Microaggressions, Trigger Warnings, and Censorship

Julian Rose

ASA 2, Sec. A01

10/14/2015

Week 4

Week 4 Blog: Microagressions, Trigger Warnings, and Censorship

Out of this week's readings, the article “The Coddling of the American Mind” captured my attention the most. The article tends to focus on 'microagressions' and 'trigger warnings' in particular, but overall it is addressing and evaluating the very notion of political correctness, which encompasses the aforementioned terms.

The question in a nutshell: would such a system of linguistic censorship and restriction cause more harm than good, rendering it a self-defeating model? Policing language and verbage to conform to politically correct standards can, as demonstrated in the article, become incredibly pesky and restrictive to the flow of classroom discussion

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While the PC culture's encouragement of refraining from potentially provocative 'trigger' words may be suitable in some scenarios, by and large it is a self-defeating liberal ideology, as it promotes reverse discrimination, (ex: professors in fear of using certain words, thereby retarding academic progression) constrains linguistic freedom, and fails to prepare students for the real world (“thin-skinned,” as stated by the author.)

I think a more holistic approach would be to foster an environment which encourages evaluating language based on the actual idea being conveyed, rather than the actual verbage and potential trigger words. If we were to foster this kind of environment, destructive stereotypes would still be discouraged, which satisfies the end goal of PC culture, without the needless language policing.

Question: How might we go about finding a balance between refraining from over-using trigger words, whilst focusing on the actual ideas being conveyed rather than the verbage (trigger words)?