Well said, but there is another, more
insidious side of the
politically correct movement.
Quite often, the goal of political correctness is to outrun a set of connotative meanings that have accumulated over time. This would be fine, except for the fact that those connotations are sometimes based in fact.
So, the end result is often an unending procession of new, more "acceptable" terms for things that are fundamentally problematic. That is to say, the language of political correctness can momentarily step ahead of perception and understanding, but it cannot permanently distance itself from the underlying problems it hopes to deemphasize.
Of course it matters how we speak - this is a major premise of George Orwell's 1984. Newspeak and Doublespeak are employed by a totalitarian government to hinder dissent.
It is my assertion that political correctness is in fact the realization of this very same strategy, albeit originating from a totalitarian populist movement.
"An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public" - Carl Sagan