Chimppigs unite!

Chimppigs unite! — Wallows

You have already made it impossible creating yet another catastrophe of meaning.... The rupture of the Hyper Real and oblivion of the perfect abstraction and metaphysical object of chimp-pig has created a metaphysical dualism of separating the incomplete, the departed, the irreconcilable chimp and pig.

It is too late you already ruined Christmas.

The ontological perfection of chimppig
- the 6 arguments for chimppig
- the rekindling of classical naturalism/natural philosophy
-the metaphysical application of chimppig in solving the 3 dystopias
- the transcendental aesthetic of chimppig
- the cognitive metaphor and new historicity of human anthropology and evolutionary psychology
- the unified field of life meaning that is chimppig...


All of these ruined by you.

I know what you are trying to hint at chimp-pig, this is the grammar and spelling of the eurocentric patriarchial racist white scientists. It denies you the truth of your true origin, your true species genesis the primordial ancestor of both chimp and pig, there is no separation.

I don't know how you live with yourself Wallow I really dont...

I see you understand the way of the chimp-pig. But, I think we should continue this conversation over at the lounge.

The pig-chimp content is rife over there.

I see you understand the way of the chimp-pig. But, I think we should continue this conversation over at the lounge. — Wallows

Done.

AS A WHITE MAN I AM OPPRESSED BECAUSE I CANNOT FREELY SAY THE N-WORD, THIS IS WHAT ORWELL DESCRIBED IN THE ONLY BOOK I HAVE READ (ONE NINE EIGHT FOUR) — Maw

Har he har. Another sarcastic exaggeration. If it's not a problem that warrants screaming "I'm a victim of oppression!" from the rooftops, then it's not a problem? It's all or nothing?

My non-white male friend feels the same way as I do, by the way, although I don't know why it should matter what skin colour or gender one is to have an opinion on this issue.

Generally I agree with andrewk that it's a use and mention thing. Nobody worth listening to is arguing for the use (in this sense, and also leaving aside its use by black people for the moment); the issue is whether it's all right to mention it. I'll find it horribly condescending of you to presume that a certain type of person ought to be protected from your mere mention of any word. However at the personal level it really depends. Even just the mention of "nigger", like that there, has the same violent frisson as mentioning "cunt", a word that I rarely use or even mention outside of a certain group of close friends, so I pretty much never even mention the n-word at all.

But the cultural significance of all this is that in the public sphere, intent and the use-mention distinction are being ignored. And that is stupid.

Blacks (African Americans, err, Negroes... niggers?) use "nigger" in the same way that cock suckers use "queer". — Bitter Crank

Maybe you can stop being an idiot about this now especially as this was discussed before and it was explained in detail to you where you were going wrong. — Baden

I missed that discussion. I'd be interested to read the linguist's take on it.

Off the top of my head and loosely speaking, if using it--as opposed to mentioning it--can be unobjectionable, then you still gotta use it right. The unobjectionable way of using it happens to be inaccessible to most white people, because it's associated with black sub-cultures. But if anecdotal evidence is worth anything at all, I happen know people in black London sub-cultures who have close white friends in those sub-cultures who use the word just like they themselves do. They know how to use it in a way Hanover never could, not only or even primarily because he's not black, but because he's not of that sub-culture.

This process of a group of people co-opting a word originally intended as derogatory of that group as a badge of honour is a very common process. That the word continues to be offensive when not used by people part of that group (or sub-culture as jamalrob describes it) is apparently confusing to some. However, it shouldn't be.

I can't say to a co-worker "you're such an asshole sometimes" when he takes the last cookie from the jar because it's unprofessional and unacceptable in the given context. I can say it to my best friend. I can flip my finger at a friend, I'd better not do so at a random stranger. If my wife calls her best friend "bitch" in a playful manner, I'd be pretty retarded to think I'm privileged to call her best friend "bitch" as well. It doesn't work that way.

We apply double standards all the time. Black people get to use that word, we honkies don't and we lost the right to do so because our dads and granddads were assholes to black people.

Funnily enough, you were in the discussion I was referring to. But it was on the old PF. @Hanover was in it too. It centred around the general status of AAVE/BVE.

