone knows that they (insert serious behavior). And by 'everybody knows' I mean there are witnesses to incidents which have been documented and are in clear violation of various policies (for very good reason). I don't get it: some ratbastard of a faculty member is called up on some stupid, trivial charge that doesn't even violate any policy and everyone is forced to defend them because if admin can go after ratbastard, they can go after anyone. Admin is just generally too chickenshit or too lazy to go after faculty for actual bad/unprofessional behavior.
 
Do you really think that this started with communists?
You maybe right. The push to change language use and understanding has a long history of bad actors.


But in our modern times, the Soviet Union was the first instance of a highly centralized state manipulating language for a political agenda.
Did you actually read you link? That's not about manipulating a language.
 
Do you really think that this started with communists?
You maybe right. The push to change language use and understanding has a long history of bad actors.


But in our modern times, the Soviet Union was the first instance of a highly centralized state manipulating language for a political agenda.
Did you actually read you link? That's not about manipulating a language.
Uh, yes it is. It's about using the "correct" language to signal.
 
Do you really think that this started with communists?
You maybe right. The push to change language use and understanding has a long history of bad actors.


But in our modern times, the Soviet Union was the first instance of a highly centralized state manipulating language for a political agenda.
Did you actually read you link? That's not about manipulating a language.
Uh, yes it is. It's about using the "correct" language to signal.
It's not about using language to signal, but about a statement that everyone can see is false.
 


The other video from the Clown World account with the San Francisco business owner hosing the mentally ill homeless woman, fuck that guy...

But in this case, the speaker is very based.
 
From the movie Demolition Man.

A future word where voice recognition scans for violation of speech codes.


 
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