Mediated Relations vs Genuine Connections

Here we are now – our lives outlined in a one page profile, with our interests, likes and dislikes all neatly organized in that all-too familiar blue and white layout. It seems like the whole world is cast under the spell of this ever intoxicating rush of information besides a vast cybernetic means of communication. That, we freely call Facebook.

Facebook [FB] is a new age addiction that (thanks to user-friendly interfaces and the spread of technology globally) has managed to work its way into the lives of almost every people. What’s more interesting is that even if it just started on 2004, it has already become a phenomenon worldwide. As Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pointed out, “If Facebook were granted terra firma, it would be the world’s third largest country by population, two-thirds bigger than the United States.” Undeniably, it has come to be an element of the lives of not just the present generation; in fact, even our parents and our professors are joining the bandwagon!

According to the statistics revealed by Dartmouth College’s Institute for Security, Technology and Society (ISTS), sometime in the next few months, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. With over 100 million members accessing the site and around 150,000 new users signing up on a daily basis, it is no longer surprising to see Facebook on top of the list of the most trafficked websites in the United States. This rapid growth spurt of Facebook seems to have intensified quite dramatically over the past several months. Indeed, Facebook is “accelerating at a crazy rate, but it’s actually been growing and doubling about once every six months for quite a while,” says Zuckerberg (Locke).

Behind these staggering statistics, perhaps most of us do not know when, where and how Facebook came to existence. It was actually in February 2004 that Zuckerberg – former Harvard undergraduate – along with two classmates helped found Facebook in his dorm room as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another. This social networking was at first limited to several students in Harvard. Several months later, it has finally rolled out to other colleges, then to high schools, then to a bunch of companies, and eventually to us. Did Zuckerberg realize back then that he was witnessing merely the larval stage of his creation? Did he even recognize that he will be the next pioneer of a social network that will sooner or later ‘eat the world’ and join the ranks of the Web’s great superpowers? (Fletcher 16-17)

By saying “Web’s great superpowers”, we mean other top rated sites on the list. Google helps us search our data. YouTube keeps us entertained. Twitter keeps us posted. But Facebook? Aha – very huge advantage: the emotional investment of its users (Fletcher 17). It might seem that this blue-and-white-themed social network is nothing more than a medium for communication; yet in reality, it is so much more than that. It has the capacity to make most people smile, shudder, or even fret when no one responds to their witty remarks on their walls! Through this, it has been an opportunity for Facebook to open another platform for its users – a platform with a whole new variety of services that most of them are definitely excited about.

Well, you may have created your Facebook account with the intention of keeping track of friends and family abroad, or maybe as a way of finding old acquaintances. But the question is, have you gotten more than you bargained for?

Social networking – under a broader topic called new media – in turn has become a giant ‘buzzphrase’ over the past years (Dubner). In just a short while, most people across the globe have already patronized Facebook over other social networking sites. There is actually no need to ask why this happened: it is without doubt apparent. New media, together with Facebook and other social networking sets, has burst the “one-size fits all” bubble that we have now been accustomed to (qtd. in Sula 2). Because of this, more and more people are turning to Facebook for they are encouraged not just to socialize online, but to engage in amusement and businesses varieties as well.

We all know that Facebook is mainly about finding people we have lost track of; it is about reconnecting ties with acquaintances. These people are complete cast of characters, most of whom we have forgotten existed. But aha! – Facebook never, ever seem to forget. No matter how different we may have looked or changed now, we can still be identified. These days, the easiest way to identify us and our long forgotten friends and colleagues is perhaps with the most used and well-liked ‘Facebook tags’.

Aside from overcoming time and distance for people to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances, Facebook also provides people a new avenue for amusement. This was made possible since Facebook has established valuable ties from different application and program providers. The all-time favorites such as Farmville, Plants vs Zombies and Lemonade Tycoon are just a few; there are still hundreds more. What’s fascinating is that these applications that share with Facebook’s seemingly unending success has been another excellent way to deal with boredom. They give users this option to play games against each other and to join numerous interest groups and communities in just a single click. I repeat: just a single click.

Furthermore, Facebook has transformed itself into a valuable business network too. It offers different entrepreneurs a chance to advertise and market their products as easy as possible. Today, we can find back to back advertisements in FB – be it for food, accessories, clothes, and a lot more. We do not know this but the company behind FB’s feat is making money because we are, on some level, broadcasting information through our profiles, likes and dislikes. Partnered with variety of business sets, they give them [business sets] access to our information with an equivalent fee, of course. Through that, entrepreneurs can have a good statistical measure on what to sell, and how to advertise their market. The data we are directly providing them thus feeds a bottom line. With these things, Facebook has left the people an impression of utter dependence – of having no communication channel that makes such opportunities available other than itself.

