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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY �Politically correct� is helpful and fair The subject for today is "politically correct" and "gender-free" speech. I have to admit that I am not an expert on English usage. My problem is that for much of my working life, I wrote for radio and television. I still use words as if they were going to be said aloud and not read silently. This leads to run-on sentences, incomplete sentences and other peculiarities, but I�m too old to straighten up and fly right. My, how the world of reading and writing has changed in the last 30 years. Back in about 1968, I attended the annual meeting of the Oregon Associated Press Broadcasters, held that year at the Village Green in Cottage Grove. One of the items on the two-day agenda had a title that went something like, "How to Write in the New Gender-neutral World," and the speaker was an English professor from the University of Oregon. He said that a change was coming in how gender would be used in the English language. The professor noted that since the end of World War II, many women had been organizing to overturn centuries-old perceptions that they were somehow subservient to men. What they wanted were new words that described in neutral ways activities of both sexes. At that time, many men would have said that the words needed to describe people in a neutral way already existed. Those were "man" or "mankind," and these generic words were actually inclusive of both sexes. The professor handed out a page of words and how they might be changed. The object was to remove the "men" or "man" suffixes from words like policeman, journeyman, anchorman, salesman and midshipman. Thus "anchorman" became "anchor" and "chairman" became simply "chair." It seemed awkward to me at the time to use an inanimate object such as "chair" to describe a person, but I�m pretty well used to it now. After listening to the professor, I thought at the time that women have a right to work for changes in the language to eliminate some words that they feel are unfair. There are a lot of things worse than trying to change a few words in the language. I really approved of one new word � "Ms." � which first appeared in 1949. The word was used for a person to whom you are writing when you don�t know if she is a Miss or a Mrs. When I was in office, I found it very helpful when replying to mail from a woman who signed only her first and last names with no indication of marital status. Otherwise, I would reply to the whole name, such as "Dear Martha Jones." Not being sure about the marital status was like flying blind, and the Ms. covered all situations Reshaping the language to make it more inclusive was a minor chore compared with what followed, "politically correct" language. The term first appeared in the New York Times is 1911, but that was an isolated incident. In 1984, the phrase made its first modern appearance in The Washington Post in a story about Rep. Barney Frank. Another Post reporter used it in the same year in a story in the arts section about how novelists have a duty to be politically correct. From there, the use of the phrase increased nationwide, so fast that in 1993 Nigel Reese was able to compile "The Politically Correct Phrase Book." Reese is British, but most of the book concerns usage in America. Some of these phrases read like a comedy routine, but the author swears many are commonly used. Here are some samples: Ugly: "aesthetically challenged." Broke: "financially challenged." Fat: "horizontally challenged." Dead: "metabolically challenged." Criminal: "morally challenged." Adultery: "consensual, non-monogamy." Other phrases included "parentally disadvantaged" for orphan and "offender" for burglar, criminal or murderer. Finally, there�s one that hits closer to home: Writer: "blank-paper challenged" � me. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.