[dahart]

> who knows what else […] making the language less expressive

There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.

I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.

Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?

[mhb]

When the end result has actually happened (advocacy for the avoidance of sound-alike words), it is no longer a slippery slope.

Anyway, there is value in trying to get people to understand that people who innocently use a sound-alike don't intend to offend them. Which is pretty much what John McWhorter has written about many times. The failure to understand context seems to be a big part of many issues of the day.

[dahart]

The “end result” you just referred to is only for the 3 specific words we’ve been discussing and no others. It actually is a slippery slope argument when you’re talking about any other words and not the 3 specific ones in this thread.

I totally agree there’s value in sharing context, and helping people not be offended. USC agrees as well now. Good!