Whore/Ho/Slut

[Herb Stahlke]

Sali's point is illustrated nicely in the film "Boys in the
'Hood".  At a home-coming party for a young man who's just been
released from prison, the boy refers to the girls at the party as
"hos".  One of the girls objects strenuously to that term being
applied to them, and the boy insists that it's not insulting.

Herb

>>> mufw at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU 10/11/00 12:18PM >>>
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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