5 ms·

I remember a few years ago someone posted a link here to a guy that had built a clever off-road wheelchair so that people with disabilities could enjoy hiking,

I remember a few years ago someone posted a link here to a guy that had built a clever off-road wheelchair so that people with disabilities could enjoy hiking, and some people got upset with him because he used the wrong euphemisms.

GJim 2y ago
Its a curious form of signalling that appears common amongst the American users of this site; I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves! Such virtue signalling is at its worst when used to pile-on a speaker or post for uttering some perceived slight, or daring to suggest an unpopular idea or political view. It is bad for open discourse, even open society, and needs to stop.
- istultus 2y ago
  As someone who isn't American but grew up in California in the 90s, I find myself often explaining American public behavior to others who are baffled by it. As I see it, the US - the first place with a supposed egalitarian bent on the cosmopolitan society - created a system whereby people from all backgrounds and ethnicites could interact in the public sphere without tripping each other's emotional wires - that is the basis for Political Correctness. Keep your baggage at home, and out in the real world and in the market you can interact with everyone as equals (so, Mike Munger's "the answer is trasaction costs!"). The system worked pretty well for a time (fine, it's called the 90s). The problem is that the edifice kept on being built up, as more voices raised more touchy subjects that needed to be sanitized in public, enough that it began to bother people. I think that as alternative means of communication allowed people to more be "themselves" in the digital, if not real, public domain, the discrepancy between public discourse and private thought became more glaring. Now, for every system, there are those who naturally like to uphold norms, and these are the ones you say are "virtue signalling" - I think they're just norm upholders. But for the rest of us, it takes only one euphemism that hits us the wrong way to get us questioning the whole over-built edifice. The fact that one political side arbitrarily took it up as a cause, of course, made the other side all the more dogmatic in its application. So it will be eventually torn down and replaced by something identical and the cycle will continue anew. ~fin~
- cauch 2y ago
  Not a native speaker, but while I would not have reacted, it is strange to use a term some negatively connoted instead of "Chinese man". I think the Englishman comparison is not very smart. With the same logic, it's fine to use pedophile to refer to someone because it's grammatically constructed similarly to audiophile and no one never complained when associated to the word audiophile. I don't think a pejorative word (recognized as such in all modern dictionaries) stops to be pejorative because it exists a similar construction that is not pejorative. And I don't think you need to be the one accused to be a pedophile to be offended when you see someone uselessly accusing someone else to be a pedophile. (but again, I would probably not have reacted, and have given the benefice of the doubt to the interlocutor, assuming they were unaware of the pejorative connotation)
- chimprich 2y ago
  > I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves! And yet "Chinaman" is considered derogatory. If you believe the Wikipedia page, it has been considered so since at least 1965 in British English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman You might not consider it logical for "Chinaman" to be considered derogatory when similarly structured words like "Frenchman" are not, but the reality is that if you use the term then you will be evoking the current meaning. > and needs to stop The point of the article is that you can't stop the euphemism treadmill, no matter how emphatically you request it.
- vintermann 2y ago
  "Chinaman" is not inherently/originally a slur, but seriously who says that today? Even Englishman, Irishman and Frenchman sound slightly old-fashioned to me - surely you'd rather say "He's French" than "He's a Frenchman". It's one of those words you certainly shouldn't be offended at finding in an old book, or not even if an elderly person uses it, but if a young person uses it then he's probably dug it up deliberately for questionable political reasons.
- smeej 2y ago
  If the word had been "Chineseman," maybe it would fit with your other examples better. No one says, "He's an Englandman, Irelandman, Franceman, etc." To me, this set of words would already lean negative and imply someone hopelessly devoted to a specific country, not someone of that nationality, even if "Chinaman" didn't also already have a pejorative history.
  - Grustaf 2y ago
    This is very typical, you observe that the expressions are slightly different linguistically, and then make a leap from that and posit that this makes it pejorative. It's a bit similar to how some people just posit that "The Ukraine" or "The Congo" is somehow pejorative just because most countries don't have a definite article.
    - smeej 2y ago
      I don't even sort of follow what you mean here. All I'm doing is telling you what this set of words that nobody actually uses sound like they would mean to me. The term that does exist, Chinaman, already has its own pejorative sense. It doesn't need that from me. All I'm saying is that these other words (again, words that I didn't "make up," but also that nobody actually uses) would sound negative too, and are the actual parallels to the term in the parent's example.
      - Grustaf 2y ago
        On the contrary, your example shows that any pejorative connotation is NOT related to the etymology. "Englandman" doesn't sound pejorative, it just sounds strange because it's not an actual word. "Englander" is a real word that is not pejorative, but derived from the name of the country.
        smeej 2y ago
        Of course it is. It comes directly from the etymology. By using the name of the country rather than the demonym for its inhabitants, it implies some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it, rather than a simple point of history about a person's ethnic heritage, over which the person had no control.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Dane is here interesting. Why not Denmarkman or Denman or Danishman? Which one of those is correct in same way?
  - Grustaf 2y ago
    Probably because Denmark is a very old country, it predates most nation states, and the word originally referred to the tribe. Same with "Swede". They correspond to "Angles" I suppose.
  - GJim 2y ago
    I dunno. A Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian (Norseman brings to mind beards and battle-axes), a German, a Welshman, a Luxembourger. English is weird! Source: An native English speaker of His Majesty the Kings English, not one of those weird leftpondian dialects :-)
    - Grustaf 2y ago
      It's not weird at all, and it's the same in all languages. Some of the countries are very new, or the speakers of the language only came in contact with it recently. Then it's more likely they will use a country-related term. If on the other hand you have been in contact with the people for hundreds, or thousands of years, long before modern nation states, you will probably be using a tribal name for them, like Dane or Swede. It is usually easy to understand if you just look into it.

