A rchive Date
[ 05-06-2000 ]
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[ International Relations ]
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[Warning: Read at your own risk
By LINDA WILLIAMSON
Toronto Sun
January 31, 1999
No one knows better than a writer how powerful words can be. So before we go any further, a warning: this column may contain words that some may find offensive.
Fortunately, this being a column of printed words, not spoken ones, I needn't worry about any of what I'm about to say being misheard. That is, unless some computer-savvy Internet reader downloads this through a voice synthesizer. And I could hardly be held responsible for that, could I?
It's hard to be sure.
Case in point, the brouhaha this past week in Washington over a public official's peculiar choice of words. I speak not of the beleaguered U.S. president, but of an aide to Mayor Anthony Williams, who resigned his job after using a word at a staff meeting that was interpreted as a racial slur.
David Howard resigned after saying "niggardly."
As most any dictionary will tell you, the word is Scandinavian in origin, dates back to the 1300s, and means "parsimonious, stingy, sparing, scanty" - or, if you like, "cheap." It has no racial connotation.
There is, however, the problem of it being misheard, or misinterpreted as a racist remark by people with either a limited vocabulary, a tendency to rush to judgment, or both. This caution is raised by A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, and it is the reason why Howard, who is white, does not regret his decision to resign.
"I would hope that this would be a red flag to us, that we need to learn to perceive things from the other person's point of view," he told the Associated Press.
The controversy clearly underlines the high racial tensions of modern America, but similar feelings are common in Canada.
Radio talk shows asking whether "niggardly" was a slur last week were inundated with calls from self-described well-educated Canadians who felt the way others perceived the meaning was more important than its actual definition.
To paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, it means whatever the public chooses it to mean. Even our language, it seems, is ruled by public opinion today.
'Offensive' words
These incidents follow the previous week's news that Merriam-Webster was removing several "offensive" words, such as some derogatory synonyms for "homosexual," from its online thesaurus. Inexplicably, the word "homosexual" itself was also removed.
One would think this action might send the exact opposite message of that intended - by turning "homosexual" into a taboo word. Besides, all English-speakers should be aware that there are other meanings for "queer" and "faggot." (Webster's says it has a 25-year-old policy of not including words that are slurs against minorities. Not all dictionaries do - these words remain, labelled "offensive," in the new Oxford dictionary of Canadian English.)
As this chill descends over our lexicon, it's hard not to wonder what will be next. Dictionaries are full of vicious, hurtful words, as well as words with dubious origins.
Words like "hysterical," for instance, which means crazed, but which derives from the Greek word for "womb." Or "emasculate," which means "to weaken." Are these words not offensive to women? Heck, the word "girl" was once an accepted word for "young, unmarried woman." Now, except in the expression "You go, girl," it's offensive to most females over 18. Should our dictionaries reflect these connotations?
I have two dictionaries, one French, one English, which offer "avaricious" and "to cheat" as alternative definitions for "Jew" - both terrible slurs. The French dictionary adds this educational note: "usage hurtful to Jews; based on a hostile tradition." The new Canadian Oxford does not include this ugly usage. It does, however, list "frog" and its variations as offensive slang for "French or francophone person."
It would be easy to argue here that no word is inherently bad and that all censorship is wrong. That's only partly true. It's also partly wrong - as wrong as insisting, as many do, that a language is a finite, unchanging thing.
The real lesson here is that our understanding of words must go beyond the pages of a dictionary - we also must educate ourselves and others as to how certain words have explosive powers that are sometimes beyond our control.
The better we understand that, the better we communicate. In other words, watch your language.
Linda Williamson is the Toronto Sun senior associate editor. She can be reached by e-mail at lwilliam@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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