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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

The semantic turn of the Left is one of the worst signs of intellectual decay. There's approximately zero evidence that linguistic changes influence thought: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is rejected by linguists except perhaps in some very narrow situations. The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color. And none of them are better or worse than the other (though the 2020 innovation "bodies of color" managed to find a way to be more degrading than the worst that Stormfront could come up with).

Why? We feel powerless to fix the problems that plague our society, so instead we turn to things we have agency over. Maybe we can't prevent group X from suffering from social discrimination, but if everything is just a matter of what words we use, we can just choose to use those words, stridently denounce everyone who hasn't gotten with the program, and pat ourselves on the back and call it a day.

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> The euphemism treadmill is a running joke,

It feels more like a minefield than a joke. A minefield that gets new mines added every so often just to keep everyone on their toes. When I was younger, I used to feel like I could keep up with all the new taboo words, but it seems like it is happening faster and faster these days.

You can unintentionally say something that turns out to be taboo, and you're done for. Some years ago, I causally used the "r-word" and didn't even think anything of it, and blam! big mistake. We used to toss that one around all the time back in the 80s and 90s, felt kind of like a jerk when you used it in the early 2000s, but in the 2010s it's become totally lingua-non-grata. We learn the hard way from these experiences, but it does feel like a growing minefield.

Worse, when something innocent we write/say today becomes a slur in 2040, future people will dig back in time and judge us by the words we wrote in 2020. Do you know what will be a slur in 20 years? I don't.

> I causally used the "r-word" and didn't even think anything of it

You casually called someone a "retard" (I assume that's the word) and someone took that wrongly? Of course they did! Even when "retard" was an acceptable put-down, it was still a put-down.

Maybe the way to avoid the "minefield" you speak of is to not put others down? Even deservedly! Just try to be nicer to everyone, even if they are not, themselves, nice.

I've never thought of retarded as a putdown, it was just the sound used to describe a certain group of people. Be careful assuming you are in possession of the one true way.

There is a difference. Retarded was used to describe a person's condition. It means slow. Retard the noun was more a slur or put down.

> I've never thought of retarded as a putdown

You may be one of the few, in that case. Good! Other people might not understand that about you if you used that word around them.

> Some years ago, I causally used the "r-word" and didn't even think anything of it, and blam! big mistake.

Doug Stanhope has a great skit in which he explains that the word "retarded" was originally the sensitive way to refer to this group, because at the time they were called directly derogatory terms.

But, like with every such attempt it was quickly adopted as an insult.

My not particularly original take is that policing language addresses only the effect, not the cause. Question remains: should the world learn of our peaceful ways by force?

Yeah, there's no word to describe something negative that can't be turned into an insult. Whatever words we use to describe people on the fringes of society will be turn against those we don't like to treat them as if they are on the fringes of society.

If it somehow became popular to describe people of a certain type using the phrase "people on the fringes of society," then within a generation or two kids would taunt each other in schoolyards with "No, you're on the fringes of society," and "No, you are!"

Just like Special Education students in schools, students who require one-on-one teaching from trained teachers. It was abbreviated as sp.ed., and where I grew up, "sped" was a common insult, as in "you're such a sped", or "that sped is so retarded".

I once got into a debate with someone on Reddit where they claimed "Middle East" is an offensive term, which was news to me. They preferred "West Asia and Northern Africa", or something. I claimed that this is just taking the same path that "oriental" took, which is now taboo in some countries, even though it literally means "from the east" and is the opposite of "occidental".

Even just special ed is used as an insult

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dqsgxLyl5E

>in the 2010s it's become totally lingua-non-grata*

I thought it was the 2020s.

But it's too good not to use, and it's the last good insult we have. Mental ableism is the last bastion. I make my stand here.

The slippery slope we're being forced down on leads to "don't be mean to anyone ever", and I, as a product of the era of https://youtu.be/C4dnCZSYmbY, fundamentally refuse to accept that.

I personally have replaced it with fucktard, just so there isn't any confusion.

Also I'm bringing back "special".

I know that kindness never goes out of style.

Negative words can change meaning or severity over time, in both directions, but if you aim for clear expression and avoid insults, it is unlikely anything you say or write will be judged badly in the future.

Why do you need freedom of speech? Just be nice!

