The N word
This is a bit of a follow up on @jamalrob's thread about Roger Scruton's termination for speech that was interpreted in a politically incorrect way.
My question is whether the N-word specifically has become a word that is per se insulting, regardless of context, where its mere utterance is a sin.
Two very recent examples are: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/emory-professor-investigated-for-using-racial-epithet-again/5gabbFS99IJn06yYbrMYaO/ where a university professor was placed on leave for his use of the word in a purely educational context and now a civil rights attorney for using the word at a public meeting where she was explaining that the word ought not be used: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/san-francisco-democrat-under-fire-meeting.
Note that in the latter case, the Republicans are calling out for her censure, claiming a Democrat shouldn't be given a pass for what Republicans might be crucified for. My thought, as a fairly conservative Republican, is that she ought not be censured and forced to apologize because her intent was not to do harm.
Having grown up in the deep South in the US in the 1970s, a region where race relations have not always been harmonious, I learned never to utter the word or to write the word. It's not out of political correctness that I named the thread as I did, but it's just part of my programming at this point in my life. The fury of my parents should they hear that word from one of their children would be indescribable, like a murder just occurred, so now I can't/won't say it.. The use of that word separated the classes and spoke to educational levels.
I'm reminded of the Orthodox Jews who refuse to write the name of God in a non-religious document because the name itself is holy. They write God as G-d, and have their own way of changing the word in the Hebrew as well. The word itself seems to be a deity. It's said that the correct pronunciation of Yahweh is now unknown due to it never being spoken. Perhaps that one day will become the fate of the N-word.
My question is whether this social convention of never uttering the N-word is a reasonable act of respect or whether it's simply a politically imposed rule that can be used to divide and destroy?
My question is whether the N-word specifically has become a word that is per se insulting, regardless of context, where its mere utterance is a sin.
Two very recent examples are: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/emory-professor-investigated-for-using-racial-epithet-again/5gabbFS99IJn06yYbrMYaO/ where a university professor was placed on leave for his use of the word in a purely educational context and now a civil rights attorney for using the word at a public meeting where she was explaining that the word ought not be used: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/san-francisco-democrat-under-fire-meeting.
Note that in the latter case, the Republicans are calling out for her censure, claiming a Democrat shouldn't be given a pass for what Republicans might be crucified for. My thought, as a fairly conservative Republican, is that she ought not be censured and forced to apologize because her intent was not to do harm.
Having grown up in the deep South in the US in the 1970s, a region where race relations have not always been harmonious, I learned never to utter the word or to write the word. It's not out of political correctness that I named the thread as I did, but it's just part of my programming at this point in my life. The fury of my parents should they hear that word from one of their children would be indescribable, like a murder just occurred, so now I can't/won't say it.. The use of that word separated the classes and spoke to educational levels.
I'm reminded of the Orthodox Jews who refuse to write the name of God in a non-religious document because the name itself is holy. They write God as G-d, and have their own way of changing the word in the Hebrew as well. The word itself seems to be a deity. It's said that the correct pronunciation of Yahweh is now unknown due to it never being spoken. Perhaps that one day will become the fate of the N-word.
My question is whether this social convention of never uttering the N-word is a reasonable act of respect or whether it's simply a politically imposed rule that can be used to divide and destroy?
Comments (200)
I think it shows that Americans have a similar issues like Germans have with their past.
Not as traumatic as there of course, yet slavery, segregation and the hangings of blacks simply is an issue that white America has a problem with. And just to take it casually could be interpreted the wrong way as Americans take themselves very seriously. And just like with Hitler and nazism in Germany, the issue is used in current politics and casts it's long shadow to the present. In Germany showing the nazi flag can get you up to three years jail time, so they take it seriously.
By "politically imposed" I infer that you're referring to "political correctness." i.e. in our current society, it is deemed politically incorrect to say the actual "n-word". This is surely the case, but it's not "simple", it's evolved into political incorrectness for good reasons, partly historical - but also because today it DOES divide.
Quoting Hanover
That's very interesting, because I have the opposite experience, growing up in Houston. My father always used the n-word to refer to African Americans (my mother didn't). His family were small-town farmer folks, and many of them were even worse (they invariably prefixed the n-word with "god damned"). I learned to not use the term based on becoming inspired by the civil rights movement, and (TBH) this resulted in my having a rather low opinion of my red-necked cousins and anyone who sounded like them. I loved my dad, but we had many arguments about his vocabulary - and he eventually stopped using the word (at least around me).
So far as I can see, the refusal to mention is a strictly American phenomenon, whereas horror at its use is worldwide. The no-mention phenomenon in some cases makes inroads into other cultures simply by dint of the huge exposure they have to US culture generally, just like sometimes people in other countries will think the emergency number is 911.
Out of deference for their deeply-held feelings and beliefs, I will never mention the word when Americans are around - as is the case here. I would also avoid both using and mentioning the three-letter G word when talking to ultra-orthodox Jews. But when talking to people from my own culture, I have no in-principle objection to mentioning the word or hearing it mentioned, although just like scatalogical, reproductive, sexist, homophobic or other racist obscenities, I avoid mentioning it as much as possible, and always slightly wince.
But, people are pretty sensitive to the word, despite it being dropped in almost every African-American rap song. I am a pretty sensitive person and even refrain from calling African-American's as "blacks". Personally, I can tell the difference between the academic intent of using the N-word... Doublethink, is there really any academic purpose referring to African American's like the N-word? I don't think so...
Peak niggard was at least as far back as 1800, according to Google Ngram. It comes from somewhere in whitest Scandinavia, at least as far back as 1400 give or take 15 minutes, when the Middle English started using it. Those creeps.
"Nigger" can't be verboten, because I hear Negroes (another N Word) who perform rap using it almost continuously. If it were so insulting, they surely wouldn't use it. Just like I don't hear people describing themselves as "niggardly". Usually not, anyway.
"Jew" strikes my ear as problematic. One can't read periods in European or American history without seeing the term used again and again as a vicious epithet. One almost hesitates to use the word at all.
Quoting ssu
But not nearly as big a problem as black America has. Frankly, I don't know why we white people should have much of a problem with it -- after all, white people were owners not slaves, and white children went to the better schools, and were rarely if ever lynched (though it did happen, but not in quite the same context as black lynchings). White people got the better end of the stick, which somebody always does.
Losing those feelings of racial guilt will help us white folks deal with the bad hands that have been consistently dealt to black folks. After all, most of us have not had the opportunity to personally oppress black people. Most of us (like 99%) were not involved in writing the Federal Housing Administration rules back in the 1930s. Those rules were the key tool of post Jim Crow oppression -- creating the modern black slum and white suburbs. Those rules set the pattern for continuing segregated schooling. Quality of school and place of residence are geographically linked.
Most of us weren't personally responsible for maintaining the long term impoverishment of blacks, and the resulting degrading slums.
Guilt doesn't always lead to repentance. Sometimes it leads us to hate some people even more. Racial hatreds have long been used to divide the working classes. As the song says,
Blast off!
What word was that? Cospic? Crutle? Cuckoo? Confus? Christ? Caudal?
Oh common, tell us...
