Name Magic
Words have meanings, but some words have intent. The intent is the key to deciding whether a word is derogatory. While some will attempt to hide their intent by claiming, “It was a joke”, the fact that the individual thought that there might be humor in the use of the word is adequate to assume a bad intent.
Jesse Wendel deals with Obama’s remark, “Hold On One Second, Sweetie”. While he deals with the choice of a word and the non-apology, people in comments attempt to paper over the entire thing.
The question should be: what was the intent?
The intent was derogatory based on Obama’s actions, not simply the wording. He wasn’t simply speaking to a female reporter as a child; he was dismissive. He didn’t simply call her “Sweetie”; he ignored her question.
If he had returned to her and answered her question, then no harm, no foul. The fact that his actions were just as dismissive as his words, amply display his intent: children should be seen and not heard.
Greenboy makes his intent crystal clear in Tortured Prose: he wants the working class voters in rural America to become Republicans. He must, because calling people “trailer trash” is so loaded with hate and scorn, that he obviously never wants any of these people to vote for a Democrat at any level of government.
Everyone is prejudiced about something, just like Greenboy.
13 comments
About time someone asked that question and framed the proper context! Thank you Bryan. 🙂
Context is everything in language, particularly English which is almost unique in that a word or phrase can have so many meanings, particularly emotional, without any easy way of distinguishing intent in print. Most languages have some means of inferring the inflection by using various symbols (diacritical marks, umlauts, or even the position of a word in a sentence. English has none of these. Though it does make some use of diacritics, most people seem to be unaware of their proper usage). So, we rely on context and body language to infer intent.
Good post. Thanks. 🙂
English is neither “fish nor fowl”. There are only two types of languages in the world: those that depend on position for context, and those that depend on word endings. English is an amalgam of both. It started as an “ending” language and has been dropping the endings in favor of position over the centuries.
The Oxford English Dictionary is an invaluable tool because it documents the changes in meaning and use over time. When you are dealing with something written 200 years ago, like the US Constitution, you need to find out what the words meant at the time they were written, not what those words mean today.
During one of the periodical battles between the religious and irreligious on a list I belonged to I remember an exchange over the inerrancy of the Bible in which it was said that “if G-d was the author of the Bible He should have hired a proofreader and an editor”. It then dissolved into exchanges in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin to prove the unprovable.
English is plastic. That is its greatest strength and greatest weakness. It lacks the true precision available in a more standardized tongue. You have to look for intent before you claim anything.
It’s a lot easier in Russian. Name usage tells you everyone’s status immediately. The intent is obvious.
LOL @ Russian! Only because it’s true! 😀
I remember my very first lesson on Russia, names. The first lesson was that Ivan Pyotrevich in Russian means ‘John the son of Peter’ and was always used in most Russian documentation. It is not the actual name of the person (the Pyotrovich is not a surname but a patronymic for a male, the female equivalent being evna rather than evich, or ovich (ovna) in certain circumstances. I think there was a yvich form also). There are rules, most of which I no longer remember… LOL I think the *vich form was used for the Aristocracy, and the commoners had a shorter form. And people think English names are complicated! LOL
Many of the rightwinnut uneducated masses would be horrified to discover how many *English* words were ‘borrowed’ (some might say, stolen) from other languages, including Russian. 🙂 One of your favorite words “Agitprop” was originally a Russian concatenation of the Russian ‘Department for Agitation and Propaganda’. The Russians love playing word games as much as America and later renamed the department ‘Ideological Department’. LOL
The major difference (we were told) was that in the (former) USSR, proper usage of words and meaning was critical if you didn’t want be seen quickly as an outsider. However, I was never able to put it into practice as I was never sent to the USSR (probably a good thing!) Though, I did end up attending a few Embassy functions here (Russians have a great sense of humor usually, and usually at your expense!) LOL I was PMSL whenever I saw Bushmoron with Russians, especially Putin! They were having great fun at his expense, which really is so easy to do. LOL
Language is such fun really! 😀
obama says he calls all kinds of people sweetie but i liked the comment i saw elsewhere: i bet he wouldn’t call mike tyson sweetie.
a generalization i’ve noticed: women really do call all kinds of people sweetie — men, women, children, pets — but men only call women, children, and female pets sweetie.
Hipparchia, having been raised down here, I call people I don’t know sir and ma’am if they are out of high school. Younger than that depends on the circumstances, but I’m polite unless it involves criminal activity. I still follow the pattern of adding Miss and Mister to the first name of older people that I have known for a while. I personally equate calling a young woman “Sweetie” with the world’s worst pick-up lines.
Kryten, Russians have a three part name, imya, otchestvo, familiya or given name, patronymic, surname. The surname, as indicated by the fact that the word is not Russian, but an Italian cognate, was mandated by Tsar Peter the Great as part of his “westernizing” of Russia.
The polite form of address is the surname and patronymic, even for the Tsar. Addressing someone by their title, or even by their title and surname is demeaning, as it means you didn’t bother to learn their names.
