[PD] [OT] Re: about sexism
Mathieu Bouchard
matju at artengine.ca
Wed Oct 10 08:18:00 CEST 2007
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Chris McCormick wrote:
> implying that the phrase "Mongolian hordes" represents a historically
> valid viewpoint is perpetuating a western-biased (racist) falsehood.
"horde" is not a viewpoint. It's a noun. It means "political subdivision
of a (central asian) nomadic people". It comes for Turkic "orda" meaning a
Khan's residence.
> The mere fact that everyone knows what we're talking about when we say
> "mongolian hordes"
If you use political correctness to get a word loaded with connotations to
be replaced by a brand new word, the old connotations tend to be carried
over to the new word. Thus those are not so much properties of a specific
word, than a topic of public opinion. This is something that is best fixed
by education and not by "dictionary engineering".
> whilst there is no similar widespread cliche for western invaders in our
> culture is testament to this fact.
I believe that "colonialism" and "imperialism" are widespread words,
concepts and clichés, that are loaded by several centuries of history.
> A little. The conflict is similar to that in Australia. There are many
> sides and they usually concern the ownership of traditional lands:
You could add:
* passive-aggressive government wants to make programme initiated by
previous government look bad
* fear that it legitimises (or opens a can of worms on) some completely
unreasonable claims, such as ownership of areas that are no longer
usable for traditional purposes and that may have already been
compensated for in a previous treaty, ...
that's what I can think about. I'm not taking any side, because I don't
know about the issues, I only listed some forces that I would guess tend
to have a lot of influence on policy.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada
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