Political correctness and linguistic improbability

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:49:18 +0000

I can’t wrap my tongue around ‘African-American’. I usually end up with ‘Afro-American’, which is apparently somehow more remarked upon as a mistake than ‘black’. So I think I’ll stick with ‘black’. If you insist on my saying ‘African-American’, I will make you call me ‘Eastern-European Caucasian’. Because if I suffer, so should you – it’s more politically correct that way.

I’m generally against removing random terms from a language just because somebody might find them bad. Sure, some terms are meant to be slurs and those should be avoided in polite conversation – but if a term is used both politely and impolitely the problem is obviously not the word’s.

But this isn’t about that. It’s about linguistics. PC terms can be quite the annoying little buggers because they’re long and unnatural and they’re fighting a losing battle against a basic principle of any language: common words tend to be shortened (where possible). Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s economy, maybe it’s practicality, but whatever the reason may be, common words are usually short.

Now, I live in Romania where there are very, very few black people. It doesn’t really matter what we call them because we won’t be using the term too often. I can say, „Oh, yeah! The last supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-African-Romanian I saw was in a pharmacy in Cluj a few months ago.” Do you know why? Because I’m likely to mention a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-African-Romanian only once or twice per year. I can dedicate him/her 21 syllables when I do. It’s like honorificabilitudinitatibus – how often am I going to mention the state of being able to receive honors? I don’t know. (and I’d call it ’the state of being able to receive honors’ then, but that’s another story)********

Americans, though?… They actually have a black population in which people don’t know each other by name and occupation. They might actually need to refer to black people every once in awhile. Trying to take away a short word and replace it with a long one isn’t really that great of an idea. Actually, it might be begging people to have two ways of speaking about blacks: one in public, where they pompously call them ‘African-Americans’ and that can be a way for them to feel like proper citizens or whatnot… and one in private, where they’ll use something more comfortable. It doesn’t dissolve tension, it creates it. It’s unequal treatment – yet again! Whites gets to be called ‘white’, which is comfy and straight and never really questioned, while with blacks you have to watch your tongue and learn how to avoid both being a stuck-up idiot and somehow impolite (although you never meant to be).

The term also has another issue: it mostly refers to black people who’ve been there awhile. It’s charged with the need to describe citizenship and race at the same time – but since Africa is a location as well, it implies that black people in the US are necessarily connected just to Africa and America and that’s all there is to it. But what if a French black couple emigrates to the US? Presuming that they are African and American alone might offend their French roots.

It’s a term that just makes things more complicated than they really need to be.

P.S. If you somehow managed to ban the word ‘black’ from use, you’d probably have people start using ‘Afs’ or some other such word to save time and effort. Just saying.

I love swear words

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 11:05:04 +0000

Swear words do this amazing thing in language, that no other category of words does quite as well, or with as much versatility. I’m not referring to insults here (although that’s supposedly their main function), but to the fact that they intensify the meaning.

If something is awesome, then it’s awesome. If something blew your mind and made you feel very enthusiastic about it, it’s fucking awesome. If you’re awed and a bit shocked, then it’s bloody awesome. If you’ve been raised in a very clean (and probably British) environment, it’s ruddy awesome. Or, if you feel like it (and probably American), it’s freaking awesome.

They give you hints about the mood of the speaker as well: „I feel awful” is one thing – it tells you that the speaker is feeling, well, awful. It can be a whine, or a snappish retort – you won’t know. But that’s about it. „I feel bloody awful” suggests the anger/strength of the speaker.

And you can throw some of them just about any-fucking-where. Like in the middle of the word. Abso-bloody-lutely. Can you picture that done with any other word? „She was abso-cool-lutely beautiful” – …not really.

The more common of swear words have a way of migrating from nouns to verbs to adverbs – they can be turned into nearly anything you want them to be. All other words are tidy little things waiting to be used in the right way, but swear words? They’re your bitch. You can do whatever you want with them. They slip below the radar because no proper, snobbish teacher will ever explain that you can’t say ‘Fuck the fucking fuckers’ because it’s stylistically repetitive, or because ‘fuck’ can only be used as a verb. That teacher will be so busy trying to remove the devil from your vocabulary that you can go on abusing the damned word.

Linguistically speaking, these words are one of the most interesting things going on. Versatile, with their original meaning long ignored (is ‘fuck’ even sexual most of the time? Is ‘bloody’ blood-related when used in casual conversation? Has ‘damned’ got anything to do with hell or Christianity?), and with their current meaning shifting around as needed, they’re the wild cards of language, the things you can best use to show (intense) emotion or feeling.

It’s kind of fucking awesome of them and I love the bloody bastards. They get a lot of bad publicity, but they’re fulfilling their part in getting meaning across like no other words do. You’ve gotta give them some credit.

Linguistics on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Political correctness and linguistic improbability

I love swear words