I'm strongly against the use of "the N-word" in place of the actual word for ethical reasons. The word is "nigger", and context matters, and sensitivity to the word "nigger" - regardless of context - is counterproductive, as it empowers the word and enables its use as a weapon. I will only use "the N-word" if I feel I have to.
The solution to the problem is common sense. If you need to use it in an academic context or otherwise, do it sensitively. E.g. Don't keep repeating it over and over unnecessarily like the Dem apparently did.
Quoting Hanover
Agree. She ought to simply be given a lesson in how not to be stupid with words. Speaking of which:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Maybe you can stop being an idiot about this now especially as this was discussed before and it was explained in detail to you where you were going wrong.
It's a French word. Two syllables. First syllable is the Italian word for 'with'. Second syllable is a Cockney adjectival word for a person being tough, aggressive and not slow to violence. As always in Cockney, you drop the initial 'h'.
Then again, even those with severe retardation are aware of the negative connotations of using the N-word.
Perhaps, the teachers need some more education and not the students in the news-feed provided.
"Now quiet down children, you know we aren't allowed to reveal what the "..." words are until you are at least 18--possibly 28. So you are 13 now -- you will just have to wait until you are all grown up."
That's not a solution to the problem in the bigger picture, which is that it shouldn't even be an issue to begin with. The power shouldn't be in the hands of those people who are sensitive. They should learn to desensitise in appropriate contexts or leave the class.
There's no such thing as a bad word, only bad usage. The belief in bad words is what's childish. My close friend and I call each other cunts all the time. To us that's not a bad word, given the way that we use it. It is a lighthearted term of endearment.
I can't relate to the childish joy you get out of being ignorant about this. There are historical and linguistic reasons for the differences in context between how the word is used amongst black people and how it's used by white people about black people. We've been through it all before. But go ahead and drool over your own rebelliousness at not understanding some basic stuff.
You can shoot yourself in the foot to prove that you bleed or you can be a grown up and not make an issue out of it.
What you call "being a grown up" is actually just counterproductive conformity over taking a stand. Like I said, your solution isn't a real solution, because it doesn't solve the real problem. It actually contributes to it. Obviously it's practical not to get yourself fired, and it might well be in your interest to act so as not to get yourself fired. That isn't saying anything insightful. But what's in your self-interest isn't always what's most principled, and it isn't in this case.
Oh, well I guess that this explains everything. Lock up the thread boys and girls, Zarathustra has spoken.
The difference with the Jews was this is something internal to their own community. I am not in the U.S. now and have only ever been a tourist but when I was there last New York had just banned the N word from use and black artists had to fight for their exception for it to be used. The debate of the N-word goes back not only to the inflammatory/derogatory Ni... distinction being the devolved form of the more neutral Ne... distinction it is characteristic to hear Martin Luther King or Malcolm X use and that was only in the 60's. So it is safe to assume that the language as well as the culture is changing.
As for the entire question of the N-Word I come from a country where it was taboo to say it for decades so it is normal to me. I think the political division honestly comes from playing up the value of the word itself... whether you say the word or not it doesn't address educational or economic equality. It just seems like a left vs. right identity politics game, that will escalate when the white population becomes a majority minority in the U.S. I feel that the entire conversation of racism in America is absurd because of the conceptual impossibility of it for other races to be racist against whites.Wait until it becomes white people get hate speech laws too and black people can't call them cracker arguments...
Moreover the fastest demographic growing are mixed races how are you goig to tell someone 'you can't understand black people' when they have white skin but their mother or father is black. Flip side how are you going to tell someone of color that 'they are not one of your people' when their parent is 'not one of the people' you assumed them to be ? Does that then make them half a person...
What will kill the country and true inclusion isn't a word but a diversity that is skin deep.
I am sick of conversations of race and immigration in Australia it is about the rise of unemployment of Muslim refugees. Alot of these refugees are asylum seekers who are unable to speak English, I am sick of pretending they came here of their free will and volition and can be considered job ready members of a society from the get go. A refugee is by definition in plight and desperation, as one seeking refuge.
I am a little more left leaning in that in my empathy of value, but rhetorically the political left and right I find both repugnant and disgusting.
Well, the Jews had a problem with nazism too.
Yet in Western society we value self criticism. We want to be better, we want to improve things. We want to be good people. We have these ideals and we want to be just and tolerant, even permissive and so on, all the good things. Hence we look critically at our past and in many ways were other cultures might find just their glorious past and be proud of it, we think that in order to improve ourselves, we have to learn from our past mistakes. Nobody is for outright segregation or slavery as nobody is for taking away the vote and other rights from women.
This creates the present environment. Add to this that once the African Americans did have the obvious success with the civil rights movement, the intellectuals of this group use the same narrative that was so effective before, which btw is very typical to any movement that reaches it's basic primary objectives. Of course there is still racism as there are misogynists too, yet to understand the present discourse, our way of thinking about the history and culture has to be taken into account.
I've actually wondered where the racism and the bigotry comes from. I find it telling that white Americans use terms like white trash of their 'own' poor people. As if the last bastion for being a bigot is to be one at your own racial group. Such derogatory words for poor people were used in Finland only in the 19th Century or earlier, but not anymore. (I recall from history like the term loinen, parasite, for a person so poor that he or she was put to live by the authorities in someone else's home and typically got the salary in food.)
Holy suffering Christ, if the moral issue of the day is the right to say 'nigger' rather then 'The N-word' to a bunch of bored college students then gawd help us all. I've probably said both at one point or another during my teaching career, but I'd have zero problem following an explicit convention not to use the former. Anyway, good luck on your crusade. I suggest a primer around your local neighbourhood. At least you've got the NHS to sort things out for you when it all goes south.
Is that sarcasm?
It doesn't explain everything, but it [i]is[/I] an example which highlights the importance of context and the naivety of the belief in "bad words".
That's consistent with my observation that its use revealed one's class. I think the same holds true in the African American community.
That's because you are suffering from humorless pedantry.
I understand it perfectly well, which is why I am opposed to words being judged "unspeakable". Childish rules call for a similar response. I do not use the word "nigger" in casual conversation or writing, but that does not mean I approve of anyone's ban on the word. Yes, Baden, I ridicule intelligent adults discussing language using circumlocutions like "the n word" when the word in question is "nigger". It's childish.
Oh, stop with the ridiculous exaggeration. I'm not on a crusade, and it's not the moral issue of the day. There are far more important moral issues. But that doesn't mean that this isn't a moral issue, and that doesn't mean that you're right to trivialise it as you're doing. You're not even addressing the issue. Of what relevance is it supposed to be that you'd be a-okay with being a lap dog to political correctness in academia? That certainly doesn't mean that it is the most ethical course of action to take.
The solution is just to never say it. The subjectivity of deciding when it can said and not and the severity of the consequences make it just too dangerous to say.
You weren't just doing that, you were repeating some tired old recycled stuff about black people using it etc. that we hear regularly from the morons on Fox News and don't expect to see puked up across the pages here by one of our more esteemed commentators (there you go, a backhanded compliment).
Exactly.
Well, analyzing one's intent even in college settings, where adults are often treated as children in elementary school is the deeper issue here, don't you think? And, this goes without mentioning that college tends to hypersensitize students, and not desensitize them, as much as you've like the latter to take place and not the former.
And that we are anonymous on this site proves the fear of possible consequences quite well.
