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Okay, so I’m pretty sure that I want to write about the impact of “political correctness” and maybe compare its status to other forms of prescriptivism.  I also wanted to talk about its impact on lexicography and resulting neologisms, such as “African American” and “disabled” as well as discussing the evolution of “culturally sensitive” vocabulary.  For instance, “crippled” has shifted to “handicapped” (which is now considered offensive as well) which has changed to “disabled” which might evolve into “differently abled” depending on how much insult people associate with “disabled.”  I was also curious as to the process by which people derive offense from some words and not others; in some cases, they attribute insult to words which actually have no racial or sexist etymologies, such as the word “niggard” which was used to mean “miser.” 

Lastly, i was interested by the extent to which over-prescriptivism can actually produce the opposite of cultural sensitivity by becoming a joke.  For example, “mentally challenged” introduced “challenged” as a more sensitive word, but has now been used humorously as “vertically challenged” (”short”) and “metabolically challenged” (”dead”).

 Ack…so, I have a lot of random ideas and really don’t know which direction to take this.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to which sound the most promising or are best suited to a research paper?  I would really appreciate any opinions/feedback.  Thanks!