Class Year

2016

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Spring 2016

Department 1

Philosophy

Abstract

The debate over political correctness and the repression of speech has experienced a resurgence in the 2016 election season. “Political correctness is killing people,” Senator Ted Cruz remarked in December 2015. This thesis explores the liberal justification for the repressing politically incorrect speech and challenges the association of expressive freedom with truth, a position linked to John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of liberty and George Orwell’s denunciation of political speech. Reflecting contemporary postmodern views on language and liberation, I ultimately defend political correctness as a way to reflect social stigmatization, render stigmatized words more visible, and enhance linguistic agency.

Comments

Written as a Senior Thesis in the Philosophy Department.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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