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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Bias

Avoid gender bias by using non-gender-related words. Awareness of the irrele­vance of an employee's gender is why airlines now have "flight attendants" instead of "stewardesses" and why the postal service hires "mail carriers" instead of "mailmen". It also is unnecessary to write that something is "man-made" when a neutral word like 'synthetic" or "artificial" is just as good. "Employees" is better than "manpower", and "chairperson" is more acceptable than "chairman". Some terms may seem difficult to neutralize — "congressperson", "business person", and "waitperson" don't exactly trip off the tongue. However, with a little thought, you can come up with appropriate titles, such as "legislator", "executive", and "server".

The problem of avoiding gender bias is particularly difficult because much of our language is geared to the use of the word "man" as a generic term for both males and females. Attempts to avoid this lead to such usages as "he/she" or "his/her" that make for difficult reading. However, another word can be used in most cases. If you pluralize the noun in question/the pronoun "their" will serve nicely. In other cases, you can use words such as "personnel", "staff, "employee", "worker", "person", or "practitioner" to describe both men and women in the workplace.

□ Words and word-combinations

1. bias — тенденциозность

2. employee — служащий

3. manpower — личный состав; людские ресурсы

4. executive — руководитель, администратор

5. personnel — персонал, штат, кадры

6. staff — штат, штатные сотрудники (в отличие от внештатных)

Politically Incorrect Language

Beyond avoidance of stereotypes, there is an ongoing controversy about what constitutes "politically correct" (commonly called "PC") language. In today's world of diversity at all levels of national life, there is increased sensitivity about what words are used to describe minorities and other groups of people.

Such concern has merit, and writers should be sensitive to words that may offend individuals or groups. However, critics charge that a flood of euphemisms can cause a loss of clarity and may result in a kind of political censorship that is not healthy for freedom of expression. For example, some groups think the word "civilization" is polit­ically incorrect because it infers that some people are not civilized. Still others object to the word "disabled" and want to substitute "physically challenged" or "differently abled". Is a person an "alcoholic" or just "suffering from substance abuse"? Even the old term "Dutch treat" is under attack because it implies that Dutch people are cheap.

On another level, however, some suggestions seem quite logical. For example, in a global economy, American companies now refer to "international" sales because "for­eign" sounds ethnocentric. Writers are using terms like "Asian-American" instead of