In a lot of recent conversations & podcasts, I’ve heard in uptick in the use of unhoused to replace the term homeless. If unhoused is a more politically correct term, what makes it so?
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When people think certain terms have accumulated too much of a negative connotation, advocates will try to get everyone to use different terminology for the same concept.
It’s called the euphemism treadmill.
“Mentally retarded” was once a clinical diagnosis, but once people started using it as a way to insult the intelligence of another person, and kids started using it as a derogatory term in school yards, that phrase acquired a very negative stigma. People who don’t want those who had been labeled mentally retarded to feel stigmatized, or insulted, or mocked try to get everyone else to use different language to describe mental disabilities/handicaps/deficits that hadn’t acquired the same negative connotations and stigma yet.
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