Language is formative

The argument

As a society, we should require public figures to use politically correct speech, because language is deeply formative. Although we are reluctant to admit this, wider cultural forces influence the way we think and behave. The reluctance is understandable — it sits badly with how we prefer to see ourselves — but the claim being made is a modest one. This is not to say that humans are doomed to follow wider cultural trends, only that the society we are immersed in does have an impact on our actions, which is enough for the argument to go through. If that is granted, then what is said publicly is not merely a report of opinions already held; it is one of the forces shaping which opinions become holdable. This is why politically correct speech should be a requirement for public discourse specifically, and why public figures are the ones on whom the requirement falls: their speech reaches far enough to be one of those cultural forces, in a way that private conversation is not. The consequence of the alternative follows directly. If we allow people to share sentiments that harbour prejudice without criticism, we allow our culture to spread the popularity of those ideas — not because any single remark converts anyone, but because prejudice expressed publicly and met with silence is thereby established as ordinary, and what is ordinary is what people find themselves able to think. Understood this way, our society's political correctness is not an impediment to free speech or a pointless rule of propriety. It is a measure that discourages the widespread affirmation of prejudice, which is a different thing from forbidding its expression and is aimed at the effect rather than the speaker.

Premises

Counter-arguments

As creatures with free will, humans can choose to embrace or reject particular opinions. We can choose our beliefs for ourselves and are not doomed to accept popular ones. In a society with politically correct standards, people will still choose to embrace problematic beliefs. For this reason, political correctness does not prevent prejudice. It simply prevents people from sharing their opinions.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise states the formative claim in a strong and a weak version at once. That culture shapes thought is widely accepted; that it does so strongly enough for public speech norms to alter what people believe is the contested empirical claim, and no evidence is offered for it. The hedge "even if it does not wholly determine our actions" concedes the gap without closing it. [Rejecting P2] The move from criticising prejudice to requiring politically correct speech swaps a voluntary practice for a mandatory one. Criticism is more speech; a requirement is a restriction, and calling it a mere discouragement of "affirmation" does not show the restriction is costless. It also assumes that expression suppressed is belief abandoned, when the opposite outcome is available — sentiment that goes unchallenged precisely because it is no longer said aloud. [Rejecting C] The conclusion answers a narrower question than the one asked. Establishing one benefit of political correctness does not establish that it does no harm; that requires weighing costs against benefits, and the premises examine only one side of the ledger.