Among these whys and wherefores, the key reason why Facebook is still up on the online social pedestal is its ability to make “friends” without borders. It can bring people with varying backgrounds together who might never have met otherwise. All it takes to meet new people is good Internet connection. Being the vehicle for this change, the Internet is then considered the “third place” (the first and second places being home and work) where people can build a sense of togetherness with people even from across the world. How come? Well, some people really find it difficult to make new friends due to their hectic lifestyle and intense work schedules. These modern day deeds do turn social activities into an impossible mission; and yes, social media have stepped in as a useful helper.

From its ability of bridging the distance between friends and family that are strung out across the globe to its potential of providing target niche markets to entrepreneurs, Facebook on the surface may be perceived as a socially acceptable networking site for people to share experiences that are grounded on the real world. But here’s another question that I guess we all have to think about: Do social networking sites enable genuine interaction or do they just reduce it to an escapist experience, displacing real interaction in favour of an alternative reality?

Perhaps we do not notice this; but Facebook unconsciously directs people to create a fantasy land where a major discrepancy lies on the ‘social DNAs’ of the people. Behind all the listed advantages are more disadvantages – disadvantages in terms of cultural and social relationship towards our actual, real-world community.

According to Harry C. Triandis, author of the book Culture and Social Behavior, culture is to society what memory is to individuals (1). In other words, culture includes traditions that tell “what has worked” in the past. It encompasses the way people have learned to look at their environment and themselves, and their unstated assumptions about the way the world is and the way people should act. But this age we are now living in is already full of wondrous illumination brought by the advent of how an entirely new society delivered the promise of change. The current era (which is best described in terms of its dominant culture), as we have expected, is radically different from any other. The difference is due to a number of connected factors. But many are centrally concerned with the growth and establishment of the new media.

Keith Tester points in his book entitled Media, Culture and Morality that “Cultural production is today dominated by the media to such extent that no cultural activity is untouched by them. (2)” They present everything as interesting in and for itself. They, as a result, tend to utterly destroy the possibility that some things might be qualitatively better than others. This domination of the media and the collapse of all critical faculties into the categories of the interesting or the boring means that it is not just cultural value that has tended to be destroyed; societal values have been seriously harmed as well (Tester, 1994).

It is fair to say that the impact of media in the cultural sphere has, most generally, been associated with the destruction of cultural and societal identities. Here’s a brief history:

Once upon a time, before the era of globalization, there existed local, autonomous, distinct and well-defined, robust and culturally sustaining connections between geographical place and cultural experience. These connections constituted one’s – and one’s community’s – ‘cultural identity’. This identity was something people simply ‘had’ as an undisturbed existential possession, an inheritance, a benefit of traditional long dwelling, of continuity with the past. Identity, then, like language, was not just a description of cultural belonging; it was a sort of collective treasure of local communities. But it was also discovered to be something fragile that needed protecting and preserving, that could be lost. Into this world of manifold, discrete, but to various degrees vulnerable, cultural identities there suddenly burst (apparently around the middle of the 1980s) the corrosive power of media globalization.

This globalization, so the story goes, has swept like a flood tide through the world’s diverse cultures, destroying stable localities, displacing people, bringing a market-driven, ‘branded’ homogenization of cultural experience, thus obliterating the differences between locality-defined cultures which had constituted our identities (Tomlinson 1-2).

This, then, is the story that implicates how media dominion threats that particular subset of culture and society by “brushing off” its identity. Triandis also supported this indication, investigating one of the societal and cultural differences that is evident in the revolution brought by new media: a transformation from a culture that is collectivist to a culture that is individualistic.

Before the new media greatly influenced our society, greater part of the people are said to be collectivists: they are mostly defined in terms of groups, in terms of relationships. If they want to enjoy, they move out of their homes to primarily seek out companies from other people. Their means of social gratification is to directly look for acquaintances, for connections, for relationships. In terms of their groups, they have a few but relationship to them is close and intimate. People do seriously value security, ingroup harmony and personalized relationships (Triandis 166-169).

