Racial epithet makes news

Wed Jul 7 16:08:13 UTC 2010

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> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Racial epithet makes news
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The inevitable subjectivity of discourse raises the question, "ameliorated
> for whom"?

And, of course also, "When?"

I first encountered the work by Agatha Christie when I saw it dramatised and
acted by the Citizens' Theatre Company in Glasgow in the early sixties.  At
that point, the title had been changed from _Ten Little Niggers_ to _Ten
Little Indians_, so I suppose it would be fair to say that then, in the
sixties in the UK, 10 Niggers was deemed offensive but 10 Indians wasn't
(yet).  Later, the further change was made to _And Then There Were None_.

(The ending of the play was also ameliorated for the boards -- in the novel,
all ten protagonists are Bad People and all die; in the play, the Male Lead
and the Female Lead turn out to be Innocent, and so survive.  Go figure.)

> Undoubtedly {Honest Indian!} would ameliorate the phrase for some people,
> but I suspect they would be in the minority of those initially offended.

Things do bother me about the phrase, "Honest Injun" (and I'd agree with
Charles Doyle that the particular spelling makes the phrase a distinct
separate lexical item), mostly because it seems to reek of stereotyping.
Actually, as a Brit, I'd (a) probably never use it -- my phrase-of-choice in
context would probably be, "Honest, guv" -- and (b) read it as implying
[all] Indians are honest [but dumb].

Also, both "Honest Injun" and "honest, guv" seem to my ear to imply a
somewhat disingenuous assertion of truthfulness.  Frankly, I wouldn't buy a
used car from someone who said that, so I'm not surprised that it's found
employed, apparently unironically, by a politician.

Robin

> OTOH, Norman Mailer got by with "fuggin',"

Father Jack, in the TV series "Father Ted", characteristically used the
(deliberately) transparent locution, "Feck off!"

RH

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

> 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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>> > 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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>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>
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