Whore/Ho/Slut

[Salikoko Mufwene]

At 10:48 AM 10/11/2000 -0400, Doug Wilson wrote:
>
>I'm not sure that the equivalence of 'ho' with 'whore' is legitimate. I
>agree that 'ho' formally or etymologically = 'whore' ... but in the
>dialect(s) from which the transcription 'ho' is generally used the word has
>been generalized to mean essentially 'woman', I think.
>
     The generalization is not universal among speakers of African American
English. It depends on who is referring to who, in what context, and what kind
of relationship the speaker has to the referent. I think the last condition is
very important. For general discussions of such terms, interested readers may
want to check Geneva Smiherman's and Arthur Spears's contributions to
AFRICAN-AMERICAN ENGLISH (1998) edited by Mufwene, Rickford, Bailey, & Baugh.

Sali.



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Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
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