The University of New Hampshire has a “bias-free language guide” on its website that explains why certain words may be offensive to people with disabilities, LGBT people, people of color and women. The site CampusReform, a publication inside the Leadership Institute, a conservative organization, first brought attention to the guide Tuesday and Wednesday New York Magazine published a piece by Jonathan Chait criticizing the guidelines. Chait has been very outspoken on what he said is “p.c. culture,” which he believes is restrictive or oppressive of some speech. The guide has all the words anti-”p.c. culture” pundits hate, from “microaggressions” to “problematic.”
Some of the criticisms have been focused on the use of “American” as biased or “going Dutch” as a negative term for splitting the bill. The guide suggested U.S. citizen or resident of the U.S. instead of American because it assumes the U.S. is the only country in both North and South America. The president of the University of New Hampshire, Mark W. Huddleston, has since released a statement to ThinkProgress on the guide:
While individuals on our campus have every right to express themselves, I want to make it absolutely clear that the views expressed in this guide are NOT the policy of the University of New Hampshire. I am troubled by many things in the language guide, especially the suggestion that the use of the term ‘American’ is misplaced or offensive. The only UNH policy on speech is that it is free and unfettered on our campuses. It is ironic that what was probably a well-meaning effort to be ‘sensitive’ proves offensive to many people, myself included.
Two of the faculty members involved in putting together the guide explained the intent of the guide to ThinkProgress. Sylva Foster, program coordinator of the university’s office of community equity and diversity wrote in an email to ThinkProgress, “Our intent was to offer people ways to find words that are creative and accurate descriptions — and to include the many wonderfully diverse ways that we, as human beings, present ourselves.”
Janice Pierson, office manager of the office of community, equity and diversity commented on the part of the guide that discusses words to use to describe people with disabilities.
“Well as far as the disability angle, everything that was on the site was actually taken off the [American Disability Act] site. We didn’t essentially make it out of thin air,” Pierson said. “It’s certainly not meant as a word police. It’s meant as a different way to get people to think about language. We were running into a number of students were having problems speaking about people with disabilities.”
Although some of the terms mentioned by Chait may be head-scratchers, here are some other parts of the guide:
Preferred: “non-disabled” is the preferred term for people without disabilities. problematic: normal, able-bodied, healthy or whole
Preferred: wheelchair user, person who is — wheelchair mobile, physically disabled, quadriplegic, paraplegicProblematic: handicapped, physically challenged, invalid, “special”, deformed, cripple, gimp, spaz, wheelchair-bound, confined to a wheelchair, lame
Preferred: Assigned SexProblematic/Outdated: Biological/Genetic/Natal/ “normal” sex
Preferred: WomenProblematic/Outdated: Girls (when referring to adult women)Preferred: People of Color
Problematic: Colored, Non-WhiteNote: In the U.S. context, “People of Color” usually refers to Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, Latino/a, Hispanic, African American and biracial/multiracial people and should not be used synonymously with “Black” or “African American.”
ThinkProgress spoke with James Stanford, an associate professor of linguistics at Dartmouth College. Stanford said that while he agrees with the intentions of the guide, a guide may not be the best way to discuss the ever-changing nature of language and what is appropriate.
“I believe it would be more beneficial to treat students as intelligent, autonomous agents who have the capacity to make wise decisions when they receive information and have time to think it over and discuss it. Such an approach could empower them for a lifetime of interacting sensitively in a diverse and constantly changing world. After all, a good number of these currently ‘approved’ terms may come to be perceived as offensive during a student’s time in college or soon after,” Stanford said.
Stanford said a better route may be to discuss the underlying issues behind the language in order to both address why certain words are hurtful and empower students to be responsible with their language. He pointed out that language can be very powerful in influencing the way we think about and perceive the world and the question of how much it affects us is a much debated topic among linguists.
“For example, studies have clearly shown that use of the generic ‘he’ pronoun can cause readers to assume that a reader is referring to a male (such as a job announcement). Our speech has consequences. Language constructs and reflects society, and so our everyday word choices matter a great deal. With every utterance, we are producing and reproducing society, both the good and the bad. I think that students should be treated as autonomous adults who can learn to make wise linguistic decisions in a complex and changing world — without memorizing the latest list of approved words.”