The University of Sydney (alma mater of such awkward squad stalwarts as Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and Clive James) has been grappling with the issue of how to reconcile people’s right to speak about stuff that annoys them, with the right of people not to be annoyed by that speaking. To this end, they have commissioned an external review that makes a number of recommendations, most of them eminently coherent and sensible, and this one:
The University should amend its policies and procedures to make clear that each person utilising a word or phrase is responsible at the time the word or phrase is used to identify to the audience the context in which it is used. (New Civility Rule)
Um, er, OK, what? I mean, context is often useful to promote understanding, especially if a word or phrase is obscure or contentious. But does this mean every speaker has the responsibility to ensure every word s/he utters is perfectly clear to everyone present, utterly devoid of any trace of ambiguity or nuance? And then, what if the words used in the contextualisation require further contextualisation, and so on to infinity? If not, what the hell does it mean?
The end result of course will be that all public speech at the university will be reduced to the most banal, basic components, words that are incapable of offending, words that cannot be misunderstood (deliberately or otherwise), words that cannot challenge, cannot provoke and ultimately cannot educate. Which makes the continued existence of the University of Sydney look a bit bloody pointless, no?
Now, please excuse me, I need to write a companion post that identifies to the audience the context in which these words are used. I may be some time.
(Thanks to James Ley for alerting me to this.)
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