The Politics in Anti-Politically Correct Discourses

Politicians from Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro, Giorgia Meloni, Bernie Sanders, Marine Le Pen, Hugo Chávez, George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, and Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva, among others, have openly denounced political correctness (PC) or publicly employed politically incorrect language in their discourses. In practice, the use of PC attempts to avoid judgmental terms in favour of euphemistic substitutes, and presupposes that changes in language mediate discrimination in positive ways. Anti-PC, on the other hand, represents a dismissal of PC terminology and/or the denouncing of PC language and users. Recent surveys and electoral outcomes in some multicultural democracies (e.g. the United States, Brazil or France) suggest that large portions of the electorate respond positively to anti-PC discourses in politics – but why?

It was not until the 1980s that right-leaning conservative elites, including many academics, started denouncing PC language as a restriction to freedom of speech. The modern conception of PC originated in Mao Tse-Tung’s depiction of the “correct” socialist party line in the 1930s, used to describe doing the right things and thinking the right thoughts. The term was picked up by leftist circles in the US during the 1960s to describe – often ironically – more orthodox followers of socialism. It was not until the 1980s that right-leaning conservative elites, including many academics, started denouncing PC language as a restriction to freedom of speech. At the time, the so-called “university debates” across American universities brought widespread attention to issues surrounding PC, multiculturalism, and affirmative action in the US and across the world. By the mid-1990s, PC debates had become as much about political ideologies as about the diverse cultural movements PC language attempts to relabel. Since then, the rapid expansion of PC language has generated more abstract and imprecise terminological replacements that can feel unnatural, create confusion, and further socioeconomic inequalities via linguistic processes. Altogether, this has contributed to the evolution of PC from a noun used to describe language substitutions to an adjective used to describe excess politeness or the evasion of truth in society or for individuals.

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In his influential article “The Populist Zeitgeist”, political scientist Cas Mudde suggests that contemporary populists use PC to identify a modern elite and profit from “breaking” with PC language. Since the articles’ publication in 2004, anti-PC discourses in politics have regularly been associated with populism. Mudde understands populism as a thin-centred ideology that can be combined with various other political ideologies. This makes it hard to pinpoint if anti-PC discourses are a manifestation of the populist ideology, an adjacent ideology, or a specific feature of certain societies. That is, it is not clear why anti-PC discourses are a politically profitable strategy for diverse populist leaders with different ideological commitments but not for other politicians. In such, there appears to be a leap associating populism and anti-PC discourses without systematically analysing its usage over time and across contexts.

Similarly, cultural backlash theory argues that socially conservative individuals with authoritarian orientations resent the erosion of respect for their core values and that this resentment is reflected in a backlash against PC language. The theory assumes that anti-PC discourses matter in politics because of what they mean (i.e. as racist, sexist, and/or homophobic comments) and that this is why they resonate with certain old, rural, or uneducated electorates. Yet, the theory finds very limited empirical support. Anti-PC discourses, for example, appear to resonate broadly within societies for various reasons, many unrelated to resentment (e.g. humour). Thus, both the cultural backlash and populist accounts focus on a few specific manifestations of anti-PC discourses by particular politicians and only partially explain how anti-PC discourses function in politics, or why they might matter for political outcomes.

Perceptions of a politician’s authenticity are connected to higher levels of political trust. Employing anti-PC language in political discourse can make politicians appear more authentic, to have stronger convictions, and seem less strategic, in comparison to “PC politicians”. Anti-PC discourses can signal to audiences that a politician is being “true to their inner self”, by reducing the perceived link between thinking and saying for audiences. In fact, the denouncing of PC language or the labelling of a politician as PC ingrains an allusion to inauthenticity, to someone or something that expresses its views in calculated ways to avoid judgement. This matters politically, as perceptions of a politician’s authenticity are connected to higher levels of political trust and can inform electorates about how politicians might act in contexts where the public is absent. Thinking about anti-PC discourses in politics in terms of authenticity allows us to broadly reflect on how these discourses might work to connect diverse politicians to large portions of their electorates (beyond simply reducing the process to being “connected to populism or resentment”).

Whereas meaning in political discourses is consequential and PC language is important to multicultural democracies, we might have been too quick to dismiss anti-PC discourses in politics as “populist rhetoric”. By doing so, we might have overlooked fundamental aspects of doing politics related to how politicians connect with audiences via discourse. Electorates can vote for politicians regardless of – or even despite – what is being said or the policies proposed, because they perceive them to be authentic, for example. Politicians – especially those who value democracy – should work on different ways to connect with electorates for whom personality perceptions are at least as important as the meanings or policies associated with what is being said. Electorates often do not agree with everything that is said or proposed by a politician, but believing that a politician is saying what they really think can go a long way…