Pejoratives

Pejoratives, those terms we use that might seem to be harmless, but really are not. You know these terms. They're terms intended to express disgust, to disparage, to belittle. They're often harmless in and of themselves, but in use and context, they're intended to undercut reasoned discussion by provoking an emotional response.

Take, for instance, "homophobic". Find a person who believes that it is not moral for two people of the same gender to engage in sexual relations, and he or she is not principled or morally indignant or "taking the high road". He or she is homophobic whether or not there is any distaste for the people or any phobia for the act. All the accuser has to do is place the label and the investigation into the morality of the act is eliminated.

One I hear too often is "hunch". I can express what I read in the Bible with clear presentation and obvious reasoning, but the best it can be is "a hunch". Do you know what a hunch is? It's a guess, a suspicion. It is a belief without a reason. A coach or a gambler will "play a hunch" when he acts without obvious reason and operates on intuition rather than evidence. Thus, in the example of my case, when I say, "The Bible clearly states that a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman", I'm operating on a whim, a guess, a suspicion, pure intuition. There is no reason, no evidence, no concrete for such a thing. That's the effect of the pejorative, "hunch". And the discussion is done. "You've got your hunch, and I've got my opinion."

Sometimes pejoratives are context-sensitive. You can be "fundamentally sound" but you'd better not be "a fundamentalist". You can seek to conserve our culture, but "conservative" is normally not a good thing. And I'm not at all sure that the people who classify someone as "right wing" believe that such a person can ever be right. It's okay to be spiritual, but not religious. It's acceptable to be principled, but not confident of your beliefs. In the right context, merely pointing out that a woman is blonde or a man is white can be intended as insults.

Pejoratives are effective tools for terminating discussion. Take Rick Perry's recent faux pas. He forgot a name of an organization. It's a mistake that any -- likely all -- human being can make. It's not a big deal. A brain freeze. A momentary lapse. No bearing whatsoever on one's ability to lead a country. Perry said at the moment, "Oops!" In normal use that would mean "a minor mistake." The media picked it up and made it "the oops heard 'round the world", and now "oops" became a pejorative that pundits say will end Perry's run for the presidency. His ideas? Irrelevant. His hopes and plans for the country? Doesn't matter. His "oops" became a term intended to disparage the man in order to terminate the discussion.

There is another term for this process of the use of pejoratives to end debate. It is called ad hominem, a logical fallacy. It invalidates the argument of those against whom it is used by disparaging the person. Unfortunately, too many people these days aren't aware of logic. It doesn't bode well for reasoning people.