Re: query: distorted languages?

From: "Matt McLauchlin"

> This happens all the time, not just due to holocausts. Compare the rapid
> vanishing of the word "gay" meaning anything other than "admirer of the
Pet
> Shop Boys." A second meaning of a word becomes so shocking or
joke-inducing
> that all meanings except the stigmatized one vanish.
>
> It doesn't even have to do with the same word all the time. When was the
> last time you heard someone get described as "niggardly"?
These seem dissimilar examples to me. While I don't know all the ins and
outs of the etymology of "gay", I should think this is just lexical shift.
(Compare (through fuzzy collegiate memory): In "Plan 9 From Outer Space" [I
think], a stewardess says to a pilot something to the effect of "Let's
ball." (and they both continue using the term several times). While it's
clear from context that she means "Let's go dancing [of a Saturday night]",
an entire college audience sniggers since the more contemporary meaning is
"Let's f*ck."

I can remember back in high school bringing the house down by reading (in a
faux Southern accent) part of one of the Mark Twain novels where Huck
suggests to Tom, "Wouldn't that be gay?" (o_KAY_, so I wasn't so in touch
with myself twenty years ago [nah, that ain't true; in touch, but scrambling
to cope] ).

"Niggardly", for me, is a different issue. I was out of the country at that
time, but "Salon" discussed in an article the incident which started the
whole flap. Sounds to me like a serious dose of over-sensitivity. The
article's point was, now that the linkage has been made, erroneously or not,
from here on out you will never be able to tell a Black waitress not to be
niggardly with the coffee refills. Since we Americans are mega-sensitive to
the N-word, etymological considerations or that third syllable be damned,
we've made the connection.

Given that criterion, we could say "country" is offensive since it contains
the C-word. And wasn't there a Shakespearian reference somewhere? Some
comedic male character has his head in a woman's lap and says, "My mind has
turned to *count*ry matters." Do we deride those who talk about burning
"faggots".

I hope I'm not being overly *in*sensitive. As a gay American male, I find
myself extremely thick-skinned to these sorts of usage. (Don't get me wrong;
I know an epithet when I hear one). It seems to me, though, that doing Angst
over "niggardly" as an ethnic slur (which it never was till somone made that
fateful [erroneous] connection) (and now has a bizarre power it should never
have had) diverts attention away from the real racism
(which, if I were a conspiracy buff, is what I would think the Establishment
*wants* you to believe.).

Moving to Montana (with industrial rations of canned peaches and garbonzo
beans) :)

Kou