4 ms·

The use of Sierra Club as the lead example is a good one because of the racialist motivations in the founding of the club. The change of usage to “enslaved peo

by gumby 4y ago

The use of Sierra Club as the lead example is a good one because of the racialist motivations in the founding of the club. The change of usage to “enslaved people” is an important one because of the lack of agency in being enslaved (!). It’s easy for the brain to make the connection that a term like “slave” is an inherent property of the person so described, like “brown-haired” rather than something imposed upon them. But as a non-American who’s lived in the US a long time, seeing the term “American” used generally doesn’t bother me: it’s trivial and automatic to see when it’s simply synecdoche for “resident”, “taxpayer”, or, yes, “US citizen, so not applicable to me”. I am not offended when I see a headline, as I did this morning, saying “your passport will be delayed so apply early”. Just doesn’t apply to me so who cares?

mc32 4y ago
It's like they want to abolish metaphors and want to become language prescriptive --which people and grammarians wanted to get away from in the 60s and later (not that that ever persuaded the French against prescriptive language). And I guess English lends itself to more demands like this because its vocabulary-rich. Other languages have to re-use and recycle words for different meanings a lot more and are not able to accommodate these demands.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Other languages have to re-use and recycle words for different meanings a lot more A rather extraordinary and unlikely claim. Not to mention that words in languages like Arabic have much deeper semantic ramification compared to a Germanic language like English.
tgv 4y ago
> the lack of agency in being enslaved I don't get this, at all. It makes at least one fallacy, namely assuming that people are born free. They are not. Every newborn is restricted by parents, society, environment, etc. We must accept that: we can't think, act or sustain ourselves until much older. Thus, we loose our restrictions slowly, and we don't loose them all. Some people were actually born as slaves. That's the horror of it: to be born as property. Agency has nothing to do with it: suggesting that it does implies the possibility to avoid it, and ipso facto that staying enslaved is the slave's problem. The appeal to a made-up brain process doesn't improve your case.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Agency has nothing to do with it: suggesting that it does implies the possibility to avoid it That was the point of my referring to it: the agency lies with the enslaver, not the enslaved.
  - tgv 4y ago
    But the word is not about agency: it expresses a state. How that state was achieved, doesn't matter. Are we going to say "enprisoned people", "people who somehow and totally against their will caught COVID", "people who accidentally experience permanent, fully reduced hearing"? Do you still call people who once were, but not longer are, slaves, enslaved? The assumption behind it all is that if someone can make a inference about your thoughts, no matter how far-fetched, those thoughts must contribute to an undesirable state, hence you are a bad person.
low_tech_love 4y ago
The problem with ”slave” (as an example) for me is, how do we know this is actually a problem for enslaved people? How do we know this isn’t just a ”white man burden” thing? Yes, it makes sense, but just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it’s inherently good or applicable. Lots of things make sense from a theoretical, conceptual perspective, but are not feasible in practice. It seems to me that enslaved people have much bigger problems than to worry about this, and if they don’t anymore, then the wording doesn’t matter. They are either ”former slaves”, which emphasizes the severity of the situation they were put through, or they are still slaves, which again——emphasis. I could argue that the new wording diminishes the seriousness of the predicament (but I won’t as I don’t believe that, given the horrors of slavery, the word matters at all here).
feoren 4y ago
> seeing the term “American” used generally doesn’t bother me: it’s trivial and automatic to see when it’s simply synecdoche for “resident”, “taxpayer” Nitpick: synecdoche would be if someone called you "America". You can imagine a teasing "Hey America, get out of the way" toward a tourist who encapsulated their views of Americans. "American" is just a regular adjective.
- gumby 4y ago
  I meant "American" as a noun ("Americans benefit from the investment in national parks") -- sure, I do too.

by gumby 4y ago

mc32 4y ago

It's like they want to abolish metaphors and want to become language prescriptive --which people and grammarians wanted to get away from in the 60s and later (not that that ever persuaded the French against prescriptive language). And I guess English lends itself to more demands like this because its vocabulary-rich. Other languages have to re-use and recycle words for different meanings a lot more and are not able to accommodate these demands.

gumby 4y ago
> Other languages have to re-use and recycle words for different meanings a lot more A rather extraordinary and unlikely claim. Not to mention that words in languages like Arabic have much deeper semantic ramification compared to a Germanic language like English.

tgv 4y ago

> the lack of agency in being enslaved I don't get this, at all. It makes at least one fallacy, namely assuming that people are born free. They are not. Every newborn is restricted by parents, society, environment, etc. We must accept that: we can't think, act or sustain ourselves until much older. Thus, we loose our restrictions slowly, and we don't loose them all. Some people were actually born as slaves. That's the horror of it: to be born as property. Agency has nothing to do with it: suggesting that it does implies the possibility to avoid it, and ipso facto that staying enslaved is the slave's problem. The appeal to a made-up brain process doesn't improve your case.

gumby 4y ago
> Agency has nothing to do with it: suggesting that it does implies the possibility to avoid it That was the point of my referring to it: the agency lies with the enslaver, not the enslaved.
- tgv 4y ago
  But the word is not about agency: it expresses a state. How that state was achieved, doesn't matter. Are we going to say "enprisoned people", "people who somehow and totally against their will caught COVID", "people who accidentally experience permanent, fully reduced hearing"? Do you still call people who once were, but not longer are, slaves, enslaved? The assumption behind it all is that if someone can make a inference about your thoughts, no matter how far-fetched, those thoughts must contribute to an undesirable state, hence you are a bad person.

low_tech_love 4y ago

The problem with ”slave” (as an example) for me is, how do we know this is actually a problem for enslaved people? How do we know this isn’t just a ”white man burden” thing? Yes, it makes sense, but just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it’s inherently good or applicable. Lots of things make sense from a theoretical, conceptual perspective, but are not feasible in practice. It seems to me that enslaved people have much bigger problems than to worry about this, and if they don’t anymore, then the wording doesn’t matter. They are either ”former slaves”, which emphasizes the severity of the situation they were put through, or they are still slaves, which again——emphasis. I could argue that the new wording diminishes the seriousness of the predicament (but I won’t as I don’t believe that, given the horrors of slavery, the word matters at all here).

feoren 4y ago

> seeing the term “American” used generally doesn’t bother me: it’s trivial and automatic to see when it’s simply synecdoche for “resident”, “taxpayer” Nitpick: synecdoche would be if someone called you "America". You can imagine a teasing "Hey America, get out of the way" toward a tourist who encapsulated their views of Americans. "American" is just a regular adjective.

gumby 4y ago
I meant "American" as a noun ("Americans benefit from the investment in national parks") -- sure, I do too.