This might be the most British comment ive ever replied to

Oï MATE!

You got a license for that joke!?

I am not British. Not even Canadian!

It's pretty simple: you have freedom to say whatever you want, but if you're worried about how you'll be judged, now or in the future, then you will curtail your worst impulses. Alternatively, you can lean into your freedom, say whatever you want, and then deal with the fallout when it eventually comes.

Look at the comment to which I replied, and then tell me my reply doesn't fit.

> It feels more like a minefield than a joke. A minefield that gets new mines added every so often just to keep everyone on their toes.

It gets new mines because when a word becomes a widely used derogatory term for a group of people we need a non-derogatory word to use instead when when we are trying to talk about people in that group and aren't trying to be derogatory.

That what tone is for! And when is written, you use the context. And when there is no context, you asume the kindest interpretation

So when a word that starts out as a neutral term to describe some condition or collection of people gets adopted over time by the general public as a slur or derogatory term, and that's how it is used 99.9% of the time, we should assume when we hear it out of context it is the 0.1% case?

Also for many of these words most the general public has complete forgotten the non-slur/non-derogatory meaning (or has never known it). No amount of tone will fix that.

Imagine an unmarried couple with a child who gets a copy of the child's medical records from their pediatrician and see the child described as a "retarded bastard". The chances that they will know that "retarded" was once a medical term for someone who is behind on mental development and that "bastard" means a person born out of wedlock are pretty low. At best they are going to be greatly puzzled by the doctor using those words.

Retard?

Can you provide sources for "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more or less rejected by linguists"? I took a university course in "Philosophy of Language" around 2008 and I was taught in no uncertain terms that language structures thought.

The wikipedia article for Linguistic Relativity[0] states:

> Research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting linguistic relativity, and this hypothesis is provisionally accepted by many modern linguists.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

That quote is a relatively recent addition (17 Jan 2023) and isn't well-cited. A longer standing and more objective statement from the article:

> Many different, often contradictory variations of the hypothesis have existed throughout its history.[4] The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This hypothesis was held by some of the early linguists before World War II.[3] This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists.[2]

You can read a reasonable discussion of it here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/6aqsex/how_muc...

Thank you!

From the article:

The project of the guides is utopian, but they’re a symptom of deep pessimism. They belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real.

Though I wonder if this diagnosis is actually too optimistic, in that it assumes people are 1) aware and care about the real problems and 2) willing to put in effort to enact meaningful change. Perhaps this is too cynical, but I think most people who adopt this sort of symbolic gesturing are pretty detached from the root issues of power and wealth inequality. "Virtue signaling" is a product of vanity, not pessimism/powerlessness.

This what people do to distract from the fact that they don't want to give up housing as a lucrative investment if it means more housing, as that would infringe upon their lifestyle.

You say it's both "intellectual decay" and "feeling powerless" but I see no reason that the two are connected, causal, or both happening. Hand people victimized by the past few centuries of American history the ability to fix, say, the generational wealth gap that resulted from denied opportunities and seizure of property, and see if they still only focus on words.

That would be a great experiment.

I welcome "The semantic turn of the Left". It shows the emperor has no clothes.

By increasing the silliness, more and more people observe "Wow these folks are ignorant lunatics, unaware that they're driving the perception of themselves as immature, ignorant hypocrites whose identity is built upon political trends."

> the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is rejected by linguists except perhaps in some very narrow situations

What do you mean by this? Hasn't linguistic relativity been studied and demonstrated quite extensively?

I don't disagree with your overall point, but found this surprising.

It's meant a lot of different things in the past. The initial version (the "strong" hypothesis) has been roundly rejected. Claims associated with it are what people usually think of ("the Ancient Greeks couldn't see the color blue!") when they think of Sapir-Whorf.

Weaker versions with much more narrow claims are debated and controversial, but even for those, it's the most flashy (and least supported) claims that get the most popular press.

It's a shame. Many people who call themselves left instead have views similar to violent communism (as opposed to social democracy or Marxism) and fascism of the hard right in terms of inflexibility, harsh punishment, mercilessness, and aggressive intellectual and social domination. Gen X and older tend to have more of an idea of the spirit of left liberalism and what it means socially, life outlook, and pragmatically.