This article gives a fairly straightforward picture of the linguistic angle I'd be closest to on the issue. Essentially the argument is that nigger/nigga are in an important sense different words rather than just differently pronounced variants of the same word (this shouldn't be particularly surprising if one recognizes the existence of AAVE and understands a little about how dialects/sociolects work. "Dope" and "sick" are words whose meaning can vary to the point of incomprehensibility to fellow English speakers not familiar with their dialectical use.)

Anyhow, here's the crucial point of departure for any sensible conversation on the issue:

"One of the most potent slurs in American English is the racial epithet nigger (we warned you!). However, many white people oblivious to history and privilege don't hesitate to muse, "why can they [read: "black" people] use it, then?" Their observation - that some black Americans use what sounds like the same word - is valid, although insisting that makes the use of slurs OK is not valid."
...
"So when some speakers of AAVE use the word nigga, it is understandably interpreted as an r-less variant of a word that underlyingly has an r. However, the supposed r never shows up, not even intervocalically (jargon for "between vowels").

When people maintain that they're two different words, there seems to be good evidence for that. Note to white people: This does not give you license to use either. If you do not speak AAVE, and chances are you don't, you don't get to use either word. You WILL offend people, and no one will like you."

My bolding. And this is not just opinion. It's backed up by mounds of evidence, some of which is mentioned in the article (pdf of original study here ).

The authors go on to discuss the technical term "semantic bleaching", which refers to the phenomenon of words losing shades of meaning over time. "Nigga" is one such word.

Re this important point:

I happen know people in black London sub-cultures who have close white friends in those sub-cultures who use the word just like they themselves do. They know how to use it in a way Hanover never could, not only or even primarily because he's not black, but because he's not of that sub-culture. — jamalrob

It's addressed here:

"[Nigga] is not inherently specified for race, like nigger and other epithets are. In fact, race is often added to it, so the authors may be referred to in our neighborhoods as "that white nigga" and "the black nigga who was with him." Others include "asian nigga," and even "African nigga."

Among those who use the term, it is now a generic term like guy.

This shift in meaning seems to have happened some time after 1972-ish, possibly in conjunction with the rise of the Black Power movement, as an attempt to reclaim the word, similar to some feminists reclaiming bitch, and cunt. It was a necessary prerequisite for the super cool grammatical change our paper is actually about."

So, yes, it's not about skin colour or genes as such but being a member of a community broadly considered the black community but encompassing sub-cultures where you don't have to be black.

The article goes on to argue that "nigga" is actually becoming a pronoun rather than a noun and there's data to support that, but that's less relevant to the issue being discussed in this thread.

Science and common sense are happily married on this one. :up:

It centred around the general status of AAVE/BVE — Baden

Oh yeah. Good times. I thought that was here on TPF.

Otherwise yes, thanks, that's what I was thinking, that they're actually different words (which is not to say it's always cool to use "nigga").

Yes, and that kind of complicates the use/mention thing, which gets infected by user/context/falsely attributed phonetic variant issues, confuses people, and leads to general strife on both sides.

Yes, and that kind of complicates the use/mention thing, which gets infected by user/context/falsely attributed phonetic variant issues, confuses people, and leads to general strife on both sides. — Baden

I don't exactly see how it complicates the use/mention thing. I can see how it's complicated in the way I described above, by the sheer violence of the word, which as with "cunt" makes even the mention of it uncomfortable. But the linguistic angle you've outlined and which I agree with doesn't seem to add any complication that I can think of with respect to use/mention, though I'll note that it's not nearly so uncomfortable to mention the word "nigga" as it is to mention the n-word, hence my repeated use of "n-word".

I mean especially in terms of the argument that black people use it all the time but white people can't even mention it. As if "it" referred to one word. Cue great resentment. My own view is that mentioning "nigger" should be OK as long as it's done with some sensitivity and awareness, including of the fact that black people do not generally either use or mention this word, but a different word in their own dialect. What I would object to though is making an issue out of wanting to mention it when it has or is likely to offend.

It's the same word.

Get the popcorn

I agree with all of that except, I think, for the last sentence, which is what this is all about I guess.

An obvious exception to the above btw would be in a strictly scientific context, such as a study or article like the one mentioned, where you have to spell out exactly what you're discussing for reasons of precision and accuracy. And I don't know of any controversy over the word being used in that way.

I agree with all of that except, I think, for the last line, which is what this is all about I guess. — jamalrob

Well, I don't know of a scenario apart from the one I just gave where it would be a battle worth pursuing to insist on mention though I don't think there should be punishment for mention either. Give me something to chew on.