When new media stepped in, trends represent a significant shift from collectivist culture to an individualistic culture. People from the latter culture are mostly defined as an independent entity. Yes, people tend to be friendly but non-intimate toward a wide range of people outside the family. If collectivists know more about others, individualists know less since they favor independence from groups. They tend to have many groups, but relationships to them are casual, and with little emotional investment. Much of the people’s behavior occurs when alone or perhaps in couples (Triandis 166-169).

The brave new world of Facebook is just a concrete example of how this previously mentioned culture and behavioral shift takes place. Majority of the people these days have significantly rely on the faces of new media. Look around you, notice that we already have a culture that has turned to Facebook for social networking, informational searches, and other forms of entertainment (Sula 3). As a matter of fact, ISTS revealed that more than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook daily, and 1 billion pieces of content are shared weekly. Instead of performing social activities in actual, most end up doing them online. Facebook, in particular, reshapes the world irresistibly not just because of the change in the way we receive information, but also the change in which we establish communication.

The nature of communication has undergone a substantial change in the past 20 years – and the change is not over. Broadcast technologies such as FB transform these short bursts of communication from one-on-one conversations to little news (or trivia) programs that we can “tune in” when we want an update or have something to say, and “channel surf” to other activities in between updates.

As you may have noticed, communication via social media is easy to implement; it has already become a brand new avenue of interaction. Social networking sites like Facebook, according to the New Media Consortium, give people a way to represent themselves with a profile, as well as various means of communication ranging from text and voice chat to public message boards and/or private messaging (4).

New environments like these do present additional opportunities for most of us (such as overcoming distance between two different people); but they also present challenges for achieving effective communication. Communication through social networking sets, if you fail to notice it, actually reduces embarrassment or fear of rejection. This may sound pleasing because it helps minimize anxieties of some, but in reality, it is not. Yes, it may help some to expand their circle of friends, but then the chance and the opporunity to experience real interaction is missed. No real interaction, no social growth then. As they have said, “real learning happens by doing”. The same applies to interaction. Real interaction happens in real encounters, and not via the mouse.

As stated by the NMC, the evolution of communication raises questions about the nature of interpersonal interactions, the attractions and pitfalls of online communication, and the potential loss of traditional modes of contact (5). With this, we can infer that online communication via social networking displaces social interaction, keeping people apart (Lecky-Thompson). Our premise is that social networking technology has not only mediated communication on countless ways, but that the very ways we communicate – and even the ways we talk and think about communication – are changing and being replaced as a result. Everything has been so much convenient that people already lack the drive to interact face to face, and rather chose to just embrace the power of anonymous interactions. People are social animals, in the main, and removing that pillar can actually affect their social development, especially if started at a young age. Instead of bringing the people together, social media thus increases the distance between them.

The context in which an interaction occurs has a profound effect on communication. The New Media Consortium mentioned this in their publication Social Networking, The “Third Place,” and the Evolution of Communication:

In face-to-face encounters, factors ranging from psychological to environmental to cultural all have an effect on how the message is transmitted and how it is understood. Online communication is no less subject to context, and may bring with it additional contextual issues that will have an effect on the intended message (3).

With all these, the type of technology being used to facilitate the interaction indeed has a bearing on the context of communication. The challenge of communication, that of being understood, exists online as much as – or maybe more so than – offline. As more and more people participate in these kind of communications, signals that were developed to add context to text-based messages – like smileys (J, L, K, etc) and tags (such as and ) – are slipping into the mainstream. But even if these context indicators continue to surface with each new mode of communication that emerges, the issue of context is still far from solved. As the NMC puts it, “A conversation taking place through instant messaging in between meetings will have a different flavor than if the same topic were discussed in a virtual world, on the phone, or in an online meeting room.”

Speaking of instant messaging, we have to admit that most of us do email, most of us do chat. Most of the times, we convince ourselves that as long as we can write (or perhaps type) our thoughts well, we are already good in terms of communicating. Perhaps, in some ways, even better since we’re not distracted by the person’s physical presence. But according to neuroscientists, we are wrong. Dr. Thomas Lewis, a neuroscientist with particular interest in neurobiology, confirmed at the Conference on World Affairs that we are just fooling ourselves into thinking that written text is even half as effective as face-to-face in communicating a message, and that one cannot truly know someone and experience real communication through written text alone.

I guess we are all aware of the notion that most of the information we get in a face-to-face communication is not from the words themselves, but rather from body language, facial expression, and tone of voice. We never actually have to learn how to process body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice; we evolved this capability because it is innate. The brain needs and expects these other (yet more significant) channels of information; and when they don’t come, the brain suffers and so does our communication.The problem only gets worse with an increased chance of misinterpretation.

