(no subject)

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Friday, February 9, 2001 9:43 am -0600 Natalie Maynor
<maynor at CS.MSSTATE.EDU> wrote:

> And places like The Oriental Bazaar, a popular store in Tokyo.  Fwiw,
> I've yet to find an Oriental who finds anything wrong with the term,
> though I've heard that Asian-Americans on the West Coast do.  The
> Japanese friends I've discussed this subject with find it very strange
> to think that they should be offended by being called Oriental.
>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)

Similarly, I've had students who self-refer as 'oriental' (in Texas) and
even one who self-referred as 'mongoloid'.  (The last was probably the
weirdest person I've ever had as a student--not because he called himself
'mongoloid', but I expect that his failure to realize that the word might
be troublesome was a symptom of his very weird world-view.)

Lynne

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320