Perhaps you have heard about Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI). It’s the work of a bunch of “progressive” academics who believe that the world will become a better place if only we can stop using certain words that supposedly have harmful effects.
In this AIER article, David Henderson and Charles Hooper subject EHLI to some rational scrutiny and conclude that it comes up empty.
The authors write:
Consider the word “master.” The Stanford document explains that ‘Historically, masters enslaved people, didn’t consider them human and didn’t allow them to express free will, so this term should generally be avoided.’ So, for example, you shouldn’t encourage your child to master algebra or English.
While it’s true that the master of a human slave and the master of a subject such as English share the same noun, most of us would consider the enslavement of a person to be something terribly wrong, while attaining expertise in a subject is good. The fact that the two expressions use the same word fails to make the distinction between the two definitions of the word. Many words have multiple definitions. Eliminating the word won’t do much to eliminate the connotation.
They’re right. Tossing out a useful word like “master” just because in the distant past it was used to denote a wrongful relationship weakens the language for no reason. Like so many other “progressive” initiatives, this one is all cost and no benefit.
I’d like to ask the people behind EHLI this: If it’s harmful to use the word “master,” isn’t it even more harmful to use the word “slavery”? That would seem to follow a fortiori. But I don’t think it’s on the bad-words list. And statist zealots often reference it to advocate policies they want today, such as racial preferences and reparations.