[Ravenholme]

You were rather ambiguous on that point Battuta, actually gave the impression that I gleaned.

Well, your history, not mine.

[General Battuta]

You were rather ambiguous on that point Battuta, actually gave the impression that I gleaned.

Well, your history, not mine.

It's not mine either. I have no blood relation to these people. But I do respect that my beliefs about what's offensive or frightening aren't the only beliefs in the world, and that I need to be considerate of that.

I'd hesitate before telling an internment camp survivor that their feelings are 'the stupidest thing I've heard all day', is all. I'm happy to make Holocaust jokes (for better or worse) but I probably wouldn't do it to an Auschwitz survivor's face. And hell maybe I should reconsider that general freedom too.

I don't know, I can see both sides but I just feel like my authority to determine what's cool and what's not is much less than the authority of people who were actually part of the events that defined the words.

[iamzack]

it seems silly that something a child would come up with on his own can be considered hugely offensive.

Once as a four-year-old I was attempting to cling to my mother's leg in a pool and I stumbled upon the nonsense word 'nggr!'

But you didn't attach it to a black person, did you? We have Brit and Scot, so Jap seems like a logical term for a person from Japan. Kind of like Paki for Pakistani, when we call people from Afghanistan Afghanis instead of Afghanistanis.

[General Battuta]

it seems silly that something a child would come up with on his own can be considered hugely offensive.

Once as a four-year-old I was attempting to cling to my mother's leg in a pool and I stumbled upon the nonsense word 'nggr!'

But you didn't attach it to a black person, did you? We have Brit and Scot, so Jap seems like a logical term for a person from Japan. Kind of like Paki for Pakistani, when we call people from Afghanistan Afghanis instead of Afghanistanis.

Didn't you get banned over this?   Playing with fire if Kara stumbles in here.

See, I agree, they are reasonable contractions...until at some point they're weaponized and turned against the group in question. That's happened to 'Jap'. It was used in propaganda posters, broadcasts, military slang and common parlance to designate a slant-eyed, rice-eating hive of interchangeable and fanatical yellow-skinned supermen who wanted to conquer the world and sexually violate American women. That's what the term means, especially for people who lived through that era.

Whether you are a Japanese national today, or - worse - an American citizen who was treated as a traitor and a 'Jap' just because of your ancestry, you don't want to be that any more. You want to be a human being, not a monster.

Jap isn't just a contraction any longer. It was repurposed. You can't pretend that it's short for Japanese any more than you can claim that 'negro' or 'colored' are acceptable terms no matter how factually accurate they might be.

(And I'm gonna guess the same goes for Paki.)

The same thing could happen to Yank one day, and when that day comes it'll no longer be an acceptable term for Americans.

[iamzack]

Wasn't Yank originally a slur and then people got over it?

[General Battuta]

Wasn't Yank originally a slur and then people got over it?

Probably so. For some people I imagine it's still a slur. The same process might happen to 'Jap' some day. You never know.

But I imagine that the people who 'get offended over it' do so because they believe it's used in ignorance, without full understanding of what the term still means to many.

Arthur C. Clarke once suggested that in the feature we'd all call black people niggers because the term would have been stripped of any derogatory meaning. But it hasn't happened yet.

[Ravenholme]

Wasn't Yank originally a slur and then people got over it?

Probably so. For some people I imagine it's still a slur. The same process might happen to 'Jap' some day. You never know.

But I imagine that the people who 'get offended over it' do so because they believe it's used in ignorance, without full understanding of what the term still means to many.

Arthur C. Clarke once suggested that in the feature we'd all call black people niggers because the term would have been stripped of any derogatory meaning. But it hasn't happened yet.

The funny thing is that it started out with no derogatory meaning - and then slavery got involved. It was a bit of an imprecise contraction, as not all black people came from Nigeria, but tell that to an ignorant public back in Europe/NA

I also hate to point out that the propaganda, whilst being a broad generalisation, did have a lot going for it terms of what would happen if they did conquer you. Just look at what happened to Japanese occupied China, and all the horror stories out of there.

[General Battuta]

Wasn't Yank originally a slur and then people got over it?

Probably so. For some people I imagine it's still a slur. The same process might happen to 'Jap' some day. You never know.

But I imagine that the people who 'get offended over it' do so because they believe it's used in ignorance, without full understanding of what the term still means to many.

Arthur C. Clarke once suggested that in the feature we'd all call black people niggers because the term would have been stripped of any derogatory meaning. But it hasn't happened yet.

The funny thing is that it started out with no derogatory meaning - and then slavery got involved. It was a bit of an imprecise contraction, as not all black people came from Nigeria, but tell that to an ignorant public back in Europe/NA

Quite so. Analogous to 'jap' in that respect.

[iamzack]

You know, I've actually never heard the word Paki used except by people who legitimately thought it was the word for Pakistani.

[Ravenholme]

You know, I've actually never heard the word Paki used except by people who legitimately thought it was the word for Pakistani.

