Racial epithet makes news

[Jonathan Lighter]

The inevitable subjectivity of discourse raises the question, "ameliorated
for whom"?

Undoubtedly {Honest Indian!} would ameliorate the phrase for some people,
but I suspect they would be in the minority of those initially offended.
OTOH, Norman Mailer got by with "fuggin'," though considering the context (a
minority practice, I'm sure) I find the manufactured euphemism distracting
and irritating (thus "offensive"?).  Presumably most readers of _The Naked
and the Dead_ in 1948 were expected to have found the real form "fuckin'" to
be "distracting and irritating," or even worse.
The transparency of the euphemism is classic example of how thin and
subjective is the boundary between "offensive" and "inoffensive."

And what precisely is meant by linguistic "offensiveness" anyway? I'm
constantly "offended" by various cultural irritants (can you imagine?), but
the vast majority do not rise to the figurative level of a mosquito bite.  I
guess if you're a pundit, spokesperson, spinmesiter or activist, you've
learned not to ignore but to publicize and decry minor "offenses" as being
logically identical to or insidiously complicitous with major,
even egregious, ones.

"Offensiveness" is a slippery concept rather like "sexism" and "racism,"
which run the gamut from  "A blonde walks into a department store....,"
"Nothing on BET interests me,"  and "Yarmulkes look funny," all the way to
"Stone the adulteress!" and "Exterminate the brutes!"    Which is not to say
that offensive attitudes, including sexism and racism, don't exist: they're
just not all comprably wicked or deserving of attention.

Bonus bitch [sic, it alliterates]: CNN reports on a guy who's made a
bundle from a downloadable game in which players battle the oil disaster in
cartoon form. It's almost impossible to win, and when you lose a screen says
"Now all the animals are dead. BECAUSE OF YOU!!"

Predictably, some on-the-street interviewees thought the game was "funny,"
and some thought it was "sick."  But nobody at Steele-bashing CNN thought
to be officially offended by the inventor's statement, which, unlike his
game, offends the hell out of me: "I think it's very important to laugh at
tragedy, because what else can we do?"

Once upon a time, people could think of LOTS else to do.

JL

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Robin Hamilton <
robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Racial epithet makes news
>
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> > ---------------------- Information from the mail
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Baker, John M." <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Racial epithet makes news
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...
> >        I think there is an interesting question, though, as to what
> > extent an otherwise offensive term is ameliorated by its use in a set
> > phrase.  Certainly some speakers and writers think that it is:  For
> > example, Agatha Christie on several occasions used the phrase "nigger in
> > the woodpile."  I don't know of any other occasions when she used
> > "nigger"; she probably would have thought it inconsistent, when used on
> > a stand-alone basis, with the tone she sought.  Contemporary editions of
> > her work seem to have the phrase edited out, which would seem to imply
> > that the word retains some measure of its offensive character, even when
> > used in a set phrase.
> >
> >
> > John Baker
>
> Well, there's her novel which started life with the title (in 1939) as _Ten
> Little Niggers_ before being ameliorated to _Ten Little Indians_ (sic!) and
> ending as, _And Then There Were None_.
>
> Again, the context isn't entirely straightforward -- the original title
> draws on a counting rhyme (UK only?), and while offensive in the UK,
> "nigger" has (or had) a different semantic spread to that in US English,
> referring to *any non-white figure, rather than specifically African
> American or West Indian.
>
> Possibly marginally related, the English children's author Enid Blyton
> toned
> down the language of Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus tales about Brer
> Rabbit and Brer Fox for an English audience.
>
> Robin
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> > Of Jonathan Lighter
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 8:57 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: Racial epithet makes news
> >
> > If I may play the devil's advocate, "Injun" may be rightly offensive in
> > ordinary discourse for obvious reasons. That does not entail that the
> > phrase
> > "Honest Injun" is meant to be or should reasonably be understood as
> > offensive.  For critics to jump on Steele with both feet for saying
> > "Honest
> > Injun" and for CNN implicitly to endorse that reaction (when it could
> > have
> > reported it without comment) strikes me as disproportionate to the
> > offense.
> > (Like that matters.)
>
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