Politically correct in France

Politiquement correct is an expression appeared towards the end of the XXe century to qualify the political straightness, i.e. the acceptable way to be currently expressed. The qualifier is used either to promote this political straightness, or to turn it in derision (even if derision, appearing rebellious, is itself politically correct). If the promotion of practices described today as politically correct (practices which raise in fact of a form of social control on the expressions of the language) is certainly old, the innovation of the concept is to indicate this control explicitly, to assert it like legitimate, and to even integrate in its center a pseudo-dispute; any real dispute being immediately isolated.

Hexagonal

The French corollary of the politically correct is a form of Set language that Robert Beauvais named hexagonal the , conceived to displease with nobody and to retract any difficulty by the recourse to the euphemism. The hexagonal one is thus to distinguish from the set language of combat which makes the reverse: American attackers and their lackeys , trade-union gangrene , and other phrases of routine to the use of the militants of all edges. Robert Beauvais deplores the existence of this bombastic alternative of French in whom the direction of a sentence dissolves in agreed formulations which masks it.

A increase of the prices becomes for example a readjustment , although a reduction remains described as reduction. The bottom-of-the-range is seen replaced by the line entry . The nuclear Bombardement of a city is seen qualified vitrification , the dismissals of measurements of adjustment of manpower etc

The topic was also treated by:

Gustave Flaubert ( Dictionary of the generally accepted ideas )
Pierre Daninos ( the jacassin )
Philippe Vandel ( Dictionary French-French )

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