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Discourse & Society
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DOI: 10.1177/
Discourse Society 2003 14: 17
NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH
`Political Correctness': the Politics of Culture and Language
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A B S T R A C T. In this article, I approach the controversy over ‘political correctness’ (PC) in terms of three questions: a socio-historical question, a theoretical question and a political question as follows. (1) Why this apparently increasing focus in politics on achieving social and political change through changing culture and changing language – what has happened socially that can explain the ‘cultural turn’ and the ‘language turn’ in politics, in social and political theory, and in other domains of social practice? (2) How are we to understand the relationships among culture, language and other elements of social life and social practices – how are we to understand the relationship between change in culture and language, and social change? (3) For those who are politically committed to substantive social and political change (whether on the right or on the left), what place can a politics centred around culture and language have in a political strategy which is to have some chance of success? The article concludes with a discussion of strategies and tactics for contesting critiques of ‘PC’.
K E Y W O R D S : culture, dialectics, discourse, political correctness
We might see the controversy around ‘political correctness’ (PC) as a political controversy in which both those who are labelled ‘PC’ and those who label them ‘PC’ are engaged in a politics that is focused upon representations, values and identities – in short, a ‘cultural politics’. An immediate caveat is that the homo- geneity of ‘PCers’ (those who are labelled ‘PC’) is no more than a constructed homogeneity produced through the labelling, but I shall leave that until later. The objective on both sides is cultural change (in a sense of ‘culture’ I shall explain shortly) as a trigger for broader social change. This makes sense of the obser- vation, which a number of commentators have made, that there is a sort of per- formative contradiction in critiques of ‘PC’ because they would seem themselves
A R T I C L E 17
‘Political correctness’: the politics of
culture and language
N O R M A N FA I R C L O U G H
L A N C A S T E R U N I V E R S I T Y
Discourse & Society Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 14(1): 17– [0957- (200301) 14:1; 17–28; 028927]
discourses, they are also systems and forms of consciousness, and they may be ideologies – again, neither excludes discourses, neither is discrete, but they are analytically different. Let us say that a particular form of social life is a particular networking of social practices (the ‘systems’ referred to in Williams’ terminology above) including particular articulations among culture, language (discourse) and other elements of social practices; and let us say that social change is a change in the networking of social practices and the articulation of elements. This will have to suffice as a theoretical basis for approaching the question about social history and change. In broad terms, an increasing salience of culture and discourse in (an increasingly reflexive) social life is a feature of modernity, and perhaps especially of changes in social life over recent decades. The ‘cultural turn’ and the ‘language turn’ are first of all ‘turns’ in social life itself, and only secondarily turns in philosophy and social theory. Let me quickly review some more recent aspects and indications of this change. First, the ‘culture industries’, including broadcasting, have become increasingly important domains of social practice, and their networking with other domains of social practice (the eco- nomy, politics, family life, etc.) has become an increasingly significant feature of social life. Culture industries such as television are (as the term suggests) entities on an economic level as well as others, but they are specialized for ‘signifying sys- tems’ in Williams’ terminology – and the representations, values and identities constructed in and projected and circulated through them are uncontroversially of increasing social significance. Other domains of social practice (e.g. politics, family life, community life) work more and more through the mediation of the culture industries, and cultural representations and values (and therefore the dis- courses which circulate through television and other media) play an increasingly salient role in the way in which politics, family life and so on, work. Second, culture and discourse are increasingly significant in economic produc- tion and consumption. It is a truism that commodities are now consumed for their cultural or ‘sign’ value rather than just their ‘use’ value, and are accordingly produced as embodiments of cultural values and discourses, targeted with ever greater precision at culturally differentiated ‘niche markets’ (defined in terms of generation, gender, lifestyle, etc.). Another truism is that economies are increas- ingly ‘informational’ or ‘knowledge-based’ and ‘knowledge-driven’, which amounts to discourse-driven – driven for instance by shifting managerial dis- courses that come to be enacted as managerial systems in business and industry. By the same token, the knowledge, skills, aptitudes and attitudes of employees, their values and their identities, and therefore their (‘lifelong’) education and training, become a major concern for business. There are other respects in which identities come to be an increasingly salient concern. Economic transformations have radically changed the social relations of work. The system of social classes defined primarily by social relations within economic production has lost its potency as the principle shaper of social identi- ties and differences. The attachment of political parties and governments to particular social class interests has virtually disappeared. Governments are
