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

[George Thompson]

> 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.
>
> LH

Wasn't "Yankee Doodle" a derisive song taken over by the colonists?

GAT

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

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