[Ads-l] "slaves" and "enslaved [persons]" revisited

[Joel Berson]

I think I read somewhere that although "enslaved [persons]" is now prescribed (I don't remember by what authority), "slaves" may be used when it better fits the flow of the sentence.

Joel


      From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2016 3:08 PM
 Subject: [ADS-L] "slaves" and "enslaved [persons]" revisited
   
I just read this Times piece 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html

and as a thought experiment tried to see how many of the occurrences of "slaves" could easily be replaced by "enslaved persons". (Note that there are references at some points to "enslaved African-Americans" or "the enslaved", along with the references to "slaves".)  It seemed to me that in some places the substitution would work fairly naturally, in others not so much. 

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