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Aug 2nd 2021

FEW TOPICS appear to rile people in the West as much as political correctness and its impact upon free speech. Although some on the left would like to see more laws governing what is, and is not, acceptable to say in public, most people prefer simply to avoid what they consider hurtful language. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to complain that this tendency has gone too far and endangers the principle of free speech.

The Economist Today

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Although people of different political stripes in Western countries rarely find common ground on political correctness, they may have more in common than compatriots in other parts of the world. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos Mori, a pollster, on behalf of Kings College London asked 23,000 adults in 28 countries about their attitudes towards free speech. They asked respondents to rate, on a scale from zero to seven, how they felt about using potentially hurtful words when speaking with people from different backgrounds to their own. A zero would mean that they felt that people are too easily offended; a seven would mean they thought it was necessary to change the way people talk.

More than half of respondents in America, Australia, Britain and Sweden rated themselves between zero and three (excluding those who answered dont know), meaning they were the most likely to feel that the general public are too sensitive when it comes to speech. At the other end of the scale, Chinese, Indians and Turks were the least likely to say people were being too sensitivefewer than one-fifth of the people from these countries responded with a scale of zero to threeinstead believing it was necessary to modify their language.

What affects these attitudes across countries? Using an index of press freedom from Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog, we found a strong correlation between the extent of press freedom and individual attitudes towards language. Although people living in places with less press freedom are most receptive to what the Anglosphere would call political correctness, it may be that, in countries such as China, cautious use of language is required for self-preservation. That might add fuel to conservatives fire that political correctness could somehow erode democratic norms.

The survey also asked respondents whether or not they agreed that culture wars were dividing their countries. Americans and Indians were among the most likely to say that they were, with about three-fifths agreeing. By contrast, fewer than one-tenth of Japanese and one-fifth of Russians and Germans thought that culture wars were divisive. Yet country-level responses to this question bear little relationship to their attitudes about offensive speech. Although Americans and Britons are similarly exercised about political correctness, just one-third of Britons are concerned about divisive culture wars.

Originally posted here:
People in the West are least worried about hurtful speech - The Economist