No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string.
Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called “improper” or “indecent.” An affair between a teacher and a pupil that was once improper is now inappropriate; a once indecent joke is now unacceptable.
This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgements, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. Such “non-judgemental” forms of speech are tailored to a society wary of explicit moral language. As liberal pluralists, we seek only adherence to rules of the game, not agreement on fundamentals. What was once an offence against decency must be recast as something akin to a faux pas.
But this new, neutralised language does not spell any increase in freedom. When I call your action indecent, I state a fact that can be controverted. When I call it inappropriate, I invoke an institutional context—one which, by implication, I know better than you. Who can gainsay the Lord Chamberlain when he pronounces it “inappropriate” to wear jeans to the Queen’s garden party? This is what makes the new idiom so sinister. Calling your action indecent appeals to you as a human being; calling it inappropriate asserts official power.
The point can be generalised. As a society, we strive to eradicate moral language, hoping to eliminate the intolerance that often accompanies it. But intolerance has not been eliminated, merely thrust underground. “Inappropriate” and “unacceptable” are the catchwords of a moralism that dare not speak its name. They hide all measure of righteous fury behind the mask of bureaucratic neutrality. For the sake of our own humanity, we should strike them from our vocabulary.
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Comments (71):
Could Loki please translate his execrable tract?
Dunno whether me great grandpappy felt like a cog in a monstrous machine that knew all right, but I would guess that he did.
Anyhow, my personal favorite is the term “unprofessional”, as though man’s place in this world is to practically define himself through his adherence to the social conventions of his chosen form of slavery.
I wish I didn’t care so much about the judgements of the mentaly enslaved lifers who comprise the vast reaches of humanity. Oh what I would give to be a sociopath.
[...] Inappropriate and Unacceptable Language. “As a society, we strive to eradicate moral language, hoping to eliminate the intolerance that often accompanies it. But intolerance has not been eliminated, merely thrust underground.” [...]
[...] neutrality. For the sake of our own humanity, we should strike them from our vocabulary.’ Edward Skidelsky in Prospect takes aim at two words I [...]
re Loki and ‘PatheiMathos’ (one of whose comments ran as follows:
\Go read Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/) and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two. Until then, please stop writing on a topic you clearly do not know how to research\.
you each have posted sanctimonious little tomes to the author, and I suppose, to your fellow commentators. As it is something that seems irresistible to PCM apologists–there always has to be a sermon to the unenlightened–
I wonder if you would mind commenting on that for readers. I would very much like to know what this is all about, and why it coexists with this presumed neutrality, etc… We can almost hear the familiar nasal shrillness in what you write–which amounts to a personal attack on the author \ you clearly do not know how to research..\ etc. It’s comic, but i know you mean it , so would you explain a bit what this is all about (without the pc sermon which we already have to refer to)
Hi Jake-
(I completely agree)
what do you bet it will bring on another little soapbox speech!
So odd that people think postmod jargon and cant somehow fills in for clarity or intelligence…
This is great. Thank you both for your unintended collaboration in bring to light something we all do so brilliantly and often without being aware of it. Making judgments or pointing fingers at a situation or more commonly, another person without first seeing where that thread is connected to our own thoughts and actions is something we overlook within ourselves but see clearly outside ourselves.
This story is BS! Sure, moralism is a palpable facet to our daily lives, perhaps even too much. This in itself carves out territory for the inappropriate and unacceptable. Judgements and offense are natural acts and often don’t even require any thought. The visceral, core emotional response cannot be rationalized. It is what it is. This is just another iteration of Moral Relativism, a contemporary journalistic/political cornerstone of intellectualism.
A very interesting article. For some time now, at least since the time the murder of innocent children through abortion was legalized, I’ve noticed how the meaning of words have lost their meaning and have changed to make them appear to mean something else.
George Orwell’s Newspeak is alive and well.
In the near future, we will be imprisoned if we do not speak Newspeak. And if our thoughts are construed as thinking in the “old way”, i.e., before Newspeak, we will be charged with a hate crime.
Always questioning
who decides what is inappropriate
Well, somebody has actually done the work and shown that, as I suspected, the author is wrong on several account.
http://thelousylinguist.blogspot.com/2009/12/thinking-words-part-1.html
I don’t understand how asking for facts that support one’s argument is \PC.\
This article was inappropriate and unacceptable. It’s not about intolerance, it’s about calling things as we see them. We need the words to do that.
This was fascinating! I will keep this in mind the next time I hear the term “inappropriate” or “unacceptable”. I thought I was the only one annoyed by those words. But I never was able to put a finger on exactly why. This makes so much sense!