Furthermore, there are nonzero people in groups who object to victim monikers like Latinx and over-sensitive terminology as demeaning. If it were me, since I can only speak for myself, I would want to be treated as equal without ceremony, pity, or unfair advantages. Alterations of language where there is little or no offense (asking the targets rather than the busy bodies) seem like token thoughts and prayers and inconvenience to the many rather than direct, positive help to anyone. Solve real concerns rather than pearl clutch the next unfashionable word.

Alternatively, there’s a theory of change at play here that follows a relatively long path of inquiry through politics, sociology, and neuroscience to identify in-group/out-group dynamics and mental shortcuts as central blockers to attempts to increase cross-group empathy and drive social change.

Even if that were true, I'd still not put any faith in the empathy skills of people who use e.g. "incel" as a slur, who claim "it's okay to be white" is hate speech and who call arson, vandalism and looting "mostly peaceful protests" because the in-group did it.

So long as you're not reducing entire groups into caricatures of themselves, it's probably fine.

It's not a caricature if it's taught at supposedly elite institutions of education, into which admission is contingent on a declaration of adherence to said ways of thinking.

This is three gross mischaracterizations in one!

I don't dispute that there's a theory of change here: "if we explore the linguistic landscape, we can discover a set of signifiers that will help us to destroy racism/sexism/etc."

I just reject that. We don't live in a Harry Potter book where the correct series of incantations affect the material world.

That's not the theory of change at play here. You're rejecting a straw man.

As to the rest of it: "Officer, arrest that man" is a series of incantations that affect the material world.

I can say that right now, and nothing happens. The words aren't the causal elements here changing the world; it's the referants and power hierarchies that do.

The proper analogy would be thinking that requiring saying "Officer, detain-in-an-official-capacity that man!" instead would somehow fix police violence.

> I can say that right now, and nothing happens. The words aren't the causal elements here changing the world; it's the referants and power hierarchies that do.

And you think this is something that’s not understood among those pushing for linguistics changes?

I think that.

I think those people distract and soothe themselves from their inability to enact change with linguistic games.

the correct term is no longer "persons of color"

I received a letter in the mail from official sources, ordering me to use:

"skin appropriating mammals & pseudo-mammals of complexions including greyscale shades from #FFFFFE to #000000"

(pseudo-mammals is important so as not to exclude platypus & echidna identifying peoples)

It's ok though-- I will let it slide this time.

Next time though, it will be reported to the Commissar. And they will listen to me-- Because I am half skin appropriating mammals & pseudo-mammals of complexions including greyscale shades from #FFFFFE to #000000 (anything more than a quarter is considered full validated and verified via the official channels)

> The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color.

You missed a couple at the beginning of your list. A really significant one in particular.

Including it would distract from the main point (though IIRC there was no point at which it wasn't a slur; replacing non-slurs with novel non-slurs is a different category).

That said, I think it supports my point. How effective has tabooing that slur been at eliminating racism in the USA?

I'm the furthest thing from N-word apologist, but it's pronounced the same as the Latin word meaning "black" (modulo vowel pronunciation shifts), and spelled nearly the same. It's clearly derived from a word which did not originally have any meaning as a slur, and I bet you could find early usages in English which were merely descriptive.

There's no reason to use it now, but understanding the fact that was originally a descriptive word is useful for the history of it.

There have been a few kerfuffles in soccer where a Spanish speaking person used the Spanish word for black person in an English speaking country…and were charged with making a racial slur.

Moreno is the most common word I've heard in the US by black Spanish speakers describing themselves. Is negro more common in Spain?

Why does a taboo have to "eliminate racism" to be considered useful or effective instead of just "reduce the amount of times people have to put up with hearing others call them that"?

Do you have an estimate for how much tabooing that word decreased the racial wealth gap or increased the number of black children with access to healthcare?

Well it's american site and people get itchy when you mention it, because apparently having voldemort words that are simultaneously used by people supposedely offended by it in their culture is "good" thing to do

Today, it's no longer person of color.

It's "theirsxn of sholor". Please respect this and stop the violation and violence against theirsxns of sholor which is incurred when you use othering phrases.

(not thereson-- because it has the word "son" in it, which is offensive to non-sons. sholor because it's closer to shalom which means peace.)

/le jokes

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