The word can't be illegaluzed. It's protected by the Constitution. The Klan even has the right to march down the streets of Manhattan.
In two hundred years will it be ok to be vaguely anti-semitic because the barriers broke down between jews and gentiles and there really aren't any jews anymore?
How have you reached that conclusion from what I said? I said in the last sentence from the portion of text that you quoted that I will use "the N-word" when I feel I have to. That's because I don't ignore the consequences. It's coincidental that this topic has come up, because I recently had two conversations with two different people about racism and the use of racist language in various contexts. One of them got what I was saying completely, and we both used the word "nigger" with an understanding that it was acceptable in the context of our conversation. The other person disappointingly didn't quite get it, and so I used "the N-word" for his sake. Interestingly, the first person, the one who completely got where I was coming from, was mixed race, and he had experienced racism to a much greater degree than I myself have, and to a much greater degree than the other person has, who was overly-sensitive. The other person was white, like me.
A lot of working class prosperity is quite shallow and operates paycheck to paycheck. Lose the job and the appearance of prosperity can fall apart. Depending on how much credit they are floating on, a family hit by adversity (losing the main job, or both jobs) can lose everything in a few months. people are afraid of that happening to them.
So, while they are riding high, they look down their noses on the people toward the bottom -- unsuccessful, poor, defeated, riff raff, trailer trash, white trash, white 'n's, and so on.
If pejorative class terms have disappeared from Finnish usage, my guess is that class distinctions have become smaller and people feel more secure. There are probably fewer poorer Finns, and poorer Finns are just poorer Finns, not a group representing a feared personal financial collapse.
So easy for someone who's never been in a similar position of responsibility to say that. My moral issue as a teacher is first and foremost the welfare and education of my students. So, my moral risk would be, for example when teaching in China, saying something concerning human rights that might upset the authorities there but would have a potentially positive effect on said students. The idea that, if I were teaching in America, I should further the goal of helping my students by potentially insulting a significant number of them on some bogus free speech anti-PC trip, is, frankly, retarded.
The black community's use of the term doesn't help their cause in limiting its use. It is also problematic to use race as an excuse for behavior. If Trump casually used the N word, would your rage subside if he could prove he had a black grandmother? That seems a problematic standard.
No, because it's not the same speech behaviour. We've been through this. Activate your memory circuits.
We just filled the last slot, but thank you for your interest.
I think I actually am going to come teach there. Just to piss you off.
You're not talking about behavior. You're talking about intent which you decipher entirely by skin tone. if I use the term, I mean X, unless I tell you I'm black, and then I mean Y, regardless of whether I tell you I actually mean Z. If I have one black grandparent can I use the term with impunity?
I haven't actually proposed a course of action. I'm simply acknowledging a problem and talking about ideals. You keep grossly misinterpreting my point, and that's quite irritating. I get that there are important practical considerations. I never said that people in academic positions should actually act on principles which, in an ideal setting, wouldn't get you fired or locked up. But that's precisely the problem. That we're in this situation to begin with! How about some acknowledgment of the problem instead of your attempts to set it aside as trivial or less important?
Goobacks: we will become a hairless, uniform mix of all races, with the same skin color (a yellowy, light-brownish, whitish color), while our language will become a guttural mixture of all world languages.
Our immigration laws are really strict.
Silly. You don't get to be part of the black community by spending time in a tanning salon or suddenly discovering some black genes despite life-time entrenchment outside it.
I just need you to 'choose' the right to remain silent rather than speak. That is the project of the bullshit SJW city councils.
I don't agree with this approach to things at all, but this is the kind of political atmosphere we are dealing with now, less over the table and more rules for radicals.
I'm thinking the predictions made in 1819 about what 2019 would look like are pretty much wrong.
I don't see a big problem. Because the cost of not offending here is one syllable. What is the major issue for you? Go ahead and present your argument.
One should not fear the man that scowls at him for you know where you stand fear the one that smiles while hiding a knife behind his back.
I guess I'll get a head start. I will found the Gooback's Rights Movement. From there we will launch the Goobacks political party. The rest is history in the making.
You wouldn't do that, I wouldn't do that, and most people wouldn't do that. The overwhelming majority of people don't. A good share of my work life was involved working with very disadvantaged black people (white people, too). I never used the racially insensitive language with them. Our discussion here, though, is not a classroom or a social service. It is public, and is one of the few settings (like a college classroom) where language can and should be discussed honestly.
If someone says, "Those god damned n word don't belong in a civilized country." that would be unacceptable in any public conversation (and a lot of private ones). Referencing the word 'nigger' explicitly when talking about that very word should not, and I think would not be taken as an insult in most settings -- except those where persons are wired up to react to a list of verboten terms.
So now you're offering the "you gotra live it" definition. Does Eminem get a pass? What about the Huxtables? Do they lose their pass?
The issue is the people who think that their taking offence at something that's been said means that they're in the right and can force others into submission. That's the issue. Especially when they're wrong. Whether that's a major issue or a minor issue is relative. Sure, compared to, say, the war in Yemen, this is about as minor as minor can get. But I shouldn't have to refrain from talking sensibly just because other people are dumb or overly-sensitive or both. Ideally, this wouldn't be an issue, but of course it is an issue, because there are a whole bunch of people who are dumb or overly-sensitive or both.
You shouldnt use the word "retarded" anymore. It's somewhat insulting to those parents of the intellectually challenged who would rather not have their already struggling children considered as subhuman.
"Fucked up" would have been a better choice in your sentence.
You'll have to ask the black community who's in the black community, obviously. But again, we've been through all this before: "nigger" vs "nigga", BEV etc. You can bemoan the fact that linguistic communities have insider/outsider conventions wrt language use and that the "nigger/nigga" pair is a prime example, but that's just social reality.
Give your mum my apologies.
OK, I'll be a pig and you be chimp. We will then proceed in creating some chimp-pig content.
A white person saying "n" melds nicely into the image of the mythical slave owner. That's why it's offensive. The ghosts of slave owners and slaves abound in our world because there are yet people who look like they did.
Racial difference keeps slavery and Jim Crow alive just as the existence of Jews keeps the holocaust alive, meaningful, and therefore painful.
If we take away that difference in this blended world that I spoke of, what you'd find is that people would run to some other difference. They would find the pain. People always will find the pain because that's where the drama is.
No, because you can't invent social reality. It invents you.
Nice. You just called my departed mother a retard. If I weren't so
Actually, I called you a retard. And if you weren't so retarded, you would have got the joke.
I'm disappointed. >> :sad:
Okay...
Proceeds to be a wallowing chimp.
I invented a new fragrance which smells [i]just divine[/I]. I bottle it and sell it as perfume.
I made it from the semen of a pig-chimp.
Actually... I changed my mind I'll be the chimp and you be the pig now pick a topic so I can tell you it is a pearl and you are unfit and unworthy of it...
Goobacks are being oppressed in the future. If we don't get some solidarity soon, they'll take our jobs.
Oh dear. What's going on in your world?
Traded in my cat for a pig-chimp. Now I'm raking it in. I spend all of my profits on drugs.
Start a topic on pig-chimp content on the internet and stuff like that.
Oksa was a good cat.
Quoting thedeadidea
It's actually about pig-chimp content.