Fairclough: ‘Political correctness’ 19
instead in increasingly close ‘partnerships’ with business, and see a large part of their role as creating the financial, infrastructural and ‘human resources’ con- ditions for success in the highly competitive ‘global economy’. Education becomes a primary concern, but also forms of ‘cultural governance’, the formation and transformation of identities and values. Meanwhile, left politics, unable to respond to these social transformations and the ideological assault of the New Right and neo-liberalism with an effective counter-hegemonic strategy (Hall, 1994), has become fragmented. They are no longer centred upon the political parties and social classes but oriented to ‘single issues’ and to a politics of recognition, identity and difference as much as to a politics of re-distributive social justice. This brief sketch has brought us to the point of entry of the controversy over ‘political correctness’, because as I indicated above this controversy is located within the shift to ‘cultural’ politics, the politics of recognition, identity and dif- ference. The point of arriving at this politics by the rather circuitous route I have taken above, however, is that ‘PC’ needs, I believe, to be framed rather more broadly than it has generally been within the social transformations of recent decades. Cultural interventions directed at changing representations, values and identities, and (given the particular focus of this article) doing so in part through changing language (discourse), are actually pervasive in contemporary social life. They are pervasive in economic practices, in which the inculcation of employees into new ways of working and new identities corresponding to them, partly through attempts to get them to not only use but ‘own’ new discourses (some of the buzz-words are: ‘teams’, ‘networks’, ‘partnerships’, ‘flexibility’). They are pervasive in politics and in the mediation of politics through the press and broadcasting – as for instance Hall (1994) points out, the hegemonic projects of Reagan and Thatcher were orchestrated at different levels, and were partly projects for changing culture and discourse. From this perspective, one striking feature of the ‘PC’ controversy is its narrow focus on one relatively small part of this pervasive process of cultural and discur- sive intervention. For one thing, as Hall (1994) points out, the left cultural poli- tics which was labelled ‘PC’ by the right really took off during the Reagan–Thatcher era, which was characterized by substantial cultural and dis- cursive interventions on the part of government. These were linked to the devel- opment and diffusion of a neo-liberal political agenda and political discourse especially on the part of New Right ‘think tanks’ (such as the Adam Smith Institute in the UK), which were closely linked to the Reagan and Thatcher gov- ernments. The ‘terrorism’ of feminists and anti-racists in, for instance, their attempts to gain institutional acceptance for guidelines for anti-racist and anti- sexist language use (see Section 3 of this article) seem small beer in comparison with the systematic diffusion and imposition of neo-liberal discourse through international organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD, and through the very media which were loudest in condemning ‘PC’. Of course there are significant differences in forms of cultural and discursive
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Section 1. How are we to understand the relationships among culture, language and other elements of social life and social practices (including institutions and organizations, urban or industrial infrastructure, social relations)? How are we to understand the relationship between change in culture and language, and social change? I suggested above that a particular form of social life is a particular networking of social practices including particular articulations among culture, language and other elements of social practices; and that social change is a change in the networking of social practices and the articulation of elements. A social practice (e.g. commodity advertising, secondary education) is an articulation of analyti- cally different elements which are not, however, discrete but dialectically inter- connected such that each internalizes the others (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2000; Harvey, 1996). Let us say that the analytically different elements are:
● activities; ● subjects (endowed with representations, knowledge, beliefs, values, purposes, attitudes); ● social relations; ● instruments; ● objects; ● time and place; ● discourse. Social practices are inherently reflexive – people interact, and at the same time they represent to themselves and each other what they do (sometimes drawing upon representations of what they do which come from other practices, includ- ing governmental and ‘expert’ practices). What they do is then shaped and re- shaped by their representations of what they do. We can understand the dialectical internalization of discourse within other elements in these terms: activities for instance are enactments of discourses (e.g. the way a teacher teaches is an enactment of particular representations, particular discourses, of teaching – maybe even developed ‘theories’ of teaching). This perspective is the basis of theories of social constructionism – theories of social