the Figures (a Handbook)

exouthenismos and the Corrections

Political incorrectness is the logical end to the long American campaign against etiquette, a campaign that takes pride in ignorance of silverware. Announcing that you “don’t have time for political correctness” is like saying “I use whatever tool moves the food to my mouth.”

Premised on a warped sense of equality, the incorrect are confused over the difference between 'no etiquette' and 'new etiquette'. The dislike of etiquette stems from a Puritan desire to define the New World against the Old and all its royalty. That project has carried forward in the ordinary address we use for occupants of the nation’s highest office:

Mr. President.

America thought it could dispense with the elite’s stuffy rules when in fact it tasked itself with building the world’s most complicated system of manners. American etiquette, consequently, suffers from poor design.

Above all, Americans hate strict social codes. The notion of royal highnesses and supreme leaders clashes with the American psyche. We think no one else is any better than us. We take offense when others fail to address us as equals-who-pay-taxes. We disapprove of specialized language; we have a sixth sense for conceit.

That egalitarian ethos often turns to exouthenismos, or expressions of contempt. Living an ordinary gracious life is easy enough until being no better than anyone else means I don’t have to extend you simple courtesies. Then, through the tortured logic of incorrectness (always masked as brave frankness), we lend neighbors ladders to hang decorative lights while refusing to learn the names of holidays we don’t celebrate. Beer drinkers scoff at wine drinkers. The monosyllabic scorn those who propose more syllables.

The contempt goes in all directions. Corrections really happen. One-upmanship reduces ethics to grammatical rules.

If the incorrect confuse rudeness for equality, the offended fail to appreciate the difference between an offense and inexactness. (Is it always an offense? Or is it sometimes just an incomplete statement? And what would it accomplish to at last say everything?) Some feign inclusivity while ostracizing those who fail to speak properly. A 2018 survey of the American electorate by More in Common found that “political correctness” leaves many people feeling “bewildered” and beholden to rules they have “not learned to decode.”

The corrections are not reserved for the offensive. They also serve as purification among the like-minded. Watch a room full of otherwise inspiring people take turns correcting one another and see the bright designs of critical reflection turn to musty drapery.

The corrections forget, or deny, that choosing words carefully is about constructing livable spaces. We bend grammar, add syllables, turn Serena into a verb, and adjust our relationships with pronouns because the old language is uninhabitable. These modifications issue invitations to a shared expanse of open sky. They serve the same basic function as please and thank you. They recognize the occasion. They lay claim to a new world and to the next world that follows and to the one after that.