Apparently the name discrimination issue I posted about the other day is a little different than previously reported by the CBC. According to the venerable CBC, government officials are now saying that
"asking applicants to provide a surname in addition to Singh or Kaur has been an administrative practice used by our visa office in New Delhi as a way to improve client service and reduce incidents of mistaken identity. This was not a mandatory requirement. There is no policy or practice whereby people with these surnames are asked to change their names."
They have also admitted that the letter they sent to Jaspal Singh, (the guy who brought this issue to light) was "poorly worded." This seems to be the written equivalent to the apologies politicians have been giving for oral miscommunications. For example, when Joseph Biden called Barack Obama "clean and articulate" he apologized by saying that it was not his intent to insult Obama and that his words were taken out of context.
So, I know we are in a post windowpane theory of language moment... we know that the effects of language always exceed the speaker's intent, and we question the speaker's sovereignty over that intent in the first place, and that meaning is slippery. But examples like these show that language does have concrete effects and that we'd like to hold people responsible for what they say. Right?
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