life as socially (discursively) constructed as an effect of discourses. Such ‘discourse theory’ has helped shape the forms of cultural politics that have been labelled as ‘PC’. Processes of cultural and discursive intervention, including what is referred to as ‘PC’, can be seen in these terms as attempts to change discourses on the assumption that changing discourses will, or may, lead to changes in other elements of social practices through processes of dialectical internalization. For instance, if people can be persuaded to talk of ‘partner’ rather than ‘the person I’m living with’ or ‘lover’ (or even ‘mistress’), or if people being ‘sacked’ is partly displaced in public discourse by organizations ‘downsizing’, there will (or may) be consequential changes in how non-marital relationships and economic restructuring are perceived, and how people act and react towards them. Changes
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of discourse are not merely re-labellings but shifts to different spheres of values. In the case of ‘partner’, this involves a shift for some people to the values of busi- ness relationships, which has made the term uncomfortable even for many who use it; in the case of ‘downsizing’ there is a shift to the values of a particular form of economics. Part of the controversy over ‘PC’ is attributable to often implicit dif- ferences between those who assume some form of ‘discourse theory’, which implies that representations are always positioned, value-laden and chosen against alternative representations. This compares with those who assume a transparent and direct relationship between what is said/written and ‘the lan- guage’, without the mediating level of discourse (Cameron, 1995). However, one has to be cautious about how one understands social (discursive) constructionism. First, the dialectical internalization also works ‘the other way round’, which amounts to saying that discourses do not come out of nowhere. Second, the internalization of discourses in other elements of social practices (including their physical–material elements, e.g. the plant and machinery of an industry) is a conditioned and contingent process. To see why this is so, we need to look more closely at the dialectics of discourse. Let me distinguish among three principle ways in which discourse figures in social practices. It figures firstly as discourses (note the distinction between ‘dis- course’ as an abstract noun and as a count noun – the latter is just one aspect of the former). Discourses are positioned representations (including reflexive self- representations of social practices) – positioned in the sense that different pos- itions in the social relations of a social practice tend to give rise to different representations. Secondly, it figures as genres – ways of acting and interacting in their discourse (more broadly: semiotic) aspect. For instance, interviewing, lecturing and conversing are genres. Thirdly, it figures as styles – ways of being, identities, in their discourse (semiotic) aspect. For instance, there are various ways of being a political leader or a manager, which are partly bodily and partly discursive. With these distinctions in mind, let us turn to the dialectics of discourse. Discourses include not only representations of how things are, they can also be representations of how things could be, or ‘imaginaries’. They can represent or imagine interconnected webs of activities, instruments, objects, subjects in social relations, times and places, values, etc. As imaginaries, they may come to be enacted as actual webs of activities, subjects, times and places, values, etc. – they can become actual ways of acting and interacting. Such enactments include genres – the dialectical enactment of discourses is partly a movement within the discursive/semiotic moment/element of social practices, and partly a movement between this moment/element and others. They may also come to be inculcated as new ways of being, new identities – including new styles (but also new bodily behaviours). ‘May’ is crucially important: what I am suggesting is a moderate form of ‘social constructivism’ (Sayer, 2000) which recognizes that discourses may construct and reconstruct social practices, social structures and social life, but which also
Fairclough: ‘Political correctness’ 23
it became fragmented, and some engaged in what Hall sees as a voluntarist form of ‘vanguardist’ cultural politics centring upon ‘PC’ – it lost any sense of the need for a strategic, counter-hegemonic, dimension. Hall is careful to dis- tinguish between the validity of a cultural politics focused upon a critique of lan- guage in the construction of social identities and differences, and the vanguardist way in which this politics was pursued – its attempt to police language and behav- iour, an ultra-left politics of ‘demands’. Having said that, the danger of people on the left, such as Hall, using the label ‘PC’ (see also Eagleton, 2000: 89) is that it fails to recognize that the differentiation he is seeking to make within left poli- tics’ tactics and strategies are fudged over in the critique of ‘PC’ – his own more cautious cultural and discursive interventions are just as likely to be critiqued as ‘PC’. Critics of ‘PC’ had a plausible target because some (but only some) of the forms of cultural and discursive intervention labelled as ‘PC’ smacked of the arrogance, self-righteousness and puritanism of an ultra-left politics, and have caused wide- spread resentment even among people basically committed to anti-racism, anti- sexism, etc. I recall, for instance, a discussion with a respected political activist some years ago after a political meeting in which the debate was interrupted by what he saw as