Eccentric

Edit: TL;DR: O'Neill is passing a value judgement on language change, something the field of linguistics considers poor practice.

Linguist specialising in swearing and offensive language here. Furthermore, I am actually a corpus/computational linguist who has done statistical and computational research on the subject (O'Neill is a statistics and mathematics professor). The gist of O'Neill's argument is that words are made insulting by virtue of having euphemistic counterparts. To simplify, euphemism here is a technical term for any word that takes the place of a word considered more offensive. So "mentally handicapped" by this definition would be a euphemism for "retarded". In reality, euphemisms develop as a reaction to a term that has become offensive. "Retarded" did used to be a medical term that referred to someone who is developmentally disabled, but it began to be used as an insulting term in non technical speech, and so the technical term changed to reflect this semantic change and distance itself from the offensive term. (This is wildly simplified. I wouldn't even consider "developmentally disabled" to be a euphemism at all but this is just to make it easier to explain the point without giving a whole intro to linguistics lecture)

He also argues that a lot of terms now considered offensive are changing primarily for performative reasons. This is also not really the case, and we can demonstrate that with "retarded" versus "developmentally disabled". In general, people have started preferring terms that are more specific and descriptive. When we rephrase the term "mentally retarded", we see that it essentially means someone has a "slow brain". This, however, is no longer considered to be accurate for many people that used to be diagnosed with conditions under that umbrella and so the label has changed to reflect that.

Language is always in flux and will never stop changing, just like species will never stop evolving. O'Neill is taking what is considered a prescriptive approach to language, which means deciding how language should be used. Virtually all linguists now agree that linguistics is a descriptive science and prescriptive approaches to defining language are often futile at best and counterintuitive at worst. Basically what I'm saying is if people want to use these terms, even if it's for the reasons that O'Neill is describing, it is not inherently a "bad thing". It's just a "thing".

Rude language, swearing, and insults are also constantly changing as society changes. It's an established fact that the semantics and pragmatics of a term will change over time. Some terms will become more offensive and some will become less offensive. It's just a thing that will inevitably happen as society shifts and changes.

Edit 2: O'Neill also does not provide any linguistic evidence for his claims, he's mostly going off of his own perception of them. Basically, his argument doesn't really hold any weight because he hasn't actually proved that these terms are actually used in the way he describes or for those reasons.

Hey I'm a linguist and I'd like to chime in! Great article!

There's this misconception that language is exclusively a communication tool. In reality it's a cognitive tool that helps us process the world around us. This is why writing something down helps you figure it out or why we sometimes talk to ourselves. So, very broadly, the more 'linguistic effort' you put into a task, the better you're going to remember it. This is also another reason why writing notes in lecture by hand helps you remember better than if you type on a laptop. Pressing a button or tapping on a screen is a lot less 'linguistic effort' than writing a letter by hand.

Another consequence of language being a cognitive tool is that it's intertwined with a lot of the ways we use physical tools. In fact, some historical linguists use the emergence of complex hand tools as evidence of when language emerged in our pre-history. But that's a very complicated subject for another time. There is some evidence that cognitively, proficiency with fine motor skills are correlated with language processing functions (big caveat that I'm not a cognitive linguist). So writing might not only help you slow down and be deliberate about what you're putting on a page, but the act of writing itself might also be intrinsically linked with language processing.

This is all not to say that typing is a somehow bastardized version of language production. It's just that we've decided that easier is better, which in the sense of language learning and maintenance, isn't really the case.

On the one hand, I do think this is actually a good thing. Now you can make an orc wizard if you want to without sacrificing casting power. What I think is wrong about it, however, is appropriating "inclusivity" as a buzzword to get brownie points from "the libs". The old racial bonuses aren't entirely based on inherent ability, but also on culture and upbringing. Dwarves don't only have high constitution because they're born sturdy, their culture is based around mining and building. Tieflings aren't just fiendishly charming, they live in a society that discriminates against them and they've adapted by learning to be very likeable. Also, I think there's a useful difference between race and species. Race refers to sentient creatures while species refers to animals. In all, I think this is a useful change for if you want to play a character raised outside of their culture. On the other hand, I think it's wrong they're calling this diversity and inclusivity. They're fantasy creatures. Some of them are literally artificially created within the universe to perform certain tasks (eg war forged, golems). Of course some of them are going to be better than others at certain things

You're very right. Dick move of them to hear about Skyblivion and instead of thanking the heavens for plopping a marketing opportunity for minimum effort, went "crush them out of principle".

I trust the Skyblivion team more than I trust Bethesda

Yes, thank you. I feel like since the AI boom people have forgotten that the purpose of school isn't just to teach kids to regurgitate facts

Honestly the thing I'd be most worried about is that kids at that age are learning important social and language skills. Without an adult in the room to interact with, who are they going to learn that from?

Cat.

Return of the Obra Dinn. Indie darling puzzle game where you are an insurance adjuster working on a recovered ghost ship. Very thematic and satisfying to take notes by hand

Edit: whoops someone already mentioned it

Yeah if I ever give it another go I'll definitely check it out even if it's a little janky. I liked the intro but after the first few missions I gave up. The POV thing was such an unreasonable thing to be a deal breaker, but I really just couldn't get immersed after spending so much time making my character and then not seeing them as part of the world

Honestly the fact that the game puts such an emphasis on customizing your character and then is 1st person all the way through annoyed me to no end. Thanks for the recommend, didn't know there was a mod that changed it

Yeah, with the spawn distances and the amount of enemies, there's very little space for a true sniping experience. Plus with the destructible environment, high ground is very rarely guaranteed. Plus, the camera shake mechanics aren't the most conducive to sniping. I do think that if OP wants a more sniper-ey experience, they're in their right to request it since it's a PvE game and the most important thing is to have fun. Maybe they could introduce some more variety into the sniper lineup, like different types of rounds. Or maybe a new planet that's got lots of close spaced high ground where staying at ground level means you get boxed in by enemies