Racial epithet makes news

[Jesse Sheidlower]

Erm.... As one of the folks at Random House who thought long
and hard about how to deal with these issues for HDAS, I must
respectfully disagree with this. Jon's post seems to imply
that RH pulled the "vulgar" label from HDAS, which is
distinctly not the case.

What we [i.e., I] objected to was the use of "_Vulgar._" as a
bare label on its own, with no modifying word, suggesting that
the word thus labelled was "vulgar" in all circumstances to
all audiences. So we decided that in (almost) all cases,
"vulgar" (and "offensive") were given modifiers, typically
"usu. [or "often"] considered". It wasn't about meaning;
"vulgar" and "offensive" meant different things, and these
were discussed in the frontmatter.

The "vulgar" label was never removed; is found throughout
HDAS, from the frontmatter onwards. Much more frequently than
"offensive", in fact--there are about 1450 examples of
"considered vulgar" in the published volumes of HDAS, against
fewer than 300 for "considered offensive".

I acknowledge the possibility that the "usu. considered"
language may have introduced problems of its own (at least one
prominent reviewer made of point of this); I still think it
was the right thing to do from a linguistic standpoint,
although it may indeed cause confusion for some users.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 01:39:22PM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> HDAS originally tried to get around many of these labeling problems by
> employing the warning label "vulgar" for "offensive" sexual and scatological
> terms and ethnic epithets. The implication, to me, was that such usages
> should be avoided in reasonably civil discourse because they were associated
> with the usage of lowbrows and/or bigots.
>
> The folks at Random House, however, felt that "vulgar" sounded antiquated
> and snobbish and seemed to criticize too overtly the users of such terms.
> (Like they shouldn't be criticized.)
>
> The final compromise was on the impeccably objective "usu. [or "often"]
> considered offensive," which allows you to hate the sin but love the
> sinner.
>
> "Vulgar," however, has the virtue of suggesting only that the habitual user
> belongs to an unrefined, vaguely defined lumpenproletariat.  "Offensive,"
> OTOH, encourages the idea that an educated person is expected to take
> offense and that the speaker is probably trying to offend, whatever the
> context.
>
> The relative merits of such labels are endlessly debatable. But I still
> prefer "vulgar."
> JL
> On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Racial epithet makes news
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > A problem with our discussion--and with dictionary entries--is the
> > confusion of spelling with pronunciation.  Surely the (predictable)
> > pronunciation variant [Inj at n] existed well before the spelling "Injun"
> > began appearing in printed documents.  But when did the pronunciation [Inj at n]
> > become a distinguishable lexeme--or did the lexeme "Injun" arise from
> > writers' attempt at "dialect" spelling?
> >
> > It's worth noting that Chairman Steele uttered the phrase; he didn’t write
> > it!  Does [Inj at n] possibly still occur as a pronunciation of the word
> > "Indian"?  Would "Honest Indian" be less offensive than "Honest Injun" (as
> > either spelled or pronounced)?
> >
> > As for the somewhat analogous "Nigra":  The OED labels the form "usually
> > offensive."  As I commented years and years ago in _American Speech_, the
> > label is problematical, ambiguous.  Does the "offense" inhere in the effect
> > or in the intent of what has been a standard (phonologically regular)
> > pronunciation of the word "Negro"?  One thing that is certainly offensive is
> > the intent of the SPELLING of the word to mark a speaker as racist,
> > low-class, or stupid for his employment of the (largely regional)
> > pronunciation.
> >
> > --Charlie
> >
> >
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>
>
> --
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>
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