Well, in Britain it was a widely-used term of abuse for people of Asian/Middle Eastern descent, though it seems to have generally fallen out of use just now.

Well, I reckon so, but an Indonesian friend of mine was apparently racially abused at her work (she's a waitress) by some ***** whom I remember from school, apparently got her really angry. Don't know what language was being hurled at her though, might have to ask.

[General Battuta]

You know, I've actually never heard the word Paki used except by people who legitimately thought it was the word for Pakistani.

But you are not the world!

And look this thread is perfectly civil. It is a good day on HLP. (Now if spardason would just unblock me so he'd get my PM apology for that tiff earlier.)

[iamzack]

But I cant possibly be the only one. How can something be a serious slur if any random person who hasn't heard it would use it? It just makes no sense.

Does the tone make the slur? What if I say "French" all nasty and meanlike? Will French people have to come up with a new word for their nationality if too many people say "French" with a sneer?

[General Battuta]

But I cant possibly be the only one. How can something be a serious slur if any random person who hasn't heard it would use it? It just makes no sense.

Read this post.

Something becomes a serious slur when it starts being used as a slur. It can be recreated innocently, but a word does not exist in a vacuum, transmitting information directly from the speaker to the listener(s). It's simply a signifier for a set of social information. And in the case of 'jap' or 'paki' the social information that history has attached to the word is terrible.

[iamzack]

So what are gay people supposed to call themselves? I've never heard a word for "homosexual" that wasn't a slur, including the word homosexual itself. Are there any?

What about women? Every feminine word is used as a slur pretty frequently, so what're we supposed to call ourselves?

[General Battuta]

So what are gay people supposed to call themselves? I've never heard a word for "homosexual" that wasn't a slur, including the word homosexual itself. Are there any?

Quite so. That's why people try to reclaim terms. If a 'trusted' individual uses a slur it can be taken as a sign of affection or ironic commentary on hostility towards the ingroup. This is why it's socially acceptable for black people to say 'nigger' and gay people to refer to each other as 'fags' - if used by members of the ingroup the term can be redefined as one of affection or solidarity.

These are not easily answered questions - they're the kind of dilemmas that are still being tackled today.

[iamzack]

These are really retarded dilemmas. Do we not have better things to do than determine which abbreviations are mean and which are nice?

[General Battuta]

These are really retarded dilemmas. Do we not have better things to do than determine which abbreviations are mean and which are nice?

These meanings are not defined from the top down by any individual or group decision, they're built from the bottom up from usage. They are prototypical, not algorithmic.

The meaning contained in language is defined by the speaker, the listener, the environment, the history behind them and a great deal more. We can't change that by fiat.

[iamzack]

Let's just make every label for everything a slur, like it is for gays and women Then there will be no labels left and we'll *have* to use them all neutrally.

[StarSlayer]

You're spinning a fairly tangled web Battuta.  It's certainly acceptable that members of a society should be aware of, and if sufficiently educated in tolerance actively avoid using the racial slurs associated with their society.  For example members of the United States should be aware of the connotations and history involved in calling someone of African descent the "n" word.  Expecting people to be cognizant of other societies' slurs on the other hand is a bit ungainly.  For many in the US using "Paki" as a method of referring to Pakistanis doesn't have the context it does in Britain, to be honest if it weren't for the fact that it started a furball on HLP earlier this year I would still be ignorant of its slur component.  The world is to damn big to expect everyone to be pan societally politically correct.  Plus I tend to think forcing one society to accept another's beliefs/history/whatever is a bit of a loaded issue. 

I'm not saying people should have carte blanche to throw around slurs like party favors, just that trying to force some massive politically correct infrastructure on the world isn't really realistic not to mention boring. 

[General Battuta]

You're spinning a fairly tangled web Battuta.  It's certainly acceptable that members of a society should be aware of, and if sufficiently educated in tolerance actively avoid using the racial slurs associated with their society.  For example members of the United States should be aware of the connotations and history involved in calling someone of African descent the "n" word.  Expecting people to be cognizant of other societies' slurs on the other hand is a bit ungainly.  For many in the US using "Paki" as a method of referring to Pakistanis doesn't have the context it does in Britain, to be honest if it weren't for the fact that it started a furball on HLP earlier this year I would still be ignorant of its slur component  

Indeed, but it did start a furball on HLP earlier this year.

The world is to damn big to expect everyone to be pan societally politically correct.  Plus I tend to think forcing one society to accept another's beliefs/history/whatever is a bit of a loaded issue.  

I'm not saying people should have carte blanche to throw around slurs like party favors, just that trying to force some massive politically correct infrastructure on the world isn't really realisti

I wouldn't advocate anything like that. These issues are incredibly complicated and I don't have an easy answers. But I don't believe people lose anything by being considerate of the requests of others and mindful of different cultures and contexts.

Also I've never figured out what 'politically correct' is but I'm pretty sure it's not me.