Political Correctness: A Conceptual History

Perhaps no other concept has so drastically altered the nature of contemporary public debate as that of 'political correctness', or 'PC' for short. The concept rose to public awareness in the early 1990s in relation to debates about higher education in the United States, but it very quickly spread to countries on the other side of the Atlantic, and has become the hub of debates about ethnicity, feminism, free speech, and democracy ever since.

Even so, there is as yet a very poor understanding of how this highly controversial concept emerged. The present study rectifies this situation. Drawing on materials made available digitally through various research and newspaper databases, the study provides the first empirically substantiated account of the history of the concept.

Combining procedures adapted from corpus linguistics with rhetorical analysis, the project also considers how developments in (leftwing) critical theory no less than in (rightwing) conspiracy theory are enmeshed with the history of concept of PC.

Throughout, the project provides empirical evidence that has previously not been available when discussing PC, to enable us to talk about this concept on the basis of facts rather than pre-conceived ideological assumptions. Besides making clear how, when, and why PC became a controversial concept, the study makes substantial contributions to the history of the women's liberation movement in the USA, literary theory, American studies, and rhetoric.