Thus we can see that the lack of face-to-face communication really undermines skills such as reading body language and other indirect communication facilities which are essential to achieve effective communication (Gudykunst 16). Social networking may be considered as a new avenue and a new means of communicating, but they can never realize mutual efficiency compared to a face-to-face interaction.

Mediated by new tools and new technologies, all these things are proofs that represent a considerable shift not just in the way we interact with others, but also in the way we understand the nature of those interactions. Because of that, we can tag Facebook (as well as its other rivals) as a virtual experience. What’s even daunting is the fact that people here are free to become someone they are not. It is a kind of a fantasy land where people can choose to make up anything they want just to command attention. In this realm, people can live an alternative life if they want to, people can live an alternative identity if they choose to. Hidden behind a computer screen, one can become a ‘social butterfly’. But if that attitude does not translate into one’s everyday life, then he is not doing himself any justice by just divulging in an “online illusion of popularity” (Farah).

As more people get hooked on social networking sets for professional and social purposes, we see new means of communication, new places to communicate, and new avenues of interaction unfolding at a rapid pace. Yes, they [social sites] provide all these huge improvements, but there is still no substitution for face-to-face. So, anything you can do to try to interact with people in person is critical. We should all try to make sure we have healthy amount of live social interaction because everyone, at some point, needs this in order to maintain their sound social skills in terms of effective communication.

Indeed, the current phenomenon on Facebook does say something about how our society is adjusting to the age of technology. It brings to question on what and how this new generation of Facebookers will deal with the challenges of the real world in person: like career, family and, of course, success.

Our society has been directly impacted through the new media channels created by the advancing information technologies. And now is the time – time to encourage more people to think about social media for themselves. It can become focal in someone’s life, but it can never become an adequate substitute for face-to-face, person-to-person conversations.

So, what are you up to: mediated relations or genuine connections? You choose.

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WORKS CITED

1 De Kerckhove, Derrick. The Skin of Culture: Investigating the New Electronic Reality. Ed. Christopher Dewdney. 1997 ed. Pentonville Road, London: Kogan Page Limited, 1997. Print.

2 Dubner, Stephen J. "Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum - NYTimes.com." Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything - NYTimes.com. 15 Feb. 2008. Web. 26 Aug. 2010.

3 Farah, Vilie. "The Negative Effects of Facebook." Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.

4 Fletcher, Dan. "How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy." Time Magazine 20 May 2010: 16-22. Print.

5 Gudykunst, William B. Bridging Differences: Effective Intergroup Communication. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994. Print.

6 Lecky-Thompson, Guy. "FaceBook : Good or Bad for Communication: Looking at Effect of FaceBook on Face to Face Communication Skills." Social Networking/Tagging. 30 May 2009. Web. 21 Aug. 2010.

7 Locke, Laura. "The Future of Facebook - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. 17 uly 2007. Web. 21 Aug. 2010.

8 New Media Consortium. Social Networking, The "Third Place," and The Evolution of Communication. NMC White Paper, 2007. Print.

9 "Over-Exposure in the Digital World: Drawing the Line between Our Public and Private Selves." Institute for Security, Technology, and Society. Dartmouth College Institute for Security, Technology, and Society, 22 Oct. 2009. Web. 19 Aug. 2010.

10 Sula, James G. "New Media's Impact on Society." Web. 29 Sept. 2010.

11 Tester, Keith. Media, Culture, and Morality. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

12 Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Cultural Identity. 19 Mar. 2003. Web. 04 Oct. 2010. .

13 Triandis, Harry C. Culture and Social Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill, Custom, 2004. Print.

14 Valente, Thomas W., Jodi Thesenvitz, and Anthony Lombardo. Mass and Interpersonal Communication: Buzz for Behaviour Change. Print.

When Life Gets You Down

Life in the fast lane. That's how many of us live. We are so busy that we don’t take the time to reflect on the present and how far we have actually gone through. We are so preoccupied, so focused on what will happen the next day, the next month, or perhaps the next year.

For many of us, life is similar to driving: we usually think about what we need to do when we arrive at the destination, and what we still have to do on the way home. What if there’s a sudden detour, a sudden change of direction that shunts us back to reality? Our whole thought process abruptly changes, and all our future planning is interrupted. Then here comes the bigger question: how far off track will we have to go? Do we really have enough gas to go through all the twists of this new journey?