This would not be 1/5 as amusing to me if your name wasn't Wallows... this is why I am a philistine because shit like this just cracks me up to much to take stuff seriously.
Would that our arbitrary visual differences could be marginalized so easily... (Would indeed be grand).
I'll hazard the field and say that on the one hand, we should not train ourselves to feel emotional pain when he hear a particular sound (intent should matter and all that, but beyond that we should do our best to respond to genuine hatred with genuine love). On the other hand, because of the obvious effect it has, it's not a word that should ever be uttered in certain public contexts (a politician merely uttering the word, in whatever context, is bound to stir a negative emotional reaction). I wish that we were less sensitive about the mere utterance of a word, but it is what it is.
I actually grew up in a black community listening to hip-hop, so it's not a word I could ever escape. Once I was told what it was (I didn't even realize it had racist origins at first) as the result of using it against my best friend (who happened to be black) I went for a very long time without ever uttering it (when I wanted to reference it in discussion, I said "the n-word", but even then I was unsure if that was appropriate).
As me and my friends grew older, the word became more ubiquitous, and I couldn't help but to use it among my close circle of friends (in all manner of expressive ways except the hate filled hard-"e.r.", which is what we would call a fighting word regardless of who uses it). At the same time, when I heard it come out of the mouths of the upper-middle class white kids who didn't know any better, I resented them and hated them for it.
As an adult, I continue to use the word only in private with my friends who will not misinterpret my meaning, or I'll put it in quotations if I'm forced to reference the word itself (I feel too silly saying "the n word".
I've managed to write this entire post without actually using the titular word, and now allow me to cock that all up by attempting to demonstrate why me and my black friends could not help but use it. It's too expressive:
And here's the "clean" version.
"Touch them other hitters cause I'm down for my hitters" just isn't the same...
Is the issue that it isn't the same that there is no synonym for that word..... Is it unique in a good way or a bad way ?
I wouldn't relate it to "class" (whatever that even means). It just seems to be the received world-view of a lot of people. When I was young, I remember using the word when talking to my father about a black guy that worked for him. Had the civil rights movement not become so public (on the news, discussed in schools, etc), I may have never realized there was anything much wrong with it. So in my case, I was living in a time and place where the treatment of blacks (not just use of "n-") came to my attention.
Regarding use of the word by Blacks: I truly believe they should stop it, because it sounds like a hypocritical double standard to accept it from Blacks but not Whites. That said, it makes perfect sense that it will be perceived differently depending on the source. A black person is not connoting superiority when he says it, but he might perceive that when uttered by a white person (irrespective of what was in the white guy's heart when saying it).
You're not supposed to love the Devil, though. The Devil works best in fiction. We see the evil slave owner or klansman uttering the word, and it acts as a lightning rod for all our frustration and anger which is otherwise just particles everwhere: getting stuck in traffic, having to get a tooth fixed, etc.
Pain is there. We need a way to process it. Screaming at a random white guy who said the wrong word is one way to process it. Block that path and we'll find another. We're going to scream at somebody. We have to. In an ideal world, our processing of pain would be victimless. Is your point that we should try harder to make it so?
Another oldy:
The original doesn't say "Don't this shit make my people wanna."
Its usage in the black community is controversial on the whole. Black people who aren't interested in hip-hop, and generally elderly blacks (the ones I have known), really don't like hearing the word being used by anyone, but then there are some families that use it profusely.
What are we to do? It's the mess of emergent language, and it's going to take time and changing perceptions to decide how it should or shouldn't be used.
Come to think of it, most of the slurs that I am aware of are actually somewhat recent language acquisitions (perhaps because the pain associated with them must be in memory?). Would it be politically or culturally insensitive to call someone a Damn Philistine!? The modern meaning actually means "a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them", but etymologically (or Biblically) it refers to a region in the Middle East or its people, which is a less than complimentary comparison...
Aside from getting people to stop using the word in a hate filled sense (applies to everyone), I want people to scream less at each-other in general (even when they're clearly justified to do so). We scream if we must, but we mustn't let it poison our personalities and cause us to respond to hate with only hate.
In part, sensitivity to the word gives it its negative power, and while I am sympathetically forced to rebuke people who use it in a hateful sense, I want to do so in the most dignified way possible. I'm not black so it's not as if I can ambassador myself to racists on behalf of black communities, but I can still try to set an example. I really don't have the answers here, I'm just trying to get by by expressing myself.
Quoting thedeadidea
Even if we wanted to interfere, what knobs could we fiddle?
I grew up when and where never uttering the word was a part of my parents' resistance against those in their generation who did. The Civil Rights Movement divided every group, including my white family.
So, growing up that way and seeing for myself how people tried very hard to stop calling people that name makes having some black people use it as a special word that belongs only to them quite painful.
I don't have an opinion about whether the use of that language is good or bad against the background of some eventual historical end. But I have witnessed the degradation that is fused with the word and that is what it will always be for me.
edited 10.05.2019 changing "apepigs" to "chimppigs"
This edit was made possible thanks to Wallows and his nipples that continue to support us and our important work.
@VagabondSpectre
Can I post a video too?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.amp
Chimppigs unite!
You have already made it impossible creating yet another catastrophe of meaning.... The rupture of the Hyper Real and oblivion of the perfect abstraction and metaphysical object of chimp-pig has created a metaphysical dualism of separating the incomplete, the departed, the irreconcilable chimp and pig.
It is too late you already ruined Christmas.
The ontological perfection of chimppig
- the 6 arguments for chimppig
- the rekindling of classical naturalism/natural philosophy
-the metaphysical application of chimppig in solving the 3 dystopias
- the transcendental aesthetic of chimppig
- the cognitive metaphor and new historicity of human anthropology and evolutionary psychology
- the unified field of life meaning that is chimppig...
All of these ruined by you.
I know what you are trying to hint at chimp-pig, this is the grammar and spelling of the eurocentric patriarchial racist white scientists. It denies you the truth of your true origin, your true species genesis the primordial ancestor of both chimp and pig, there is no separation.
I don't know how you live with yourself Wallow I really dont...
I see you understand the way of the chimp-pig. But, I think we should continue this conversation over at the lounge.
The pig-chimp content is rife over there.
Done.
Har he har. Another sarcastic exaggeration. If it's not a problem that warrants screaming "I'm a victim of oppression!" from the rooftops, then it's not a problem? It's all or nothing?
My non-white male friend feels the same way as I do, by the way, although I don't know why it should matter what skin colour or gender one is to have an opinion on this issue.
But the cultural significance of all this is that in the public sphere, intent and the use-mention distinction are being ignored. And that is stupid.
Quoting Baden
I missed that discussion. I'd be interested to read the linguist's take on it.
Off the top of my head and loosely speaking, if using it--as opposed to mentioning it--can be unobjectionable, then you still gotta use it right. The unobjectionable way of using it happens to be inaccessible to most white people, because it's associated with black sub-cultures. But if anecdotal evidence is worth anything at all, I happen know people in black London sub-cultures who have close white friends in those sub-cultures who use the word just like they themselves do. They know how to use it in a way Hanover never could, not only or even primarily because he's not black, but because he's not of that sub-culture.
