TMA

TMA

Abstract

Social scientists refer to words like nigger, kike, spic, and wetback as ethnophaulisms. Such terms are the language of prejudice - verbal pictures of negative stereotypes. This research attempts to analyse the usage of neutral and coulr related words utilized by individuals on daily basis. This study was conducted by selecting a sample of 30 participants ( N=30). Results indicate that gender had no significance of the usage of color related words.

Introduction

Language not only reflects our attitudes, it also helps to define them. Language is riddled with terms which belittle, ignore or insult large sections of society. These are often legacies of the past, expressing outmoded attitudes. We have an obligation, therefore, to use words, phrases and images which do not reinforce or perpetuate offensive or discriminatory attitudes. The eradication of offensive and discriminatory language and the introduction of new words and phrases will help to alter attitudes.

Background of the study

Social scientists refer to words like nigger, kike, spic, and wetback as ethnophaulisms. Such terms are the language of prejudice - verbal pictures of negative stereotypes. Howard J. Ehrlich, a social scientist, argued that ethnophaulisms are of three types: disparaging nicknames (chink, dago, nigger, and so forth); explicit group devaluations ("Jew him down," or "niggering the land"); and irrelevant ethnic names used as a mild disparagement ("jewbird" for cuckoos having prominent beaks or "Irish confetti" for bricks thrown in a fight).3 All racial and ethnic groups have been victimized by racial slurs; however, no American group has suffered as many racial epithets as have blacks: coon, tom, savage, picanniny, mammy, buck, sambo, jigaboo, and buckwheat are typical.4 Many of these slurs became fully developed pseudo-scientific, literary, cinematic, and everyday caricatures of African Americans. These caricatures, whether spoken, written, or reproduced in material objects, reflect the extent, the vast network, of anti-black prejudice. Americans created a racial hierarchy with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom. The hierarchy was undergirded by an ideology which justified the use of deceit, manipulation, and coercion to keep blacks "in their place." Every major societal institution offered legitimacy to the racial hierarchy. Ministers preached that God had condemned blacks to be servants. Scientists measured black heads, brains, faces, and genitalia, seeking to prove that whites were genetically superior to blacks. White teachers, teaching only white students, taught that blacks were less evolved cognitively, psychologically, and socially. The entertainment media, from vaudeville to television, portrayed blacks as docile servants, happy-go-lucky idiots, and dangerous thugs. The criminal justice system sanctioned a double standard of justice, including its tacit approval of mob violence against blacks. Both American slavery and the Jim Crow caste system which followed were undergirded by anti-black images. The negative portrayals of blacks were both reflected in and shaped by everyday material objects: toys, postcards, ashtrays, detergent boxes, fishing lures, children's books. These items, and countless others, portrayed blacks with bulging, darting eyes, fire-red and oversized lips, jet black skin, and either naked or poorly ...