why Oriental is offensive

[Lynne Murphy]

Another serendipitous finding.  Being a week late in reading the newspaper
these days, I've just discovered that the Readers' Editor's column in the
Guardian last week discussed the flak the Guardian took about an article on
_Crouching Tiger..._, which uses the words 'oriental' and 'inscrutable'.
It's unclear whether 'oriental' itself would have caused the uproar (it's
also possible that if the writer had liked the movie, no one would have
commented on the 'oriental').

The reader's editor's discussion of this is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4129527,00.html

When searching the on-line version for the article, I discovered that there
are 3-6 articles a day in the Guardian that use the word 'oriental'.  I
didn't check these for the context, but I do wonder if the term is less
offensive here than it is in California.  Perhaps west-coasters are
particularly sensitive to 'oriental' because Asia is not to the east of
them?

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