Re: USAGE: "racism"

Tom:

I'll accept that your suggestions are useful for purposes of using
"racism" as a technical term (whether sociological or anthropological,
or simply defined precisely for the purpose of a particular
discussion), but users of technical terms which are borrowed from
natural language must keep in mind that the former owner of what they
have borrowed (the colloquial usage of the term) has rights of its own
that did not expire with the borrowing, and that every user of the
English language is not obligated to find out what a particular expert
means by a term before using it.  *Especially* if there is any
controversy even among the experts about what is the correct meaning
of the term.

Linguists can insist on their own precise definitions for "morpheme"
and "phoneme" but they had better not complain when people use the
words "word" and "sound" without regards to the linguist's finer
sensibilities.

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                       edheil@postmark.net
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