I can't say to a co-worker "you're such an asshole sometimes" when he takes the last cookie from the jar because it's unprofessional and unacceptable in the given context. I can say it to my best friend. I can flip my finger at a friend, I'd better not do so at a random stranger. If my wife calls her best friend "bitch" in a playful manner, I'd be pretty retarded to think I'm privileged to call her best friend "bitch" as well. It doesn't work that way.
We apply double standards all the time. Black people get to use that word, we honkies don't and we lost the right to do so because our dads and granddads were assholes to black people.
Funnily enough, you were in the discussion I was referring to. But it was on the old PF. @Hanover was in it too. It centred around the general status of AAVE/BVE.
This article gives a fairly straightforward picture of the linguistic angle I'd be closest to on the issue. Essentially the argument is that nigger/nigga are in an important sense different words rather than just differently pronounced variants of the same word (this shouldn't be particularly surprising if one recognizes the existence of AAVE and understands a little about how dialects/sociolects work. "Dope" and "sick" are words whose meaning can vary to the point of incomprehensibility to fellow English speakers not familiar with their dialectical use.)
Anyhow, here's the crucial point of departure for any sensible conversation on the issue:
"One of the most potent slurs in American English is the racial epithet nigger (we warned you!). However, many white people oblivious to history and privilege don't hesitate to muse, "why can they [read: "black" people] use it, then?" Their observation - that some black Americans use what sounds like the same word - is valid, although insisting that makes the use of slurs OK is not valid."
...
"So when some speakers of AAVE use the word nigga, it is understandably interpreted as an r-less variant of a word that underlyingly has an r. However, the supposed r never shows up, not even intervocalically (jargon for "between vowels").
When people maintain that they're two different words, there seems to be good evidence for that. Note to white people: This does not give you license to use either. If you do not speak AAVE, and chances are you don't, you don't get to use either word. You WILL offend people, and no one will like you."
My bolding. And this is not just opinion. It's backed up by mounds of evidence, some of which is mentioned in the article (pdf of original study here ).
The authors go on to discuss the technical term "semantic bleaching", which refers to the phenomenon of words losing shades of meaning over time. "Nigga" is one such word.
Re this important point:
Quoting jamalrob
It's addressed here:
"[Nigga] is not inherently specified for race, like nigger and other epithets are. In fact, race is often added to it, so the authors may be referred to in our neighborhoods as "that white nigga" and "the black nigga who was with him." Others include "asian nigga," and even "African nigga."
Among those who use the term, it is now a generic term like guy.
This shift in meaning seems to have happened some time after 1972-ish, possibly in conjunction with the rise of the Black Power movement, as an attempt to reclaim the word, similar to some feminists reclaiming bitch, and cunt. It was a necessary prerequisite for the super cool grammatical change our paper is actually about."
So, yes, it's not about skin colour or genes as such but being a member of a community broadly considered the black community but encompassing sub-cultures where you don't have to be black.
The article goes on to argue that "nigga" is actually becoming a pronoun rather than a noun and there's data to support that, but that's less relevant to the issue being discussed in this thread.
Science and common sense are happily married on this one. :up:
Oh yeah. Good times. I thought that was here on TPF.
Otherwise yes, thanks, that's what I was thinking, that they're actually different words (which is not to say it's always cool to use "nigga").
Yes, and that kind of complicates the use/mention thing, which gets infected by user/context/falsely attributed phonetic variant issues, confuses people, and leads to general strife on both sides.
I don't exactly see how it complicates the use/mention thing. I can see how it's complicated in the way I described above, by the sheer violence of the word, which as with "cunt" makes even the mention of it uncomfortable. But the linguistic angle you've outlined and which I agree with doesn't seem to add any complication that I can think of with respect to use/mention, though I'll note that it's not nearly so uncomfortable to mention the word "nigga" as it is to mention the n-word, hence my repeated use of "n-word".
I mean especially in terms of the argument that black people use it all the time but white people can't even mention it. As if "it" referred to one word. Cue great resentment. My own view is that mentioning "nigger" should be OK as long as it's done with some sensitivity and awareness, including of the fact that black people do not generally either use or mention this word, but a different word in their own dialect. What I would object to though is making an issue out of wanting to mention it when it has or is likely to offend.
Well, I don't know of a scenario apart from the one I just gave where it would be a battle worth pursuing to insist on mention though I don't think there should be punishment for mention either. Give me something to chew on.
Says you. Most linguists would say no. And the way we decide whether words are the same is by analysing them linguistically, how they behave with other words and so on. It's not just a matter of opinion. Otherwise we get nowhere.
You're focusing on the falsity of one potential objection, which I don't disagree with. But it can also be a matter of etiquette where the objection lies. So, what is worth pursuing? It's worth pointing out that mention is not racist, but insisting on mention because it's not racist misses some nuance here.
I don't know whether AAVE is rhotic. I have a feeling it may not be.
The terminal "r" is pronounced in some versions of British English. Not relevant but I can't stand this generalization.
Lol. Its the same word, Baden.
I remember being taught at primary school ( UK - a couple of several decades ago ) that the proper word to use was 'negroe'.
Times change and it can be confusing to know what the right description should be...
An elderly relative noted the amount of 'blacks' in an English football team. Defensively informed me, without my even asking, that it was not an offensive term. However, what was the point of the comment, given that other European nationalities went unremarked.
Recently, I watched the film 'The Dambusters' (1955).
There was an added introduction which warned that some of the language used in that era might now cause offence to viewers.
Turned out that ' Nigger' was the name of the Wing Commander's black labrador.
Also that the dog’s name was used as a code word during Operation Chastise – which means 'a morse code operator has to shout it with great gusto at a key moment in the movie.'
From:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/07/the-dam-busters-film-reel-history
'...It has been suggested that the N-word was less incendiary in Britain during the second world war than it was in the United States, where abolitionists objected strongly to it from the early 19th century. It would be a mistake to imagine it was inoffensive, though. Like other racial epithets, the N-word was always used in the context of belittlement and frequently as abuse. Yet there was far less awareness in Britain during the 1940s and 50s of the harm caused by using such language – and so, in real life and in the movie, Gibson’s dog’s name could go unremarked upon...'
Yes, hadn't thought of that.
Quoting andrewk
Mostly it's not. My dialect, Irish English, is as it happens.
Quoting frank
Shrug. Bare assertion. For evidence that it's not, see the article. Respond if you can.
Quoting jamalrob
That's a fair point. I wouldn't personally if I were PMed not to, but I wouldn't want mention of it against the rules here either.
Predictably provocative more like. But yes, it's right that racism and not the use and/or mention of particular words is what the guidelines focus on. So, you've made a good case for some further exceptions where insisting on allowing use and/or mention could be preferable.
Look back at that article. It is itself merely opinion. If I missed where there is any academic weight at all to that article, could you point it out?
I'm mixed-race. I've had access to primary historical sources for understanding how the words were used on both sides(at least in the 20th Century). The n-word is a slurring of negro. It just meant black. It was succeeded by "colored," which was succeeded by "black," which was supposed to be succeeded by "African American," but that one had too many syllables. Only really uptight white people use that one.
The weight of my assessment is my qualifications as a translator of words used in my own language community. So, yes, there's bareness to my assertions about it.
