Actually, what I’m picturing is a remake of “Deliverance”, with Trump in the Ned Beatty role and Putin in the Bill McKinney role.
I didn’t even make an attempt to watch.
Evidently, Trump got a Standing Bloviation.
is that what the kids call it, these days? We used to call it “cutting the cheese”.
So did I miss the part where it was supposedly written or cowritten by a white nationalist…?
Steve Bannon, late of Blightbart. Issues of “some of the speech”, “most” and “all” remain unresolved.
So anyone who is even slightly literate now has to be held at ransom by the ignorant? All my life “the jig is up” had no racist connotation and I don’t “deliberately” choose to use that phrase. Instead, according to your rules, I have to “deliberately” choose not to use that phrase. I’ve also experienced the same thing with “rule of thumb” as a phrase. So, according to you, I’m now supposed to kowtow to the misinformed, uneducated and illiterate.
:dubious: Folks, I don’t make language change, I’m just describing some of the changes that happen over time.
Nor am I claiming that false cognates or folk etymologies are a good thing. I know that “niggardly” is not etymologically linked to the n-word, nor “the jig is up” to any other racist slur. Racial sensitivity doesn’t require us to deny substantiated facts about word origins.
But it does require people not to expect other people to be mind-readers. The fact is that a lot of people like using words like “niggardly” precisely because they hope that people they think of as “stupid” and “ignorant” will be offended by the sound of them, and will then look foolish when they smugly explain the term’s real meaning.
And since nobody can read your mind when you use such a word to tell whether or not you’re being that kind of asshole, you should expect that some people will assume that you are being that kind of asshole. If you don’t want that to happen, then consider using a different word. Such smart, literate, educated, well-informed people should have no trouble coming up with synonyms as necessary.
Interesting, though, that you regard such minor examples of linguistic flexibility as tantamount to “pandering” or “being held to ransom” or “kowtowing”. Gee, if it’s really that important to you, go ahead and use the word “niggardly” and let some people assume you’re an asshole. What do I care?
What I suspect you’re really after is some kind of reassurance that because such words aren’t intrinsically racist slurs, and you don’t mean to be an asshole by using them, therefore you won’t ever look like an asshole for using them. Sorry, but in the real world of sociolinguistic evolution, there are no such guarantees, and it’s no use blaming me for it.
In any case, why are you directing all your resentment at the so-called “stupid” or “ignorant” or “misinformed” or “uneducated” or “illiterate” people for often reacting negatively to words that sound like racial slurs, instead of directing some of it at the assholes and racists who are constantly inventing and employing actual racial slurs, and deliberately using words that sound like them for the sake of deniability while still conveying the idea of a racial slur? Those are the folks who created this linguistic minefield in the first place.
I have to say, your idea that we avoid words that aren’t racial slurs because they sound like racial slurs to some people in some contexts sounds pretty much exactly like you are creating a linguistic minefield. Changing the language in order to isolate those people who use such words to offend the wrong way to approach the problem, if there actually is a problem to approach, and I’m not sure there is. Applying racial connotations to language which was hitherto free of it (as in “The jig is up”) plays exactly into the hands of those who claim that there is a politically-correct linguistic fascism sweeping the land. It’s stupid, in every conceivable way.
Speaking of linguistic minefields… lightly edited to add some semblance of sense to this babble.
Sorry, but I’m not. The minefield is there as soon as a significant number of people perceive offensiveness or ambiguity in the use of a term which was not originally regarded as offensive. By the time a typical language user like me gets around to even noticing any such ambiguity, the minefield already exists.
You seem to be regarding such a “linguistic minefield” as something that comes into being only when it potentially inconveniences you in your language use.
[QUOTE=The Mighty Boosh]
Applying racial connotations to language which was hitherto free of it (as in “The jig is up”) […] It’s stupid, in every conceivable way.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, I don’t disagree that it’s intrinsically stupid in the sense of etymologically wrong to interpret words as racial slurs because they sound like racial slurs. If it were up to me, I would choose that no such incorrect interpretations should exist.
My whole point here, though, is that it’s not up to me, or to any other individual language user.
Well, thanks for giving us President Trump.
Nm
Ehh, he’ll have his own problems if the white supremacists amongst Trump’s supporters/staff get their way.
Sure, I see that language evolves, meanings are fluid and at some level we need to change accordingly. However, there is only confusion (and offence, and conflict) ahead when people try to police others on the basis of things that may or may not be offensive. Better, in my opinion, to maintain that non-racist terms are, in actual fact, non-racist. Correct the people who think they are, not the people who know they aren’t. And the assholes who delight in clouding the difference and causing offence whilst maintaining deniability? Their ultimate aim is to get liberals to police language and scold those who ‘misuse’ it even when the language itself is innocuous, because that makes them look stupid at best and authoritarian at worst. Changing language goalposts, making up new definitions, insisting that what is false is true, seeing racism where none exists - this is the liberal version of ‘alternative facts.’
It doesn’t affect me, by the way - I don’t live in America and generally, outside the odd Uni department, issues like this are simply an irrelevance where I live. It might be worth pointing out, though, that liberalism of this sort is regarded with the same head-shaking incomprehension as the right’s strange commitment to guns in schools and suchlike. It’s insane.
That seems rather hyperbolic. Actually asserting that a false racially-based etymology is historically valid—e.g., that an idiom like “the jig is up” actually is historically derived from a context involving lynching of blacks—would be a liberal version of “alternative facts”. Because it isn’t true.
But simply pointing out that many people find certain terms offensive because of such false racially-based etymologies is not untrue in any way. Any more than it’s untrue to point out that many people use the objective-case pronoun “whom” in subjective-case contexts where “who” would be grammatically correct, because they think it sounds more refined and hence more correct to use “whom”.
Are seriously drawing similarities between Trump’s clear and obvious lying at every opportunity to what you claim as lies on Obama’s part? Or are you really that blinded by political orientation?
In other words be afraid of the ignorant.
We don’t call it “ignorance” anymore. It’s now “alternative knowledge”.
Bullshit. This imaginary world were he could have gathered together the Democratic Party and run roughshod over Trump and/or the Republican Party never could have happened. Do you really think they didn’t think about how to handle Bernie, that they didn’t have a big “He’s A Socialist” campaign ready to go?