Nigger vs. Colored, et al.

[Michael Newman]

It's over 3 yrs. I just scanned the refresher, and I'll pass it on to you as soon as it comes to me



Michael Newman
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Queens College/CUNY
michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu



On Mar 2, 2011, at 2:18 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Nigger vs. Colored, et al.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3/2/2011 11:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> I thought all disciplines were like that.
>>
>> But back to the point.  What I can tell you from personal investigation is
>> that the large number of eighteenth-century escaped-slave notices reprinted
>> in the 4 vols. of Lathan A. Windley's _Runaway Slave Advertisements_ _all_
>> use the word "negro" and eschew "nigger."
>>
>> Slave-trade advertisements similarly use "negro" - I'm tempted to say
>> exclusively.
>
> Jon, in the vast majority of, not exclusively in, 18th century
> newspaper advertisements and articles, whether for runaways, sales,
> give-aways (of children or infants), crimes, or escapes from jail,
> "Negro" was capitalized.  Whether this was because all nouns were
> capitalized (generally, if not always) or because "Negro" was thought
> of as a proper noun I'm not sure we can tell -- although one hint may
> be that it was not often italicized, as names of persons and places
> generally were.
>
> I do agree that "Negro" was used exclusively. Just a couple of days
> ago I did some searching in Early American Newspapers and Google
> Books.  Certainly there are false positives, false negatives,
> duplicates, etc., and I did not attempt to separate adjectival
> uses.  Nor did my searches distinguish capitalization.  But the
> numbers are suggestive.  I searched both all dates and before Jan. 1,
> 1800.  (Probably a little hard to comprehend in the form below, but I
> don't know how well plain text will preserve a tabular format.)
>
> Negro  --   EAN all dates: 219,000; <1800: 93,500.  GB all dates: 6 x
> 10**6;  <1800:  76,000.
>
> nigger -- EAN all dates: 674; <1800: 20 -- of which *zero* are
> genuine (not false positives).  GB -- I didn't count.
>      Probably a number of false positives.  I looked at the earliest
> instances quickly, and the first genuine hit I noticed  was 1810, in
> an a piece the reader will presume is a letter written by a Negro,
> and in dialect.  (I didn't look for anything later.)
>
> niger -- EAN all dates:  4400;  <1800:  970.  GB -- I didn't count.
>      Probably a number of false positives.  I looked at the earliest
> instances quickly, and the first genuine hit I noticed, curiously,
> was in the 1760s, the "HMS Niger" (in battle).  "Niger" occurs
> earlier (OED s.v. "nigger" says 1574, but also says "nigger" does not
> occur with hostile intent until 1775), but perhaps not in (American)
> newspapers.
>
> African American --  EAN all dates:  36; <1800:  5 -- of which *zero*
> are genuine.  GB all dates: 2.3 x 10**6;  <1800: 42.
>      Probably many false positives.  One genuine instance (perhaps
> the earliest) is 1822 Sep 6, Enquirer.
>
> African [NOT eliminating "African American"] -- EAN all dates:
> 32,000;  <1800:  6800.  GB all dates:  1.0 x 10**7;  <1800:  36,400.
>
> Joel
>
>> In fact, well into the 19th C., the "n-word" appears almost exclusively in
>> colloquial contexts. My feeling is that the Abolition debate tended to bring
>> out more heated language in the South.
>>
>> So whatever even slave-holding whites may have been *saying* in the 18th and
>> early 19th C., they seem to have regarded as the n-word as too crude or
>> low-class for formal use.
>>
>> This may have contributed to the misapprehension that "nigger" is simply
>> a contemptuous "mispronunciation" of "Negro."  See HDAS.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC,
>> 71700 <lynne.hunter at navy.mil> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700"
>>>             <lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL>
>>> Subject:      Nigger vs. Colored, et al.
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> `A propos of "Negro/Negro, black/Black," can anybody tell me when
>>> "nigger" began to be avoided in polite company in various parts of the
>>> US (or the British Isles)? Any info about the circumstances under which
>>> that term came to be replaced by "colored" or "negro"?
>>>
>>> Droll (I thought) observation from a student's paper: "...linguistics:
>>> the discipline that never apologizes for itself."
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Lynne Hunter
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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