Pied noir: an American connection? or maybe not...

[George Thompson]

>
> There are also the -ites for those who at least initially preferred
> -ists, as in "Trotskyite".

Back when I was an apprentice Trotskyist (Boston, ca. 1962), we were instructed that this form was preferred to Trotskyites, because the Stalinists were "ists", not "ites", and we weren't to be disparaged.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Monday, January 18, 2010 11:50 am
Subject: Re: Pied noir: an American connection? or maybe not...
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> At 10:30 AM -0600 1/18/10, Jim Parish wrote:
> >Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>  At 10:59 AM -0500 1/18/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>  >Is "reclamation" a very recent phenomenon? Offhand, I can't think
> of
> >>  >anything before "black" (ca1969).
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  >JL
> >>
> >>  I think in political and religious contexts it's
> >>  been around for awhile, for example for some of
> >>  those -ers we were talking about (Quaker, Shaker)
> >>  and their relatives.  And didn't "Whig" and
> >>  "Tory" start out as insults? I'm not sure this is
> >>  the same phenomenon, but it's close.
> >
> >More recent than these examples, but my understanding is that "suffragette"
> >began as an insult (they preferred to be called "suffragists").
> >
> >Jim Parish
>
> Was "suffragette" ever embraced by its adherents?  Or is it more like
> "women's libber", which was never reclaimed.
>
> There are also the -ites for those who at least initially preferred
> -ists, as in "Trotskyite".  Again, I'm not sure if these were
> reclaimed or just used so widely that the adherents had no choice.
> (I'm excluding nonce exclamations along the lines of "Yes, I'm a(n)
> ____, and proud of it!")
>
> Let's see what happens to "tea-bagger".
>
> LH
>
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