I’m saying that playing language police in this way is a waste of time and effort because even if you get people to play along, you haven’t really accomplished much of anything when people just reach for a synonym for the exact same purpose.
It’s already considered particularly hateful to insult people based on their appearance as opposed to their actions, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Well that’s the thing, the word is not being used to insult people who are actually afflicted with the condition.
Lecture me about knowing linguistics when you understand what “more so” means. I’m not averse to the idea that thought can be shaped by such subtle factors, I’m saying that it’s not as strongly shaped by it as you think it is.
So if I, as an ugly person, dislike people using “ugly” as an insult, should that mean everyone is not allowed to use the word?
The point of an insult is to insult someone. You’re not going to rile anyone up calling them a chauvinist, arrogant, willfully ignorant, or anti-intellectual. It’s the intention and emotion behind the words that matter, not necessarily the words themselves. If anything, it’s our thoughts that shape our language more so than the other way around.
Did we get less fascist than the 90s when people were using the word freely? What do we do with the words “moronic”, “idiotic”, “stupid”, “imbecilic”, etc?
If only there were a way to combine the two, then we could keep an even larger bubble going.
Don’t you know? Users being told the exact location of a file is not user-friendly!
You told me I don’t know anything about linguistics and psychology, yet now you’re offended because I read your post saying things like “the language that we use shapes our thoughts more than we realize” and “people who are most averse to the idea that thought can be shaped by such subtle factors tend to the least rational” and inferred that you think it’s a strong influence.