The reason a white person wouldn't use the omitted R version of the word is because it would sound like mockery, assuming you have a white person who wasn't raised speaking a black dialect. It'd be like me walking around your home town and telling everyone "top 'o the mornin' to ya'" in my best Irish accent. The truncation of the last consonant is characteristic of certain black dialects, and it would cause problems for me to speak that way in most contexts. The same holds true if you came down here (and please don't) and decided you wanted to speak like a southerner. They'd take it as an attempt to show them how stupid you thought they were.
So this, just to give a small sample:
"What's the evidence for pronoun status?
a nigga and my nigga are phonologically reduced. That is, there is a clear difference in pronunciation between the pronoun forms and the terms meaning "a person" and "my friend." To this end, we tend to use anigga and manigga, pronounced /?n?g?/ and /m?n?g?/ (we leave the original spacing when quoting tweets, though).
No other words can intervene while still retaining the first person meaning. "A friendly nigga said hello" does not mean "I said hello," whereas "anigga said hello" can. The first means that some friendly guy said hello, but it wasn't the speaker.
anigga binds anaphors. No, that's not some kind of Greek fetish; Anaphors are words like "myself" "himself," "herself," etc. Binding in this case refers to which anaphors show up with the word. anigga patterns with the first person words, whereas imposters do not. For almost everyone "daddy is going to buy myself an ice cream" is either ungrammatical or sounds like daddy got lost in the middle of his sentence. anigga, on the other hand, is often used with myself, as in "anigga proud of myself."
Other pronouns refer back to anigga. That is, "you read all a nigga's tweets but you still don't know me."
Verbs are conjugated first person, not third person, with anigga. This is totally ungrammatical with imposters, and totally normal for actual pronouns. Example:
"Finna make myself dinner. a nigga haven't eaten all day." Compare that to "Daddy haven't eaten all day; he's going to make myself dinner." Really, really, abysmally bad.
anigga can be used in certain conditions that imposters - like "a brotha" - cannot. For instance, you can say "anigga arrived," with first person meaning, but the only interpretation available for "a brotha arrived" is third person. It's for this reason that we cannot simply substitute the much-less-likely-to-offend "a brotha" in our discussion of these terms.
That's basically it. In every conceivable grammatical test, anigga patterns with actual pronouns and not with imposters."
in your world is equivalent to this:
Quoting frank
And that is evidence not only that it's a different word but that it's becoming a different word class. I also linked to the full pdf study too. So, you're not even being serious.
Quoting frank
It doesn't matter what race either of us is or isn't. I'm Irish but that doesn't make me right about any particular claim I make about Ireland or Irish English etc. And it's a linguistic issue by definition.
Quoting frank
Again, if this is all you have, you have nothing. Sorry.
My father used to call called black people "colored," which was actually an official designation for a time period. You checked off the box on government forms indicating whether you were white or colored. Use of the term colored now makes you sound painfully ignorant, but not necessary racist, but likely holding less than progressive views.
:zip:
How does any of that support your claim?
I'm telling you: the way blacks use the word is in many cases exactly the same way whites once used it. If you were thinking that blacks always drop the r at the end, you're wrong. So zero in on that fact and look again at the argument you're trying to counter: that since blacks use it, whites should be able to use it.
The argument you presented is a ridiculous solution to the white quest to use it anyway. That quest needs no solution. It's just a handful of white people being laughable. If they aren't actually trying to get a laugh, they're just stupid.
I'm supporting the linguistic argument that they're different words, which is what the above focuses on too in presenting syntactic disparities of usage evident of a shifting of word class. I'm not arguing against your personal experience of using the word.
(I'm not even saying it's beyond debate that they're different words, only that it's a linguistic issue and can only be sorted out by looking at how they behave not by how people think they behave.)
Quoting frank
My hope is that understanding some of the linguistic facts might help clear up some of the confusion and help white people stop being stupid about it. But, yes, maybe that is a forlorn hope.
Not a hope. I'm going to be nice and then disappear and do some actual work so I can pay the rent this month. :strong:
Fine. Apparently I need to say it again: in many cases, the black usage is the same as the historic white usage. It's very clearly the same word.
Quoting Baden
It's not all white people. It's just a tiny handful being silly.
See my edit above:
Quoting Baden
At this point, I think we can agree to disagree. It's not the main focus of the discussion for sure.
Yes, I think that I tend to hesitate before any description for fear of causing offence or not being up-to-date. One wants to be right, doesn't one? Unless you are left !
Throughout this discussion, it seems that 'black' and 'white' are the preferred adjectives placed before the noun 'person' or the collective 'people'. Perhaps in the real world we could simply ask people how they prefer to be described - when or if it even matters. Subjective self-identification.
UK governmental forms have changed to take into account changing views and acceptability.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_ethnicity_in_the_United_Kingdom
'...User consultation undertaken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the purpose of planning the 2011 census in England and Wales found that most of the respondents from all ethnic groups that took part in the testing felt comfortable with the use of the terms "Black" and "White".
However, some participants suggested that these colour terms were confusing and unacceptable, did not adequately describe an individual's ethnic group, did not reflect his or her true skin colour, and were stereotypical and outdated terms.The heading "Black or Black British", which was used in 2001, was changed to "Black/African/Caribbean/Black British" for the 2011 census.
As with earlier censuses, individuals who did not identify as "Black", "White" or "Asian" could instead write in their own ethnic group under "Other ethnic group". Persons with multiple ancestries could indicate their respective ethnic backgrounds under a "Mixed or multiple ethnic groups" tick box and write-in area.[12]'
I usually let you slink away with your weirdness, but I'm not feeling it today. If we had to consult with a professional linguist to arrive at translations, very little translation would ever have taken place.
Translation starts with a person who has enough connection to a language community to understand how the words are used.
We're not talking about translation as far as I'm concerned. The question doesn't primarily concern how to translate one word into another, it concerns whether or not there are enough differences between the way the variants of the word in question behave to justify considering those variants as two different words. For that, you need linguistic analysis of the sort in the article, which you originally refused to acknowledge even existed and now are just refusing to mention or respond to. And I'm weird... Do you at least accept that different syntactical rules for each variant (aggregated through statistical data on usage and analysis of said data) suggest something relevant wrt the question of definitions here? And what do you think that is? If not, what's your basis for denying its relevance?
"Well, we argue that there is an emerging class of words that function as pronouns (remember elementary school English class? A pronoun is a word that stands in for another noun or noun-phrase) in some varieties of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), that are built out of the grammatical reanalysis of phrases including the n- word. Well, sort of the n- word because there's excellent evidence that there are actually at least two n-words, and that some speakers of AAVE differentiate between them and use them in different contexts."
One piece of evidence:
"In fact, we argue that in this dialect, it is now human and male by default, but not always (an example of the not always: "I adopted a cat and I love that nigga like a person"). It is also not inherently specified for race, like nigger and other epithets are. In fact, race is often added to it, so the authors may be referred to in our neighborhoods as "that white nigga" and "the black nigga who was with him." Others include "asian nigga," and even "African nigga.""
So, the standard English slur word "nigger" is specified for race. The AAVE version, it's argued, isn't. One difference amongst many identified.
The idea of that makes no sense. What it is for an utterance to be insulting is for an individual to take it a particular way, to apply certain meanings and connotations to the utterance, to assume particular intentions, etc. So it depends on the individual considering it.
