The Case Against Banning The Word Retard?

In "The Case against Banning the Word ‘Retard’" a professor of law at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University named Christopher M. Fairman, writes those who are under the power of “word fetish” are not satisfied until they stop the use of the word from others. In today’s society, an approximate of 60,000 people had pledged to support to ban the word retard also known as "R-Word" on a website called www.r-word.org because they believed this words use was "derogatory." Fairman believes that we should not ban words because of two reasons, one being that banning words leads to government language control which institutionalized word taboos, and two being that the words themselves are not the problem due to the evolutions of the meanings and uses.

Fairman also fear that the banning of any word would lead to an up rise of government language control. In New Zealand the Special Olympics had already attacked the Broadcasting Standards of Authority to forbid the use of the word retard from being able to be broadcasted to the public. This is significant because the Broadcasting Standards of Authority is known to be quite similar to the Federal Communication Commission which regulates interstate and international communication such as radio, cable and television. Overtime idea of banning any certain word has evolved and has spread to be censored in private organizations. For this reason, the idea of banning words or censoring word has already spread.

Through the 1980s to the 1990s many colleges and universities has developed speech codes which was a set of not to do rules for decreasing discrimination. The key idea that is being conveyed here is that even the biggest of any federal departments such as education have already been ce...

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...ociety has changed over time and the meanings of the word retard depends on where the word is being used either professionally or just in general. This idea is significant because Fairman is giving a historical background about how the word retard was first used and reveals how the words meaning have evolved. Last but not least, Fairman’s suggestion on how the meanings and uses of a word changes over time is shown to be credible so there is no use of "censoring" the word retard.

In conclusion, Fairman concludes his article by saying that the Special Olympics’ plan of banning the word retard and protecting intellectual disabled people from the use of the word will not succeed because new words will form to replace old words, he also concludes by saying the freedom of expressing words is very important and precious so as a result, banning a word is not worth it.