Languages in the Big Apple

New Jersey, the neighbor-state we love to hate, may be the latest place to incorporate changes into its constitution in an effort to sound less asshole-ish and more PC. The State Constitution currently states that “No idiot or insane person shall enjoy the right of suffrage.”

Other states that categorize their mentally disables as idiots: Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Ohio.

On November 6th, New Jersey voters will decide whether or not to eliminate the offensive terms, which, according to the bill’s advocates, “perpetuate myths” about the disabled.

“The perception is still out there that if you have a disability that you can’t fully function, that you can’t be a participating member of the community,” said Colleen O’Dell-Multer, a Brick resident who has multiple sclerosis and is legally blind. “That perception is totally inaccurate.”

As a 1976 court opinion stated, “A mentally retarded person need not be an `idiot’ and a mentally ill person need not be `insane.’”

But don’t hold your breath — in 2002, voters in New Mexico rejected a bill that would remove the same terms from its constitution.

Still, when you think about it, even if they change the language of the constitution, the rule stays the same. So while mentally disabled people will continue to be excluded from the voting process, idiots will be granted ballots! Quite the conundrum.

Source

New research suggests that Neanderthals, our closest extinct relatives, may have spoken just like we do. Best known for making tools similar to those our ancestors used, these cavemen were previously believed to have been grunters and groaners, but new data suggests that they possessed the same gene that we credit with our language and speech skills today.

The FOXP2 gene, which scientists assumed had developed into the modern human variant that it is today less than 200,000 years ago, was found in a bunch of Neanderthal bones collected in a cave in northern Spain.

This means, according to paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, that “It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do.”

The most interesting (or creepiest to imagine, maybe) part of the study is Krause’s theory on how the FOXP2 gene ended up in our biological make-up: he “noted that some might suggest that interbreeding or ‘gene flow’ (aka sex) between modern humans and Neanderthals led us to having FOXP2 in common.”

So if you’ve ever secretly thought those Geiko cavemen were hot, don’t feel bad. Your great-great-great-great-grandma did, too.

Source

The language police descended upon a Pennsylvania woman last week for swearing at her toilet.

Dawn Herb, a resident of Scranton, PA, let her john know who was boss after it overflowed onto the bathroom floor. Luckily, her rant was overheard by a next-door neighbor, who also happened to be a policeman. His virgin ears were so distraught that he called up some fellow coppers, who raced to the scene of the crime and stuck Herb with a disorderly conduct charge before things got out of hand. Ms. Herb, who reportedly doesn’t remember exactly what she said to the poor toilet but admits using profanity, now faces up to $300 in fines and 90 days in jail.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she told The Times-Tribune, “I was in my house. It’s not like I was outside or drunk. The toilet was overflowing and leaking down into the kitchen and I was yelling for my daughter to get the mop.”

Sure, lady. In her defense, she was potty-talking to her potty.

Source

Here’s some good news: British researchers recently released a study claiming that profanity in the workplace can “boost morale and esprit de corps.”

“The study observed workers at a mail-order warehouse in England, which employed 14 people, and six focus groups of 10 to 20 people, two in England and six in the USA,” according to the Eastern Daily Press. “They included full-time and part-time workers in a variety of organisations, ranging from restaurants and retail, to a bank, nursing home and hospital.”

Yehuda Baruch, professor of management at the University of East Anglia, adds, “For some people, the use of profanity is a way to create collegiality. For others, it’s a way to relieve stress.”

The study’s other shocking revelations include the fact that young people tend to swear more often than older folks, and that some people find swearing offensive – Baruch himself, actually. He’s quoted as saying: “Personally, I detest the use of profanity. I don’t use it myself and I think it’s something terrible to do.”

Hmm. If he finds it so appalling, why did he conduct a study on it? In any case, journalists got a little giddy in their coverage of the report; here are a few headlines, courtesy of USA Today:

F-Yeah! Swearing At Work Is OK, Study Finds

Office Expletives: H— Yeah!

That’s for $@#! Sure

What the …? Workplace profanity boosts morale: study

Hey-ho.. It’s eff to work we go

Warning: this is a long one!

Living in a multicultural urban environment like New York can really skew your perception of racism in America. Sure, we get regular reminders of xenophobia in many forms – the uproar over Brooklyn’s Arabic school, for example – but more often than not, blatant racism is blurred by the diverse make-up of the city. If you’re a white person who hates brown people, you probably shouldn’t live here.

So it’s both surprising and sobering to come across letters such as this one, from KansasCity.com, in which a woman rants against people who live in America and can’t speak English.

This is in regard to Zdenko Bergl’s letter “Coming to America” (10/5). I agree with Mr. Bergl, who has no sympathy for immigrants who do not learn English. They are just as capable as the immigrants from long ago.

My family came to America from Sicily. They also attended English classes and became U.S. citizens. They were true Americans who loved our country. They and the other immigrants from long ago learned to speak English and adopted the ways of the American people. Why can’t the new immigrants?

I get very upset when I go shopping to hear the salespeople speaking in their language instead of English. I get upset when products we buy today are printed in Spanish. Why Spanish? Why not in Italian, Russian, German, Arabic, etc.? Why has Spanish become our second language? Why can’t the new immigrants use English in America because that is our language?

If the immigrants want to use their own language in their home or with their own people, that’s great. But they should learn English if they want to live in our great country.

