ABSTRACT
The term “political correctness” refers to a suite of social practices that involve avoiding or policing behaviour—usually speech—that is seen as derogating people in subordinated social groups. This chapter examines the ramifications of some recent cultural trends that seem to be modifying the ways in which these social practices are carried out. Debates over political correctness are a staple of the culture wars in contemporary liberal democracies. When the first wave of widespread anti-PC sentiment bubbled up in the late 1980s, social media didn’t yet exist, traditional news media companies were relatively stable and profitable, “mobbing” was a method of coercion confined to workplaces, and no one had ever uttered the word “clickbait”. Developments in communications technology are aligned with transformations in politics and economics, which have complicated and sometimes inverted structures of social power. Social and political movements move online and become globalised in a similar way.
