Quote:
Originally Posted by rashkae
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Personally, I believe that using inclusive language is generally a good thing. Anecdotally speaking, the only people I've encountered who oppose it do so for these reasons (which sometimes, but not always, go hand in hand):
- some simply do not agree that the group calling for inclusion has a legitimate claim in the first place, or at least don't think that the solution should affect them/their language use
- the majority of reactions to inclusive language seems to be grounded in sheer reactance; language is deeply personal and perceived as the primary means of expressing oneself, so the idea of "someone else telling me how to speak" is a complete non-starter for some people, regardless of the intention
- others acknowledge the issues, but feel that a few tweaks to language are irrelevant so long as the situation of the group in question is not improved substantially (see euphemism treadmill); in the extreme, these people also tend to believe that endless debates about inclusive language are taking away time, energy and political capital from issues that, if addressed, would increase living situations much more than any language change could
The first two, but especially the second one, seem to correlate with age quite a bit, which also makes sense intuitively: the longer you've been doing X, the harder you are going to fight someone telling you that X is wrong and to do Y instead. It causes cognitive dissonance between "I have been doing X my entire life" and "X is bad", as it could lead to the realization "I have been doing something bad". It's therefore easier to resolve the dissonance by dismissing the new idea that "X is bad" in the first place, rather than calling into question your past behavior and making the required changes to future behavior. There's also a heap of biases that affect this, such as the status-quo bias.
Anyhow, sorry I went on a bit of a rant there. As for the link you posted, I haven't watched the video yet, but based on the little blurb below, I'm immediately a bit wary as a linguist. As is often the case in pop-sci pieces about the relationship between language and thought, the presentation seems to exaggerate the impact and could lead someone without the necessary background in linguistics to think that the relationship is much more deterministic than it really is. I'll have to peek into the video when I'm not posting unprompted novels on forums.