Personally speaking, I have already gone through a lot of detours in life – from choosing a university to deciding which course to take, all the way down to college’s own version of survival of the fittest. My life’s trip has never been smooth and straight as I wanted it to be. Oh well, I guess it is just true (yes, unbelievably true) that life always finds a way to hand us challenges and to let us experience all these annoying detours. Sometimes, the challenges we usually come across are self inflicted because of poor choices we have made. Other times, they are inflicted on us because of poor choices other people have made which directly – or indirectly – influence our lives.

I am no rookie in terms of that. In fact, if life were a drive test, I would certainly be granted a license. Back then, I always worry about the things that are still to come. For instance, let’s say today is a Monday, and everybody – including me – feels bright and happy. Then all of a sudden, I would extremely be worried as I stare at my weekly planner – my always fully-booked planner. What the hell. What if I can’t finish this on time? What if I won’t be able to accomplish all these tasks? And from there, I would rant, rant, rant. Then what? I end up tiring myself; I end up exhausting and wasting myself right on the freaking first day of the week.

I admit, that was just self-inflicted stress. But the point is, if we preoccupy ourselves in worrying and thinking about tomorrow, then we will just end up missing the beauty of today, of the present. We are likely to ruin a supposedly beautiful day just because we think ahead of ourselves and of the situation. Many times, challenges are just like that. Many times, they are just part of life, and that, we can’t do anything about. But naturally, we are given two options on how to respond to them: 1) we can choose to take the challenges head on and make the most of them, seeing them as opportunities to grow as a person; or 2) we can moan, complain and grumble about how unfair the world is, and just end up finding the same challenges until we choose to take life's lessons and use them to grow.

What I’m trying to say is this: the success of a new journey really depends on our perception, our reaction, our attitude. In terms of driving, when we suddenly face a detour, we are free to choose whether to panic or to stay calm, to worry or to cool down. Our reaction to these is critical. The way we choose to perceive and respond is vital and will ultimately affect the direction we are head on.

When I was in my high school years, my dad would always say to my eldest brother when he was rushing because he was late: “You’re running late! Either you drive like a mad woman and get there 10 minutes late, or you could take your time, drive carefully, be calm and still arrive 10 minutes late!” Okay dad, that was weird. But now I come to realize and start to appreciate my dad’s wisdom. It is actually the difference between arriving flustered, apologetic and unsettled OR arriving completely in control and realizing you weren’t that late after all. Perhaps, peace is the best route for most of our journeys in life. If we try our best to be calm, if we try our best to think rationally, and if we try to disregard first our worries of tomorrow and just settle on the treasures of today, then we can go with the flow, and be back on track even before we know it.

Sure life is tough, that is why we have to atleast find a way to appreciate the detours and the difficulties that life throws our way! If life was easy all of the time, if life was so straight without all these twists and turns, I think we would all grow lazy and be rarely motivated to further change and grow. Face it, difficulties force us to change in ways that we would never do otherwise. When we are put in situations that make us uncomfortable, we frequently see the need for a change in our own actions, attitudes and even our thinking.

Sure life is daunting, but there is actually a lot more to be thankful for. You know what, one thing I learned from my mom is this: each difficulty presents a learning opportunity, else it wouldn’t be difficult. Just last summer, I got my first F in a long test. Imagine, that was my first ever F in a major subject! I did everything I could; infact, I have already forgotten to sleep right and eat right just to meet its level of difficulty. At first I was scared because the subject was alien to me, but then I became optimistic thinking that with my study habits, I could make up to my inexperience. But that F mark proved me wrong. I cried a lot because it hurts. Not because I’m grade conscious (actually, I never was); it’s because I failed to understand the paradox: I gave my all, only to know it wouldn’t equally pay off. That is a big, big challenge to me. I was down for several days and during these times, I realized that life – no matter how cool and fun it is – lets us experience its downsides to make us better people. What a lesson, I thought. That is life – we just have to open our eyes and look for the lesson to be learned. It may be similar with finding a needle in a haystack. But then again, we have to look hard as we need to because once we find that lesson, it would surely be something that we can carry for the rest of our life and for the rest of our journey.

Yes, today may not guarantee us a good outcome. Errors happen, and we fail from time to time, but we have to be ready to step up again, and move ahead rather than losing everything just because we were torn down by a bit of bad luck. Occasional mishaps happen to all of us. The difference just lies in what we learn from our mistakes, and that – as I have said earlier – will determine how we live our lives today and of course, tomorrow.

