Intellectual censorship or a victory for minorities? Linguistic choices in two open letters on political correctness and freedom of expression.

The following study focuses on the linguisitc features of two open letters which are part of the widespread contemporary debate on the topic of so-called “political correctness” in the Anglo-Saxon world. The two documents are “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, published on 7th July 2020 on the American periodical Harper’s Magazine, and “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, published on 10th July 2020, in response to the first, on The Objective, a website created by a group of volounteer journalists, whose stated aim is the defense of marginalized communities within and outside the newsrooms. The first letter counts 153 signatories, including writers, academics and journalists, among which well-known names such as J. K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis, while the second one counts 163 signatories, mainly in the field of journalism. The first letter aims to condemn the threat to the free exchange of ideas and norms of public debate represented by alleged moralistic and censorist attitudes, which derive from the tendency to political correctness; the second one aims to overturn this thesis, because it recognizes in the contemporary social and linguistic tendencies the attempt to give voice to so far underrepresented minorities. Beginning with a historical analysis of the origin and evolution of the expression “politically correct” in the United States of America, from its early use until the era of social media, this study provides an overview of some peculiar linguistic choices which are inspired by this phenomenon, and analyzes the lexical, rhetorical, of tone and content choices included in the two examined letters thoroughly.