GJim 2y ago

Its a curious form of signalling that appears common amongst the American users of this site; I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves! Such virtue signalling is at its worst when used to pile-on a speaker or post for uttering some perceived slight, or daring to suggest an unpopular idea or political view. It is bad for open discourse, even open society, and needs to stop.

istultus 2y ago
As someone who isn't American but grew up in California in the 90s, I find myself often explaining American public behavior to others who are baffled by it. As I see it, the US - the first place with a supposed egalitarian bent on the cosmopolitan society - created a system whereby people from all backgrounds and ethnicites could interact in the public sphere without tripping each other's emotional wires - that is the basis for Political Correctness. Keep your baggage at home, and out in the real world and in the market you can interact with everyone as equals (so, Mike Munger's "the answer is trasaction costs!"). The system worked pretty well for a time (fine, it's called the 90s). The problem is that the edifice kept on being built up, as more voices raised more touchy subjects that needed to be sanitized in public, enough that it began to bother people. I think that as alternative means of communication allowed people to more be "themselves" in the digital, if not real, public domain, the discrepancy between public discourse and private thought became more glaring. Now, for every system, there are those who naturally like to uphold norms, and these are the ones you say are "virtue signalling" - I think they're just norm upholders. But for the rest of us, it takes only one euphemism that hits us the wrong way to get us questioning the whole over-built edifice. The fact that one political side arbitrarily took it up as a cause, of course, made the other side all the more dogmatic in its application. So it will be eventually torn down and replaced by something identical and the cycle will continue anew. ~fin~
cauch 2y ago
Not a native speaker, but while I would not have reacted, it is strange to use a term some negatively connoted instead of "Chinese man". I think the Englishman comparison is not very smart. With the same logic, it's fine to use pedophile to refer to someone because it's grammatically constructed similarly to audiophile and no one never complained when associated to the word audiophile. I don't think a pejorative word (recognized as such in all modern dictionaries) stops to be pejorative because it exists a similar construction that is not pejorative. And I don't think you need to be the one accused to be a pedophile to be offended when you see someone uselessly accusing someone else to be a pedophile. (but again, I would probably not have reacted, and have given the benefice of the doubt to the interlocutor, assuming they were unaware of the pejorative connotation)
chimprich 2y ago
> I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves! And yet "Chinaman" is considered derogatory. If you believe the Wikipedia page, it has been considered so since at least 1965 in British English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman You might not consider it logical for "Chinaman" to be considered derogatory when similarly structured words like "Frenchman" are not, but the reality is that if you use the term then you will be evoking the current meaning. > and needs to stop The point of the article is that you can't stop the euphemism treadmill, no matter how emphatically you request it.
vintermann 2y ago
"Chinaman" is not inherently/originally a slur, but seriously who says that today? Even Englishman, Irishman and Frenchman sound slightly old-fashioned to me - surely you'd rather say "He's French" than "He's a Frenchman". It's one of those words you certainly shouldn't be offended at finding in an old book, or not even if an elderly person uses it, but if a young person uses it then he's probably dug it up deliberately for questionable political reasons.
smeej 2y ago
If the word had been "Chineseman," maybe it would fit with your other examples better. No one says, "He's an Englandman, Irelandman, Franceman, etc." To me, this set of words would already lean negative and imply someone hopelessly devoted to a specific country, not someone of that nationality, even if "Chinaman" didn't also already have a pejorative history.
- Grustaf 2y ago
  This is very typical, you observe that the expressions are slightly different linguistically, and then make a leap from that and posit that this makes it pejorative. It's a bit similar to how some people just posit that "The Ukraine" or "The Congo" is somehow pejorative just because most countries don't have a definite article.
  - smeej 2y ago
    I don't even sort of follow what you mean here. All I'm doing is telling you what this set of words that nobody actually uses sound like they would mean to me. The term that does exist, Chinaman, already has its own pejorative sense. It doesn't need that from me. All I'm saying is that these other words (again, words that I didn't "make up," but also that nobody actually uses) would sound negative too, and are the actual parallels to the term in the parent's example.
    - Grustaf 2y ago
      On the contrary, your example shows that any pejorative connotation is NOT related to the etymology. "Englandman" doesn't sound pejorative, it just sounds strange because it's not an actual word. "Englander" is a real word that is not pejorative, but derived from the name of the country.
      - smeej 2y ago
        Of course it is. It comes directly from the etymology. By using the name of the country rather than the demonym for its inhabitants, it implies some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it, rather than a simple point of history about a person's ethnic heritage, over which the person had no control.
Ekaros 2y ago
Dane is here interesting. Why not Denmarkman or Denman or Danishman? Which one of those is correct in same way?
- Grustaf 2y ago
  Probably because Denmark is a very old country, it predates most nation states, and the word originally referred to the tribe. Same with "Swede". They correspond to "Angles" I suppose.
- GJim 2y ago
  I dunno. A Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian (Norseman brings to mind beards and battle-axes), a German, a Welshman, a Luxembourger. English is weird! Source: An native English speaker of His Majesty the Kings English, not one of those weird leftpondian dialects :-)
  - Grustaf 2y ago
    It's not weird at all, and it's the same in all languages. Some of the countries are very new, or the speakers of the language only came in contact with it recently. Then it's more likely they will use a country-related term. If on the other hand you have been in contact with the people for hundreds, or thousands of years, long before modern nation states, you will probably be using a tribal name for them, like Dane or Swede. It is usually easy to understand if you just look into it.