AND HOW TO TEACH IT

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 668.

POLITICALLY CORRECT LANGUAGE

WEAK VERBS

I class – lost -i- in the infinitive

OE styrian > ME stirren

OE lufian > ME loven

II class – lost -o- in the Past and Participle forms

. BY MIKHALITSYNA ZINAIDA, LYCEUM OR-AVNER

Nowadays the whole world is obsessed with Political correctness. Let us give you some examples. In the kindergartens of the USA a fairy tale ‘Three piglets' is being renamed into ‘Three puppets' so that the Muslim people would not be offended. In Japan dwarf penguins were renamed into fairy penguins to avoid offence from short people. A story of “Snow white” became legendary. American society “For equal rights in animation films” declared that there should be three dwarfs of European origin, two must be of dark complexion, one – Latino-American and one – Indian. In Britain children once were forbidden to put on pirate-like bandage and a hook because people with the same problems might be insulted.

That is why we believe that students who study English as second language today should be aware of the importance of efforts towards inclusiveness and acceptance of diverse lifestyles and ethnicities in English-speaking countries. This is especially important for those who want to be able to function in English-speaking academic and business settings. Getting to know politically correct language not only provides important information for learners but also gives us an opportunity to become aware of important English issues.

The aims of this article are:

-to find the information on what PC language and its historical roots are;

-to make up a list of PC language;

-to investigate the phenomenon of political correctness in the Russian language;

-to present some appropriate activities on the topic (for the English language).

To do this, we found some information in the Internet, periodicals and dictionaries and analyzed the results of the survey having been made in our lyceum.

Politically correct (PC) Language is language that does not unjustly place any group above others, or in short, does not discriminate against any group of people.

A cornerstone of the PC language reform movement is the hypothesis, that language is a filter through which we view reality. The trend to ‘opening up' our society to diversity of all kinds is the reason why language reform movement was designed to aid social changes. Richard

Lingeman wrote that language should change to eliminate racist, classist, ageist, etc. pejoratives.