A Right-Leaning Language by John Weeren

2020-03-19T13:31:28-04:00

A Right-Leaning Language By John Weeren Much attention has been paid of late to bias, implicit and otherwise, and how it manifests itself linguistically. The indiscriminate use of gender-specific pronouns, the prevalence of androcentric terms, such as man-made, and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes through injudicious word choices have been widely criticized, but there is one ingrained linguistic prejudice that generally passes without comment. And that is the disparagement of left-handedness. Lefties constitute a small percentage of the world's population – some 10% – and if English and other languages are any guide, this trait has long been viewed unfavorably. For [...]