I know many of us are accustomed to an even, suave road or perhaps a cozy, comfy life to the point that when we feel like there is something on the way that will prevent us from being secured, we frequently panic and end up losing in control. Sometimes we even waver when things don't unfold the way we expect them to. Why don’t we just stay calm, breathe freely, and appreciate our “today” without jumping ahead and worrying what will happen next? When faced with a sudden unexpected situation, why don’t we start by assessing the situation in our minds? Choose how we wish to react, and the best way to be in control is to keep calm and continue living today as if it would be the best (or perhaps the last) day you’ll ever, ever, ever have.

I bet you don’t want to stay lost on track when life gets you down, do you? :)

Believe Me --

In this day and age, it is exceedingly significant to protect the feelings and well being of persons who may – or may not – be affected by the verbal or written representation of our speech. As a consequence of this growing demand, it is no surprise that the idea of Political Correctness (PC) has rapidly managed its way to us.

PC is actually a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, disability, and age-related contexts (Aufderheide, 19). As you can see, the word ‘correctness’ here is not used in its literal sense; instead, it has this particular reference to language – whether verbal or unspoken – that might be considered offensive or discriminatory. According to Richard Bernstein, an American columnist in the International Herald Tribune and New York Times, being “politically correct” – with its suggestion of a Stalinist orthodoxy – is spoken more with irony and disapproval referring to excessive deference to particular sensibilities at the expense of other considerations. The converse term “politically incorrect”, on the other hand, came into use as an implicit term of self-praise, perhaps indicating that the user was not afraid to give offense (Bernstein, “The Rising Hegemony..”).

Looking back, I know I haven’t been caught up with any serious PC situation – not yet. But to be honest, I find PC-related instances ridiculous. For example: in the politically-correct world, we cannot call blackboards ‘black’boards and whiteboards ‘white’boards because we might all end up racists even if we do not intend to. Several Primary and Kindergartens are changing nursery rhymes such as ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ to ‘Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep’. Why? Because ‘black’ sheeps might offend the black people. What if ‘rainbow’ sheeps offend the gay community? Then what color of the sheep shall we sing about? “Baa Baa Black Sheep” has been one of the most well-known nursery rhymes for generations, and for people to come along and fiddle with it is just ridiculous (Blair, “Why Black Sheep Are..”).

I have read enough number of PC instances on the web and magazines. But I would like to share you one anecdote that struck me the most: increasingly, in many kindergartens and schools, people can no longer celebrate our mainstream cultural tradition of Christmas. The excuse? Those from different cultural backgrounds may disapprove of it. In these environments, the word “Christmas” and the things associated with it – from nativity plays to christmas carols – are banned. I guess I have to agree with John Midgley, a contributor in The Politically Correct Scrapbooks, that this undertaking is indeed the tip of the iceberg and symptomatic of the wider malaise of political correctness that is affecting the society.

They make it seem that in order to not offend people from other cultures, we have to give up most of our culture. Yes, PC may somewhat be a gift to the society since it is another way to avoid friction among different groups in it. But I think it is not right to give so much compliance to it to the detriment of other considerations such us our culture. It is actually not a dispute over racism, but instead a matter of multi-culturalism (Anderson, “We’re Not Losing..”). The latter suggests preservation of different cultures; meaning, it does not require us to lose our beliefs or even our culture. Rather, we should just accept and respect everyone in this nation’s culture, as they should accept ours. It makes sense – if we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas, then we as a nation should mark other religious festivals too.

Still, Political Correctness is, for me, good in one way or another. In fact, I thank the PC pioneers for their efforts to maintain equal opportunities and anti-discrimination practices in our society. But sometimes, PC fails to reveal its true demands because, let us admit it, no one can actually dictate and talk of a “correct” and an “incorrect” use of language. There is no structural determinism that would enable anyone – even linguists! – to categorize language as appropriate and inappropriate in the first place. I strongly believe that we are free as linguistic agents, but then again (thanks to my Theology professor), we must remember that we live in social contexts which function to a large degree by “restricting the free exercise of our voluntary actions” (Skutta, “Linguistic Politics..”).

Then what could be the best way to save our community from even more trouble? Think before speaking. Complete understanding of the context of the words we use and why they might be harmful is the best contribution we can give to preserve the soundness of our community. We must be willing to educate ourselves without getting defensive. After all, language is powerful; if we want to gain respect from others, we shall give them respect too. Right?

Political correctness is not just the sole answer to most of our issues, because the change – we just need to have confidence in it – lies not in the hands of the linguists, not in those from the government, but in our own hands.

-- Believe me.