The use of the first name alone indicates a close association, or, in the case of serfs being addressed by their landowner, control equivalent to that of a father for a child.
There are diminutive forms of first names, i.e. Ivan becomes Vanya, or even Vanuchka for a very young child. That indicates a very close association, or is extremely demeaning when used by a stranger. When Chekov writes about Uncle Vanya, a Russian already knows he’s going to be a bit dotty.
In the military sergeant majors would normally be addressed by their patronymic alone as a sign of respect.
In other Slavic countries they never went beyond given name and patronymic until very recently and the patronymic of the “founding father” became the surname. You see this in the -ic endings of Serbian names which is pronounced -ich. This is how Milos became the grandfather of the Milosevic family. [Note that the better transliteration would be Miloshevich. The “sh” is why the soft form -evich is used instead of the -ovich that would follow an “s”.]
Even today, the surname is not used a great deal in Russia. News reports will write about Vladimir Vladimirovich, not Putin, because everyone knows who is being discussed. Now they will discuss Dmitri Anatol’evich.
my brother and i used to joke that we’re the products of a mixed marriage. the deep south branch of the family is very much like what you describe, using sir and madam and miss and mister [first name] like that. the midwestern branch is second to no one in their egalitarianism, pretty much steadfastly refusing to use any honorific, and for that matter, any diminutive. not a single person on either side would dare use sweetie, or anything like it, when addressing anyone over the age of about 5 or 6.
Actually, it is the Southern “code of politeness” that makes “boy” obviously derogatory coming out of the mouth of any politician from South of the Mason-Dixon Line. They can’t claim they didn’t mean anything by it, because their mothers would wash their mouths out with lye soap if they had done it growing up.
“Sweetie” must be a Midwestern thing, because the only person I know who ever says it is from Iowa.
i’ve read that it’s definitely a chicagoism. i hear it down here too, but maybe they’re all transplanted midwesterners.
Lots of people from Indiana and Iowa down here, for whatever reason.
2 words: indiana, iowa.
i can’t say, from firsthand knowledge, anything about iowa, but winters in indiana are dismal.
dis. mal.
it’s pretty much a straight shot from indianapolis to here, so not much mystery there. as for the iowans, maybe they head east first, and turn south at the first big city they come to. which would perhaps be indianapolis.
Yup Bryan! 😀 As I said… It was all pretty complicated! 🙂 For meetings and functions I did take the time to learn it all properly, and the proper address for each Russian attendee. Most of the Russians I dealt with were scientific or technical types, that was my department. They knew I took the time and they in turn took the time to learn how to talk with me. With most of them, we would end up gently correcting each other (with lot’s of compliments of course!) LOL At least… until the Vodka began taking it’s toll then we would tell jokes the other side would mostly not understand and laugh like crazy anyway! LOL The Russians were funny in that if you told a joke they did get, they would repeat the punch line every chance they got and laugh for days after! They also took great pride in ensuring we could curse properly in many Russian dialects! Very important! 😀
I know this all probably sounds as if it was just a great big load of fun for the years I was involved, but it wasn’t. We (Australia) spent a lot of our time being mediators between the Russians and others. I suppose we were seen as a kind of *neutral* territory, and in many ways, we were. Mostly because of our position way down here in the southern hemisphere. But that is really an illusion by people who think in terms of distance via the Arctic (North Pole). 🙂 If you go the other way, South, we are not very far at all. There was a good reason the USA kept a base here capable of landing a squadron of B52’s, until we closed it because it made everyone else *uncomfortable* to say the least! (Now we just have a *secret* base in Qld that have underground hangers that can house B-117’s etc. Thanks to Howard. What a moron). The USA has been trying to base ICBM’s here for decades, and when I was working intel, I heard there was a base hidden somewhere in the desert. I never did know if it was true, but I heard it from a Russian Scientist, so it could have been. It was a Russian that also told me about the Omega base here in Vic actually being one of 4 Global US VLF Submarine communications stations and was on the USSR’s ‘first strike’ list. The secondary control station for it is not very far (in miles) from where I live. *shrug* 🙂 The USA (and officially the Aus Gov) deny it of course, but now we have undeniable proof that something more than what they say is there. The cancer and other health problems in the area (roughly 100km radius) have increased significantly since it was built, and livestock mortality rates are high as well as birth defect rates for all creatures (human and not). And Amerika are our friends (as the Russians would take pleasure in taunting us whenever they could!) 😉
What a World.
Come on, everyone knows that radio waves can’t hurt you 😈
There have been a lot of things done with no long term testing based on assumptions that were flat wrong. The problem is that no one does anything after the problems are discovered, and no one admits any responsibility.
It will be interesting to see how cell phones are judged in another ten years or sooner. I can’t believe that they don’t have some effect on your body.
Australia was the obvious base for US operations in Asia, as everything the US “owns” is on small islands, many of which are subject to earthquakes and/or volcanoes.