Pedants' Paradise

[LMcD]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning. I was told some time ago that one mustn't say 'water melon' as that has become an offensive term. What these two terms are now taken to mean is a mystery to me. Words and phrases that were acceptable last year are suddenly politically-incorrect. Its a minefield (oops, for all I now 'minefield' might now be banned for some reason).

This isn't mean to be satirical . I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

I can't remember when I first encountered the phrase 'slope off', but it must have been several decades ago.

[french frank]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning.

Well, in most contexts, smittims, it would be perflectly clear that you meant an incline of some sort. And it would be improbable, I think, for you to find a context where someone might reasonably expect that you'd used it of an Asian person. I didn't know the term either until I read the news story about Clarkson who, in Clarkson fashion, was using it in an ambiguous way and certainly did know what the term implied. That was the 'lighthearted joke', ho ho. I'm sure he was relying on the fact that few people would appreciate the allusion.

Certainly, if one takes little notice of current news stories you might not stay up-to-date. I can assure you, it would be perfectly acceptable linguistically to ask your greengrocer, if they didn't mind, to please cut you a slice of water melon. As long as he wasn't black and you stressed water melon in a knowing way and laughed, winking and nudge-nudging your loutish looking friend. Not that I'm suggesting you fraternise with loutish looking people.. (And M vinteuil is a few years my junior - if he doesn't mind my mentioning it.)

[vinteuil]

how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness / ... / I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

I am 72. Are you that much older than me?

.

[smittims]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning. I was told some time ago that one mustn't say 'water melon' as that has become an offensive term. What these two terms are now taken to mean is a mystery to me. Words and phrases that were acceptable last year are suddenly politically-incorrect. Its a minefield (oops, for all I now 'minefield' might now be banned for some reason).

This isn't mean to be satirical . I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

[vinteuil]

Adopting the insult as a 'badge of honour', on the other hand, is thumbing one's nose at the perpetrators - and well done too. With time the insulting sting will have been removed.

Yes : it is a question of taking control of the language - and goes back a long way : Methodists, Quakers; more recently the black community taking on the N word -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.W.A

and similarly queer &c. One of the more recent is the disabled community adopting the term crip (cripple) as a term of celebration -

https://cripticarts.org/the-crip-monologues-2/

The important thing is that it is those communities reclaiming a word rather than having it thrown at them

[french frank]

When my daughter was an au pair in America 20 plus years ago she was appalled by the casual use of the term "retard" to describe the autistic toddler she was looking after, the more so as it was 'professionals' (speech therapists and the like) using it. They couldn't see why she was bothered. I imagine that has changed now.

Yes, and changed for the better. It's hard to see why 'retard', 'cretin', or 'educationally subnormal' - all implicitly, if unintentionally, demeaning - would ever be reclaimed as badges of pride. That's quite different from the 'N' word or the similarly racial 'P' word; or any slang term used in a derogatory or mocking way like Clarkson's 'innocent' use of the word 'slope'. It's not the word that's insulting: it's the use of the word; and once it's become generally accepted as a term of abuse, even if its use is not intended to offend, it's liable to offend and is therefore better avoided. Adopting the insult as a 'badge of honour', on the other hand, is thumbing one's nose at the perpetrators - and well done too. With time the insulting sting will have been removed.

[oddoneout]

Quite so. But I doubt if 'cretin' and 'incurable' will ever be reclaimed - both once accepted medical terms. As a 1950s Headmaster my father was used to terms such as 'educationally sub-normal' , which after all simply meant below normal on a scale . But by the 1980s it was seen as abusive.

When my daughter was an au pair in America 20 plus years ago she was appalled by the casual use of the term "retard" to describe the autistic toddler she was looking after, the more so as it was 'professionals' (speech therapists and the like) using it. They couldn't see why she was bothered. I imagine that has changed now.

[LMcD]

York Press:

• Heavy snow has fallen after an amber weather alert from the Met Office

i suppose we have to be grateful that it didn't fall before the alert.

It wouldn't be the first time the Met Office was caught out. Quite recently a council leader in Wales claimed that flood warnings were an hour late.

[Pulcinella]

York Press:

• Heavy snow has fallen after an amber weather alert from the Met Office

I suppose we have to be grateful that it didn't fall before the alert.

[smittims]

Quite so. But I doubt if 'cretin' and 'incurable' will ever be reclaimed - both once accepted medical terms. As a 1950s Headmaster my father was used to terms such as 'educationally sub-normal' , which after all simply meant below normal on a scale . But by the 1980s it was seen as abusive.

[french frank]

PAnd in my experience the 'N' word wasn't always used by caucasians as a term of abuse , merely as a term of reference. In the same way 'discrimination' has come to be seen as a bad thing, where formerly It was a useful skill ('the ability to discriminate between the genuine and fake')

That is the interesting linguistc point: it's once words are plainly used as terms of abuse (e.g also the schoolkids' use of 'spastic') that they become unacceptable. It's the abusive intent which offends and hurts. By reclaiming them, the victims hope to render them harmless and discourage their use.

[smittims]

Point taken; maybe I was casting my net a little wide and the latter half of my commonwealth forgot its beginning. But it is part of a process of reassessing or redefining the use of a word or a connotation.

And in my experience the 'N' word wasn't always used by caucasians as a term of abuse , merely as a term of reference. In the same way 'discrimination' has come to be seen as a bad thing, where formerly It was a useful skill ('the ability to discriminate between the genuine and fake')

[french frank]

Wearing the 'N' word as a badge of pride is a gesture of defiance, in the same way that the 'Impressionists' owned the word which was intended as patronising disparagement. In the same way, pop groups called 'Simple Minds' and 'The Animals' were throwing back in their faces the criticisms of the older generation. There's a clothes shop in Manchester called 'Damaged Society', and one in Shrewsbury called 'Wierd Fish'.

. Along with ripped and apparently paint-stained jeans (for which, I gather one pays more than for plain ones) and deliberate mistakes in adverts it's all part of a long-running trend where the faulty and sub-standard is embraced as new and praiseworthy.

To be pedantic (again), I'm not sure that groups who are in some way discriminated against, marginalised or insulted for what they are adopting (or 'owning') the terms of abuse as 'badges of pride' is in any way to be compared with a 'long-running trend where the faulty and sub-standard is embraced as new and praiseworthy'. It's ill-advised to generalise on such things as motives and behaviour arise from a variety of causes. This includes why people criticise others about what is none of their business. But I would stress that that's just my own opinion based on what I see, hear and experience.

[smittims]

Wearing the 'N' word as a badge of pride is a gesture of defiance, in the same way that the 'Impressionists' owned the word which was intended as patronising disparagement. In the same way, pop groups called 'Simple Minds' and 'The Animals' were throwing back in their faces the criticisms of the older generation. There's a clothes shop in Manchester called 'Damaged Society', and one in Shrewsbury called 'Wierd Fish'.

. Along with ripped and apparently paint-stained jeans (for which, I gather one pays more than for plain ones) and deliberate mistakes in adverts it's all part of a long-running trend where the faulty and sub-standard is embraced as new and praiseworthy.

[Serial_Apologist]

Language usage moves at an ever-increasing pace! No sooner have you settled in your own mind what a word or phrase means than the meaning is out of date. But tomorrow it may be current again

One that really threw me to be honest was when the word "queer" was deemed OK by self-describing homosexuals after having long been condemned as demeaning. And while on the subject, the "N" word. Frankly I've never understood the reasoning (reclaiming the term) behind either of these cases.