The bizarre argument we're examining is this:
1. I'm white.
2. There are sanctions against my use of the n-word.
3. Black people say the n-word without sanctions.
C. Therefore there is a contradiction that can only be resolved by
C1. Black people should stop saying it
C2. I should be allowed to say it.
The response you presented is this:
The n-word mentioned in 2 is not the same n-word mentioned in 3. The article you presented offers the opinion that the way the n-word shows up in varieties of AAVE is different enough from its use in formal English that it's not the same word. Is that not the point you were making?
Consider:
Bowman says, "Hook a nigga up."
This is AAVE. Could we drop Bowman's usage into a formal English statement and have it mean the same thing as the old n-word? We'll call this question R.
Examining R would require cognition of the very same type that's used in any kind of translation. You need a translator.
I'm not providing a blistering critique of the article you presented because it's not relevant. My Bowman example is common enough for the purposes of addressing this crazy issue.
As I said, the only reason I've come this far is that you do this a lot. You dig your heels in on a position that just seems completely nuts to me. I always walk away. This time I didn't.
1. I'm a guy.
2. There are sanctions against me calling my wife's friends "bitch".
3. My wife and her friend say "bitch" without sanctions.
C. Therefore there is a contradiction that can only be resolved by
C1. Wife and friends should stop saying it
C2. I should be allowed to say it.
Yeah, but no. I'll leave it to you to figure out where you're going wrong.
I'm not sure that's entirely the case though. I think the utterance itself has become a perfomative act to some, where it's inexcusable regardless of intent. I don't think in the examples cited in the OP that there's evidence of mal-intent. The accusers just cite to the utterance itself and don't provide any evidence that the speakers were racist.
Lemme know how it goes.
No, you obviously don't need a translator. And handwaving everything I said away just so you can say what you want to say is going to result in quid pro quo from me.
Agreed.
It's not confusing to me. I just don't agree that those people should be reacting that way in [i]some[/I] cases. As usual, context is everything. I think that it should be more about context than group membership. I don't think that I have to be a part of any group, I just have to get the context right. My friend was in the group of people who hold politically correct views about such language, whereby the term "nigger" should be replaced with term "the N-word". Even though I'm not a part of that group, I still think that I was in the right, and I only granted his wishes out of politeness. I wasn't using the word in a racist way. I was just talking about the kind of things we're talking about here: about racism, and how people react to minority ethnicities, and the language used by racists, and by those who have co-opted it, and by comedians, and by others, for various reasons, and with varying intentions. I don't agree with the self-censorship in such conversations. I think that it would be better if the listener got a grip of themselves instead of this tendency to overreact at the mere mentioning of the word, and expecting others to pander to their sensitivities.
Quoting Benkei
Newsflash: yes we do, so long as it's not in a racist way. It might be inappropriate in some situations and cause a big reaction, but that's more a matter of being streetwise.
And my skin colour shouldn't matter. That's the whole point of anti-discrimination. It's disappointing and frustrating that so many people miss this and target people based on their skin colour or gender.
And [i]no[/I], I am [i]not[/I] guilty for the sins of my ancestors.
My list (meaning, connotations, intent) etc. wasn't meant as an "every one of these is a necessary property" list, so that if one of them isn't checked off, then it doesn't count. It was rather illustrative of the sorts of things that people have to think about in order for an utterance to be insulting, or to be anything in particular really, rather than just a sound. That should have been clear by my "etc." among other things. You don't stick an "etc." in a "Here's an exhaustive list of necessary properties that each need to be checked off."
There's an old name for them that nobody uses anymore because it had the n-word in it. As far as I know, there isn't a new word, though. The last time I heard someone try to speak about them, they just pointed and said "those."
That is the power of a social wound.
Or a lack of imagination.
It just depends on the individual assigning meaning, of course.
That nuance being that some people find the mention of the word offensive, even though the context is acceptable. There is a proclivity in this situation to automatically respond by granting them authority and suitably limiting speech in accordance with their wishes. That's what I disagree with. On a personal level, if it was a friend of mine, or someone I respected, or there were other practical considerations, like those you mentioned earlier for example, then I might well grant that wish. But even so, I would still make the case that that's the wrong way to react. [I]They[/I] should change, not me. The problem stems from [i]them[/I].
Exactly. I think that it's a mark of intelligence and maturity if one is able to distance oneself from all of the hooha, and just have an honest, open and direct discussion about it. If we want to discuss the word "nigger", let's just discuss the word "nigger".
It comes down to full context. Here on the forum, for example, we're writing so we can use scare quotes to make mention absolutely clear. Harder to do that in speaking. But I've been persuaded at least that there are more instances where mention and even use should be insisted on than I would have thought.
Certainly not.
Yep.
I don't believe that the official name of those rocks were N-rocks or something similar. That's probably what people called them because poor black people used them for building or something and the name has its roots in racism. It's just really doubtful that from some cosmic coincidence an ancient native tribe or something called them that and now we're stuck with a now politically incorrect name.
I could go over all the creative ways the N word has been injected into various other words, but it'd be a fairly racist recitation, considering many here would think the way it's been used is funny, so I'll spare everyone.
Ugh! That is [I]so[/I] narrow-minded. You mentioned that you were mixed race earlier. So bloody what? As I mentioned, my mixed race friend and I were of like minds on this topic. He wasn't mischaracterising this as a group of white people on a quest, as you are. You don't have special authority just because you're mixed race. He's not white. He's also mixed race, and his opinion differs from yours. Neither my friend nor I are on a quest. We both saw through the colour of our skins and accepted the points we were making on their own merit. We both agreed that there are acceptable contexts in which the mention and use of the terminology is acceptable, and that in this respect, the colour of one's skin shouldn't matter.
I'm more comfortable not using it, so I don't. Some people don't say Fuck for the same reason. I say Fuck, but not the N word.
Okay. Oddly inconsistent, but okay. If you don't feel comfortable enough, then you don't feel comfortable enough. What else is there to say? I would urge you to get over that, but I can't force you to change how you feel about it.
Everyone pretty much is. You're probably Anglo and Saxon or maybe Scotch and Irish. Most black Americans have some European blood in them. This whole tribal distinction, community distinction thing, or whatever arbitrary line we're trying to draw where some can use the N word and others not, I'm just not buying despite @Baden's assurance I'm overlooking a logical basis for disparate treatment.
Yes, but that's stretching the term beyond meaning, so that the distinction is lost. It's just not practical or useful to do that.
There'd be little gained if I overcame my limitations and was finally able to speak the N word with greater comfort. It offers me one less area to get myself into trouble at least.
I guess a geologist would know.
It is useful. My son is half Jewish, so he checked the mixed race box on some application for something for preferential treatment.
I'm not thinking about this in terms of practical advantages. It's a matter of principle. I am opposed, in principle, to self-censorship. Why do it? The discomfort seems irrational.
I just googled that trying to find the geological name for those rocks and I found this:
Quoting wikipedia
But that article doesn't mention the spherical rocks. They're pretty rare. Maybe that's why.
As long as you don't read or respond to any of the actual argument by linguists that there is a case for considering usage as fundamentally different (and therefore a logical basis for disparate treatment of such usage) you're on solid ground here. :up:
Quoting Hanover
Judging by the levels of fried Mars Bar in his bloodstream, we can be confident @S is 100% pure Scottish highlander.
