"Nigga" untrademarkable?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Seriously though. Aside from being interpretable as a verb (for a little helpful pun action), _Bitch_ is "sexier" than _Hag_ or _Crone_ because, in theory, a "hag" or a "crone" may be hip, but of the three only a "bitch" can be *young.*

  Or "fine."

  JL


Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: "Nigga" untrademarkable?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 3:30 PM -0800 3/17/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Someone long, long ago--possibly Gordon Allport--observed that
>nominal ethnic designators are blunter, and therefore likely to be
>more disagreeable, than adj. + n. combinations.

Maybe Allport did too--I known it's discussed in some detail in
Dwight Bolinger's _Language: The Loaded Weapon_ (1980) and Anna
Wierzbicka's "What's in a Name?" (1986).

> There is (or was recently) a Jewish-interest magazine daringly
>called _Hebe_. The title aroused plenty of controversy (as it was no
>doubt intended to), but the publishers insisted that the name was
>chosen to show how "edgy" and "hip" the magazine was. They also
>hoped that their efforts would help remove some of the epithet's
>negative force. Cf. the mostly academic use of "queer," for simlar
>reasons.
>

and various words reclaimed by feminists--"crone", "hag", "bitch"(n.), etc.

Reminds me--I heard "reclamate" back-formed verb from "reclamation"
by someone on the radio discussing this process (probably with
reference to "nigga").

Larry

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Brings words and photos together (easily) with
 PhotoMail  - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org