Linguistic Totalitarianism

Jeff Goldstein has an interesting post on a topic he revisits on a regular basis, when he isn't molesting armadillos. Here's the money quote:

Some cultures are better at pushing back against this dynamic than are others; but ironically, free cultures, because they are the most willing to appreciate the concerns of its minority groups, are the most susceptible to the kind of linguistic totalitarianism that is the natural end to putting the receiver in charge of determining meaning and converting that meaning into the emotional justification for suppressing particular signifiers.

There's a lot to chew on in that paragraph. Read the whole post.