Words without context are just noise.
People make of them what they will; as is the case when left to interpret shadows.
So perhaps it's not whether the word has become insulting, but why has it come to be interpreted as insulting?
And actually, it's just as bad if the child is white, and even if you have a working class accent.
"Can't take a joke?" - the endless complaint of the bully called out.
But back to taboo words. It is of course essential for taboo words to be used in order to be forbidden. And it is a matter of class distinction to know the rules and conform to the etiquette.
So salty. Definitely Celtic. You lack the refinement of an Anglo.
No, they called them as they did because they reminded some redneck of how black men's heads looked and so he and Bubba coined the term and they laughed their cracker ass heads off. Apparently the name got passed down through the generations like their crossed eyes and webbed toes and it fell upon your ears and you got to share it with us.
A hearty thank you for that.
I thought some of the eurotrash on the forum might like the story.
Or maybe a chink.
The term was used in a US governmental geological survey, 1886. See p15.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/28/report.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwia5vLD2JHiAhUgRBUIHc8QCcgQFjAFegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw2iUsYUZjxMSrN6PWKCMAtg
1886 wasn't the most progressive of years.
Quoting frank
The phonetic difference between "nigger(s)" and "nigga(s)" probably has its origin in the AAVE tendency to drop the final 'r'. [Dropping the final 'r' is also characteristic of white New England speech, completely unrelated to AAVE.] AAVE has at least some origins in white southern speech, which uses a soft 'r' pronunciation.
The pronunciation of the final 'r' is a good geographical marker. Midwesterners (broadly defined) tend to use a hard final 'r'. There are regional and class differences in pronunciation in the US, and even more so in the UK.
Whether "nigger(s)" and "nigga(s)" is one word with two racially inflected pronunciations or one word (or two) with racial inflections and two separate meanings seems to me unsettled. Time will tell. Lots of words have had decades of popularity, then disappeared (and sometimes, lamentably, have refused to go away.
One of the neologisms I have tracked is "get-go". "She was popular from the get-go." According to informed sources, it appeared in 1962. I first heard in Massachusetts in 1968. I see it in print occasionally, but hear it used only rarely in my Minneapolis milieu. According to Google Ngram, the phrase "from the get go" took off about 1990. We are at peak get go now.
Here is an example of culturally limited knowledge. Google Ngram measures the frequency of words in print. Usually, 1800 is the starting date of its measurements. Here's the Ngram for nigger and nigga. "Nigga" is obviously used more often than indicated here, but it's use isn't showing up in print.
Interesting. "Nigga" wins out online.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=nigga,nigger
Odd spike around 2014.
Presumably (but I wouldn't be too sure) Google doesn't have detailed demographics on the searches -- age, race, economic status, education level, and so on. That would be interesting.
No, it only has by region.
AAVE isn't non rhotic like New England, British, or old South (I do declaa), but it truncates most all final consonamts. "Where are you going" becomes "Whe you goin" eliminating all final consonamts, including the entire single syllable verb "are."
It's verb usage is also distinct, with the to be verb used differently. The above sentence is often spoken as "whe you be goin?"
Meaning in a living language is fluid. All sorts of connotations can swirl around the very same word.
But then I couldn't understand a good share of the dialogue in "Trainspotters" which was a film made in Scotland. There are dialects that appear on Masterpiece Theater (usually BBC sourced) that are tricky too. The midwest should probably send missionaries to the UK and help them learn how to speak their own language. The stupid slobs!
Ah gonna ge me som smahz lie tha honky gah. Ah be lauyah lie hi."
Right.
Right (conservative)
Right (correct)
Right (in the direction of most people's dominant hand)
Right (I totally agree)
Right (verbal insertion without meaning)
Right (proper -- as in "Meet, right, and salutary")
Right (a bishop)
Right there, right here, right now, right away, etc.
and many more.
You are not the first person to use "rhotic" on TPF; that honor goes to andrewk, but you are 1 of the first three. You are the first person to say "I do declaa" here.
Now, what pray tell is a "pom"? Pomeranian (a variety of German)?
Those aren't cases of the same word.
Old Australian slang for visitor or immigrant from England. The etymology is lost in the mists of time. Two explanations I have heard are:
1. It used to be POME, and the E was later dropped. POME was an acronym for 'Prisoner Of Mother England', written on the identity documents of the transported convicts that were the majority of the original european settlers (invaders) of the Australian continent.
2. Refers to pomegranate, a red fruit, as a joke about the fact that English visitors get sunburned and go bright red under the Australian sun, which they are not used to. Not so relevant since supercheap air travel made sunny Spain a major holiday destination for Brits of almost all classes.
I like the pomeranian idea. That sounds as plausible as the others. It is well known to students of history that the British are soulmates of the Germans, and are unified against the real traditional enemy - the French. The two wars in the 20th century were a curious aberration.
I also want to apologise to @jamalrob for triggering one of his pet hates, making generalisations about all inhabitants of the British Isles, as if they were monolithic. I acknowledge that those islands are one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world. I was aware that Scottish, Irish and some regional dialects of England (West Country perhaps. Certainly not Cockney or RP though) are rhotic. I should have said English English, which would have been closer to correct, although still with some exceptions.
It's well known that Scottish English inserts gibberish as every third word just so they can roll their Rs. Native Scots are able to filter out the filler sounds seamlessly.
The Welsh, on the other hand, fuck sheep.
I thought it was the Australians that were the sheep shaggers. :joke:
If the word is to become a thing of the past that is unknown to the present then everybody would have to stop using it. The same people that it was meant to refer to use it all the time, they just don't want to be called it by other groups.
The same has happened to nearly all of the smaller groups that had been named by the majority in some derogatory way. A couple of gays I know still call each other queers. Nearly all groups have names that they use among themselves that has been used by others as insults at some time. Talking to some nurses a while ago( male and female) they happily called each other butt wipers. But when a smart-ass doctor used the name they were ready to lynch him.
Over time people will start to use the now acceptable words that refer to these groups as insults and then they will also become unacceptable.
If not using the words was a reasonable act of courtesy or respect then there would have to be respect for the persons being referred to. The only way that is going to happen is when everyone is considered equal to everyone else. Do you think that will ever happen.
If it is a politically imposed rule, I doubt that the intention is to divide and destroy, more along the lines of sucking up to possible new voters by the ruling or wanting to rule parties.
Not sure what it would be, but it's surely correlated to some popular media usage--a song, something some media personality (entertainer, TV presenter, etc.) said, etc.
Serves to emphasize the way the different variants/words are used. And the evidence suggests the divergence will continue.
Quoting andrewk
You basically just called me British. I demand an apology too. :grin:
A sin? Maybe not. But unacceptable? Yes. The so-called N-word was used for centuries in an intentionally pejorative way. And gratuitous insults help no-one and nothing.
It depends on who you ask and even then you will get contradictory answers from the same person who claim to be offended by the word, yet they use it themselves to refer to "friends".
These same people get offended when a caucasian uses the word, but not when blacks do. This is where it becomes a way to divide, like you said. To say that one group of people with a particular skin color can't do something where another group of a particular skin color can, is the definition of racism.