Subject:
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Re: PCisms (was :Re: Yet Another Episode 1 Question)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 16 Apr 2000 14:17:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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502 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Tom Stangl writes:
> It may be small beer, but after more than a decade of PC crap,
> you can still drown in it. I thought we had mostly gotten past
> the PC Cop stage in the world in general. One place I did not
> expect to see it, nor WANT to see it, was on Lugnet.
Hmm.. you raise an interesting dilemma. I've never considered myself PC. Far
from it, in fact. Yet I dislike use of certain words. How to reconcile it?
The PC crowd wants to prevent use of them dejure, or so it seems to me. I
merely ask that people consider sensibilities. As I've said before, no one has
a right not to be offended, and within the limits of the T&C you can say what
you wish. I shan't lobby for restricting the word Gyp via T&C, nor should
anyone else. But I try not to use it myself, and (very mildly) prefer that
others not. If they do, that's my problem.
> And to ME, the word/verb GYP and WELSH are NOT racist.
> Using the word Jew as a verb, however, is.
Today it is and they are not. But how did Welsh get the meaning it has? At some
point it must have been a much more obvious slur.
This raises another, slightly larger question. If a word is derived from a
slur, is it OK to use if the slur usage is buried in the distant past? How
distant? After all, Guild has as one derivation that it traces from Danegeld,
the bribes paid to vikings... there are no doubt thousands of other words like
that, with weak or strong connotations to historical events or pejorative
opinions.
And does using a word that now no longer is (much of) a slur signify acceptance
of the past, or merely acknowledgement of it? How far out of one's way should
one go?
Also, is it "fair" that certain groups can use a word and others cannot? For
example I know Poles that call each other Pollack all the time but take great
umbrage when someone else calls them that. Isn't that hypocritical? You can
make the obvious parallel to the N word where the phenomena is much more
pronounced.
I ask these because they are interesting questions (and because I'm blowing off
doing stuff I really ought to be doing) not specifically to stir things up.
++Lar
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