Virginia G. - Kansas City

Why Spanish? Well, Virginia, maybe because the Latino population makes up the largest minority group in the country? The question should be, Why not Spanish? The fact is, she and so many other racists continue to misuse the immigrant argument. Yes, the United States is a country of immigrants, many of whom were treated at some point or another with prejudice and contempt. But what these people fail to realize is how everything is arbitrary. Like Saussure’s declaration about the link between signifier and signified, so, too, is the fact that our country chose English as our national language instead of German. (It was a close call.) But what good is there in sanctifying English? Trust me, Virginia, it ain’t going anywhere. The treatment of the most prominent language in the world as a precious, disappearing commodity reminds me of an interview I once saw on a college campus about the importance of Women’s Studies. One boy, when asked what he thought about the department, replied proudly:

“I don’t see any buildings dedicated to Men’s Studies, do you?”

Take a look around, buddy. The whole bloody campus is dedicated to Men’s Studies. And giving Virginia Woolf a room of her own won’t wipe you or your manhood off the map. Nor will the Spanish on your cereal box.

A Tokyo judge recently ruled that the suicide of a 35-year old man was work-related, and that the government must pay reparations to the man’s family.

The man, who worked for a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company, left a suicide note detailing the verbal abuse he received from his boss, which purportedly caused him to spiral into a depression that ultimately ended his life. He wrote: “My defects echo around my head, and I now despise myself.”

According to his wife, the man’s boss abused him on a daily basis, throwing out insults including: “Your existence is offensive to my eyes. Get out of my sight,” “You’re a wage-snatcher parasitizing the company,” and “You’re a social phobic, aren’t you?”

The ruling is significant because it is the “first time a court has ruled harassment by senior staff, such as abusive language and bullying, as being the direct cause of suicide, and recognized such a death as being work-related.”

While the incident may seem odd to write about on a language website, the legal action taken in response to the bullying is a significant step for workplace security. And while this particular man in Japan chose to end only his own life, the outcomes of verbal abuse have been bloodier here in the U.S. – for every school massacre and work place shooting that’s happened in America, there is a story of bullying behind it. Seung-Hui Cho was repeatedly made fun of for his social ineptitude and taciturnity, the Columbine kids claimed they were acting out in response to a school-sanctioned favoritism of jocks and jock culture, and the list goes on. There’s a great book by Mark Ames entitled Going Postal that looks into the environments in which these violent outbreaks have occurred; in each case, there is endless evidence of verbal abuse.

In my last post I argued that language should belong to everybody. I was lying. It shouldn’t. The word “rape”, for example, shouldn’t belong to anybody who isn’t talking about, well, rape.

• Problem: Freddy likes to say, “I got raped by my biology final” instead of, “Gee. That biology final sure was tough!”
• My take: Ew.

• Problem: “The Yankees are really raping the Red Sox this season.”
• My take: Rapists are winners! Yay! Wait, what?

Sometimes these misogynistic bastards manage to evoke rape imagery without even using the word. As in:

Sandy: “So, Brad, I hear you’ve taken up gardening.”
Brad: “Yeah, I’ve been sticking my dick in that a little.”

You could argue that “sticking your dick” into something isn’t necessarily rape (the garden was asking for it, I swear!), but it’s still not a very pleasant image to conjure. And in the case of the horny biology final, a penis is given to an inanimate object. Phallocentrism in full effect.

Ultimately my problems with “rape” are identical to those that render any word offensive: by using the term lightly, we ignore and belittle the gravity of its literal meaning or original context.

So then, why can’t I stop calling things “retarded”? I guess our sensitivity is limited to the things we care about. I have no real connection to anyone who’s actually retarded, but hearing “rape” pisses me off because I’m a girl with a feminist agenda. Alas.

I suppose I’d be willing to make a deal of some sort. I’ll stop saying “retarded” if you stop saying “rape”? But in the muddled Venn Diagram that is derogation, a fair trade isn’t really possible. Maybe we’ve got to stay on the “Everyone Can Say Everything” Train a little longer, until every insult is equally impotent.

In the meantime, keep your voice down.

It’s a time-worn question: Who owns a word?

In trying to answer, I’ve come to recognize myself as a huge hypocrite. In this post, I’ll cover the pro-appropriation argument; in the next, I’ll show the flip-side.

So, who owns a word? My initial response is anybody and everybody. This can often mean trouble. Examples:

• Problem: Freddy gets mad when his friends joke about being “alcoholics” because his father’s alcoholism destroyed the family.
• My take: I think it’s funny to call anyone who drinks too much an alcoholic. And usually when you joke about people being alcoholics, it turns out they actually kind of are…

• Problem: Lilah doesn’t like it when “anorexic” is used to describe people who aren’t because she was hospitalized for the eating disorder.
• My take: Skinny people should be ridiculed as much as they are envied; I say calling them anorexic — or “ana” — is just dandy. Also, real anorexics are neurotic and annoying. We should make fun of them more often.

• Problem: Lisa has two siblings with Down Syndrome; she feels hurt and angry when people use the word “retarded”.
• My take: I’m a little torn here. I realize its offensive nature, and it pains my heart to think about it, but sometimes I let it slip. I can’t help it!

How very post-p.c. But is that really a problem? In the end, a word is just a word. Right? As any third-wave feminist will tell you, a derogatory term loses its power when it becomes the property of the people it’s meant to subjugate.

We all know the story — African-Americans have taken back n*gger, gays have nabbed fag and dyke, and feminists have stolen bitch, c*nt, whore, etc.

Language-mutilation in the form of appropriation — it’s a theory to which I like to subscribe. It’s both empowering, and, well, convenient.