I’m fascinated by language — by how we use it, by how it shapes us, by how we shape it. <\/p>\n
If unconscious use of language is interesting, so, too, is the conscious effort of individuals to change and manipulate language, whether in advertising or propaganda, or in declaring certain euphemisms to be approved, and other terms to be forbidden.<\/p>\n
Which makes this review<\/a> of Randall Kennedy’s Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word<\/i><\/a> fascinating, almost enough for me to add the book to my Wish List. Kennedy’s description of the history of the word, from neutral description to vile epithet and up to the modern acceptable usage within certain African-American circles, sounds extremely interesting — as has been the firestorm surrounding the book, by the mere fact that it uses That Word <\/i>in the title.<\/p>\n That word is one that I do not believe I have ever used, except perhaps in relation to an ethnic joke (and then rarely, back in the days when The Italian-American Joke Book <\/i>drew guffaws, not law suits). It’s a word I did hear sometimes, growing up, but not a word I hear any more in my acquaintances, certainly not as the “paradigmatic” racial slur that Kennedy describes — a word that a many vocal people believe should be forcibly stamped out of the language.<\/p>\n Interesting stuff.<\/p>\n But just to show how potentially sensitive a subject this is, even though it’s a frickin’ book title, I still used the embed-a-comment-inside-the-word HTML coding trick on The Word inside the title. That’s one Google search term (not to mention corporate web content filter) I’m not interested in showing up on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m fascinated by language — by how we use it, by how it shapes us, by how we shape it. If unconscious use of language is interesting, so, too, is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":42465,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/09\/our-livingish-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":0},"title":"Our living(ish) language","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 9-Jun-14 10:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I find, as I grow older, that rather than being more curmudgeonly about the changes (temporary or long-term) in English, I become more fascinated. It's not just a matter of slang, but of actual, lasting tweaks to how we use words (and the words involved) that are so intensely interesting.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50214,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/29\/the-most-racist-places-in-america-for-certain-values-of-racist.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":1},"title":"The most racist places in America (for certain values of racist)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 29-Apr-15 11:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"Using Google searches that include the word \"nigger\" as a proxy for racism (though particularly against blacks) is an interesting idea. Noting correlation to mortality rates for blacks is even more interesting.Again, this is looking at just racism toward one group, and has a slight fuzziness around it in trying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128232,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/05\/of-the-f-bomb-and-personal-vocabulary-kinks.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":2},"title":"Of the F-Bomb and Personal Vocabulary Kinks","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Oct-15 2:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It is perhaps a sign of my long years that I do not comfortably use that particular four-letter word. Growing up, that was the nuclear option of vocabulary, the worst possible word one could use. The \"F\" word trumped even the \"S\" word, being not only an obscenity but related\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/0671dfcb75f05e1fcbbb9a14543592bc5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":137069,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/09\/06\/whats-that-country-all-about.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":3},"title":"What’s that country all about?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Sep-18 10:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A fun world map with the most common word on their English Wikipedia page assigned to it. Some interesting results: The number one word for the US is \"War\" The number one word for Canada is \"Quebec\" The number one word for Vietnam is \"French\" The number one word for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/countries-wikipedia-word.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":129649,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/05\/when-you-have-official-language-police-things-can-get-ugly.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":4},"title":"When you have Official Language Police, things can get ugly","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Feb-16 11:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The French are known for being ... um ... determined to intentionally maintain the purity of their tongue, to officially deprecate word imports in favor of their own native words, etc.But that sort of sentiment can draw flak when the government officially makes changes to the language.'French linguistic purists have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12775,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/29\/words_mean_things_18.html","url_meta":{"origin":2492,"position":5},"title":"Words mean things","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 29-Sep-08 7:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A word map (larger = more frequent) of the First Debate. Looking at the actual word frequency is interesting. The number and uniqueness of words between the two candidates is...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}