It's the same word. — frank

Says you. Most linguists would say no. And the way we decide whether words are the same is by analysing them linguistically, how they behave with other words and so on. It's not just a matter of opinion. Otherwise we get nowhere.

It's worth pursuing not least because it belittles the experience of actual racism to see unwitting racism in the mention of a racist word, mentions that are obviously not racist. And this does now happen.

You're focusing on the falsity of one potential objection, which I don't disagree with. But it can also be a matter of etiquette where the objection lies. So, what is worth pursuing? It's worth pointing out that mention is not racist, but insisting on mention because it's not racist misses some nuance here.

I agree it's a matter of etiquette, and I agree it's not always right to insist on being able to mention it. But it might be important to insist on it sometimes. I insist on being able to do it here, for example.

I think that distinction should be easier to spot for Americans than for other British speakers, because most varieties of American English are 'rhotic', meaning they pronounce terminal 'r's, whereas British and Australian English do not, instead pronouncing the ends of words ending in 'er' as 'ah' or 'uh'. So that distinction between the conditionally permissible, and the impermissible form of the word is lost on we Poms and Aussies.

I don't know whether AAVE is rhotic. I have a feeling it may not be.

British and Australian English do not — andrewk

The terminal "r" is pronounced in some versions of British English. Not relevant but I can't stand this generalization.

Says you. Most linguists would say no. And the way we decide whether words are the same is by analysing them linguistically, how they behave with other words and so on. It's not just a matter of opinion. Otherwise we get nowhere. — Baden

Lol. Its the same word, Baden.

That's very interesting, because I have the opposite experience, growing up in Houston. My father always used the n-word to refer to African Americans (my mother didn't). His family were small-town farmer folks, and many of them were even worse (they invariably prefixed the n-word with "god damned").
— Relativist

That's consistent with my observation that its use revealed one's class. I think the same holds true in the African American community. — Hanover

I remember being taught at primary school ( UK - a couple of several decades ago ) that the proper word to use was 'negroe'.

Times change and it can be confusing to know what the right description should be...

An elderly relative noted the amount of 'blacks' in an English football team. Defensively informed me, without my even asking, that it was not an offensive term. However, what was the point of the comment, given that other European nationalities went unremarked.

Recently, I watched the film 'The Dambusters' (1955).
There was an added introduction which warned that some of the language used in that era might now cause offence to viewers.

Turned out that ' Nigger' was the name of the Wing Commander's black labrador.
Also that the dog’s name was used as a code word during Operation Chastise – which means 'a morse code operator has to shout it with great gusto at a key moment in the movie.'

From:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/07/the-dam-busters-film-reel-history

'...It has been suggested that the N-word was less incendiary in Britain during the second world war than it was in the United States, where abolitionists objected strongly to it from the early 19th century. It would be a mistake to imagine it was inoffensive, though. Like other racial epithets, the N-word was always used in the context of belittlement and frequently as abuse. Yet there was far less awareness in Britain during the 1940s and 50s of the harm caused by using such language – and so, in real life and in the movie, Gibson’s dog’s name could go unremarked upon...'

I think that distinction should be easier to spot for Americans than for other British speakers, because most varieties of American English are 'rhotic', meaning they pronounce terminal 'r's, whereas British and Australian English do not, instead pronouncing the ends of words ending in 'er' as 'ah' or 'uh'. So that distinction is lost on we Poms and Aussies. — andrewk

Yes, hadn't thought of that.

I don't know whether AAVE is rhotic. I have a feeling it may not be — andrewk

Mostly it's not. My dialect, Irish English, is as it happens.

Lol. It's the same word, Baden. — frank

Shrug. Bare assertion. For evidence that it's not, see the article. Respond if you can.

But it might be important to insist on it sometimes. I insist on being able to do it here, for example. — jamalrob

That's a fair point. I wouldn't personally if I were PMed not to, but I wouldn't want mention of it against the rules here either.

In fact, I wouldn't want the use of it against the rules either. BC used it, and I'd say he wasn't being racist, merely sort of ironically irreverent.

ironically irreverent. — jamalrob

Predictably provocative more like. But yes, it's right that racism and not the use and/or mention of particular words is what the guidelines focus on. So, you've made a good case for some further exceptions where insisting on allowing use and/or mention could be preferable.