It’s gotten so we can see someone slitting someone’s throat and all we can say is, “Tsk, tsk. That’s unacceptable!” ’cause y’know, calling the perpetrator a savage and his actions inhuman involves making a moral judgment. Worse yet, it might hurt the assailant’s feelings. And we all know that crime is always the result of the poooooooor criminal’s bad past, and therefore not anything that he should have to take responsibility for.
/sarc
The best comment was by Ryan Ruby, but he spoiled it by the groundless claim at the end that ALL philosophical problems come from linguistic mistakes. The irony of this Wittgensteinian approach is that it is precisely the sort of generalisation, that neglects the diversity of cases, which itself condemns.
Edward Skidelsky’s article on the linguistic shift over the last 30 years from words such ‘indecent’ or ‘improper’, which imply a moral judgement, to those such as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unacceptable’, which do not, brought to mind a distinction drawn in social psychology between ‘guilt’ cultures and ’shame’ cultures. Guilt cultures, traditionally assumed to be those in the West, use moral rules – together with the associated promise and threat of heaven and hell – to ensure that people’s behaviour conforms to certain norms; whilst ’shame’ cultures, traditionally assumed to be those in the East, use social pressure – and the associated gain or loss in ‘face’ – to do the same.
Perhaps, the linguistic shift from ‘indecent’ to ‘inappropriate’ does not indicate, as Skildelsky suggests, the growth of a “righteous fury behind the mask of bureaucratic neutrality”, but instead a trend in British society from holding God ultimately responsible for ensuring that we behave ourselves, to seeing that the definition and enforcement of our social norms is a responsibility that we all share.
Would this be such a bad thing?
nice article, please do read it.
I don’t buy the argument here. If ‘indecent’ and ‘improper’ express moral judgements, it seems to me that ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unacceptable’ express social judgements. Your contention that they merely express breaches of convention is false. Passing wind audibly in public is a breach of convention – a faux pas – but we tend to forgive it as an embarrassing accident. Doing something inappropriate or unacceptable is another kettle of fish entirely, and will likely earn the opprobrium of others, or even punishment (for example, being banned from future gatherings at the palace).
A second point. The writer says a once “indecent” joke will now be “unacceptable”. What he hasn’t considered is that our sense of what’s not OK has not only shifted, but also broadened. 50 years ago, pretty much anything was fair game for a joke as long as it wasn’t indecent. Now, indecent jokes are common and widely (not universally) accepted. Jokes based on race, disability and gender, however, are far more likely to cause offence. What word do we use for them? “Indecent” is too narrow. “Offensive” covers them better, as does “unacceptable”.
Which brings me to my final point. In stating that “this new, neutralised language does not spell any increase in freedom”, the writer sets up a false dichotomy. Who said that it was meant to provide more freedom? Surely the intention of calling something “inappropriate” or “unacceptable” is to express disapproval, just as our parents’ use of words like “lewd” and “vulgar” was intended.
We’re no more or less judgemental than previous generations, and we’re no less vocal in stating our disapproval of those things we dislike. Unarguably, we approve of or tolerate some things they abhorred, and we won’t stand for some things they were willing to turn a blind eye to (anyone up for a return to apartheid in South Africa?). But that’s a discussion about morality and values, not about language.
I thought you’d be amused? Jim
Perhaps the growing use of ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unacceptable’ is the result of people’s increasing lack of precision in language and the vocabulary to express oneself. On another note, I’ve found it interesting (a word in the same category) that childen and the mentally ill are often chastised by the phrase ‘that is inappropriate behavior’ as if they know what that means. Might as well just say ‘bad, bad!!’
Ironically, the dichotomous nature of the two terms resembles the very moral system being rejected: good and evil, saved and not-saved, believer and infidel, clean and unclean.
The language also forms the basis for political coercion. Governments enact hate-crime legislation to deal with what was once grotesque, hateful, spiteful, malicious, ignorant, etcetera… all, as you write, balled up in this one word, “unacceptable.” Once people were trusted to think for themselves and reject hate and grotesqueries. Not any more. The government must, like the language, think for us.
Whereas people once had the freedom to disapprove and to exist in the midst of disapproval there is constantly a call to eradicate those who do not think like us… no matter who thinks what. This is leading societies of the West to ever less tolerance while paying lip service to the term.
There’s something delusional in this speech too, as if one’s opinion were not just some weak-kneed moral opinion but something factual, solid, that gave the speaker an unquestionable moral authority. Perhaps that’s the drug that feeds the phenomenon we see escaping the lips of the impotent, like the ravings of men and women on street corners who, lacking the power to communicate with people long gone with whom they have outstanding issues, vocalize to ghosts.
Thanks for showing us the tip of this very cold-civil-war iceberg! This is not an insult: I understand there are space limitations.