Wednesday, July 29, 2015

University of New Hampshire Speech Policy: Insane

"American" is problematic



Move over University of California and University of Wisconsin. The University of New Hampshire is about to take over first place when it comes to silly speech codes. The Daily Caller has the report below. There is a link to the UNH "bias-free language guide", and you gotta read it to believe it.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/28/public-universitys-bias-free-language-guide-calls-the-word-american-problematic/

As to the "American" issue, as a Spanish speaker, I know that if you travel to Central or South America and refer to yourself as an "American", you are likely to be politely informed that they are Americans too. That "micro-aggression" aside, I always tell my friends from those regions that in English, we don't have an adjective for United States as they do in Spanish (estadounidense) Thus, we have gotten in the habit of calling ourselves Americans. When I am in Latin America, I try to refer to myself as a North American and my country as the United States.

But if we are in the US, what's the big deal?  What is with all these rules? And who dreamed up all this "micro-aggression" stuff?

Maybe we should all just learn Esperanto.


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