self-righteous, holier-than-thou, hectoring, which fetishized a rather minor matter of wording (someone referred to the chair as ‘Mr Chairman’) that was irrelevant to the point at issue, and was damaging to the meeting as a political event. My impression is that such reactions were common. It is true, as critics of the critique of ‘PC’ have often pointed out, that some of the favourite chestnuts were apocryphal (e.g. ‘coffee without milk’ instead of ‘black coffee’), but nevertheless the resonance which these critiques have had indicates that they did connect with people’s experiences. The critiques are certainly reactionary, they certainly depend upon a spurious construct called ‘PC’, they isolate one form of cultural and discoursal intervention from other forms, but like most successful ideologies they contain a partial truth. What follows from all this is that if the politics of culture and language are to work as part of a political strategy with some prospect of success, they have to be integrated within a politics of structures and habituses – a hegemonic politics, in Hall’s terms, which brings together interventions at various levels of the social. For example, not focusing on sexist or racist language use in an organization through non-sexist/non-racist guidelines in isolation from other potentially dis- criminatory aspects of the social relations of the organization, such as salary dif- ferentials or procedures for promotion. The right has understood this better than the left, though some on the left (still branded within the catch-all ideological cat- egory of ‘PC’) have understood it too. Neo-liberal and New Right politics have tar- geted structures and institutions, educational systems (and thereby the formation of habituses), as well as cultural representations, values and identities. That in itself is no guarantee of success, and there are manifestly resistances both to enactment and inculcation of neo-liberal discourses. Moreover, relatively successful enactment does not guarantee relatively successful inculcation: there
Fairclough: ‘Political correctness’ 25
is a stage short of inculcation at which people may acquiesce to new discourses without accepting them – they may mouth them rhetorically, for strategic and instrumental purposes, as happens, for instance, with market discourse in public services such as education.
4. Conclusion The editorial in the British daily newspaper The Mail on 11 April 2000 was head- lined ‘Deplorable bid to stifle debate’, and attacked the ‘liberal fascism’ of the Liberal Democrats for their complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality about the language of both Labour and Conservatives in public statements about people seeking political asylum in Britain. A focus of debate was asylum seekers being described as ‘bogus’. The Sun editorial on the same day, under the heading ‘Bogus issue’, said: ‘What a sad commentary on this PC-obsessed country that, instead of confronting the problem head on, we are talking about the “right lan- guage” to use!’ It also says: ‘There IS a flood of illegal immigrants... The majority ARE bogus’ and ‘The issue has nothing to do with race.’ The controversy over political asylum in Britain during the past couple of years is an example of the apparent continuing effectiveness of the strategy of wheel- ing out charges of ‘PC’ against political opponents. But how might those who are committed to more socially just policies towards refugees as well as ‘economic migrants’ respond to this strategy, both tactically in particular instances like this, and strategically in aiming in the long run to make the strategy ineffective? And how might discourse analysts and sociolinguists contribute? These are big issues which I can only touch upon here. Strategically, critics of globalization, neo-liberalism and more specific aspects of them such as policies on migration lack, as Hall (1994) points out, a hegemonic strategy. There is a widespread understanding that the emerging socio-economic order is deeply problematic, that, for instance, large business corporations have too much power and elected governments have too little power, that the advocacy of ‘liberalization’ in the free movement of money and goods stands in stark con- trast to the harsh restrictions on the movement of people. Yet, so far, there is no coherent alternative vision of a social order which can attract the support and conviction that might lead to a hegemonic strategy. Whether and when such a strategy will emerge we cannot know. But one of its pre-conditions is better theory and analysis. There is clearly a need for a better theoretical understanding of the ‘PC’ con- troversy on, broadly, the left. Discourse analysts and sociolinguists can contribute through researching and theorizing the ‘PC’ controversy, and seeking ways to bring their perspectives into the political debates. What is missing on the left is a general understanding of the significance and nature of cultural and linguistic interventions in the transformations of contemporary social life. We need a bal- anced view of the importance of language in social change and politics, which avoids a linguistic vanguardism as well as dismissing questions about language as
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N O R M A N FA I RC L O U G H is Professor of Language in Social Life at Lancaster University, UK and has written extensively on critical discourse analysis. Recent books include Discourse in Late Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 1999, with Lilie Chouliaraki) and New Labour, New Language? (Routledge, 2000). A D D R E S S : Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK. [email: [email protected]]
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