Browsing by Author "Collington-O'Malley, Tessa Emily"

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    "What's in a name?": political correctness, euphemism, and the impact of name-words on thought
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) Collington-O'Malley, Tessa Emily; Bylund, Emanuel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study assessed the impact that euphemistic language may have on one’s reasoning about phenomena, with specific regard to how nominal politically correct labels affect perceptions about groups of people. The main research question of the study is “To what extent do politically correct euphemisms impact reasoning?” The main study consisted of 263 first language English speakers, who were randomly assigned to one of four conditions consisting of a fictional report. In each of the conditions, the reports were identical except for the label which referenced the target group. In a pre-experimental study, the four labels used in the conditions were each rated as having varying levels of euphemistic characteristics. Subsequently, participants were asked to respond to questions about the report that they had read. Responses from the four conditions were analysed and compared in order to determine how the lexical differences in the text affected the participants’ reasoning. The results of the study contribute to the broader body of research on the impact of lexical choices on cognitive processing and provide some new empirical insights into the psychological aspects of euphemism. Results largely indicated that the use of different euphemistic labels likely does not lead to differences in reasoning about the labels’ referent. However, in two of the results obtained, it was found that euphemistic labels may affect perception, but only under highly specific conditions that are dependent on contextual cues that euphemisms, by virtue of their nature, do not provide. The findings from this study are therefore valuable for generating further theoretical comprehension of the cognitive processing of euphemism. In addition to this, the present findings demonstrate that the topic of political correctness, as a linguistic phenomenon, can be empirically examined as a rich topic of research.