The conventions for expressive content words
Geoff Nunberg recently
commented on the DC District Court's surprising
decision
to permit the Washington Redskins to retain their current name.
The decision is surprising because it is so clearly opposed to
the established conventions for using and understanding
epithets and other
expressive content words. In general, such
words have the property that their interpretation on a given occasion
of use is out of the speaker's control. It rests instead with
the audience.
It is quite common to find instances in which some hapless public figure
has forgotten this convention and tried to use an expressive content item
in a new way. Consider, for instance, the report in the
Las Vegas Review-Journal (July 27, 2000) titled
Garcia's epithet creates outrage,
which opens with 'The new superintendent of Clark County says his use of
a racial slur was not meant to be offensive'. According to the report,
Garcia said the following during a speech intended to
"make his stand against racism clear":
"Niggers come in all colors.
To me, a nigger is someone who doesn't respect themselves or others."
Garcia's attempt to redefine
nigger on the fly failed miserably. His
audience refused to budge on the word's usual interpretation. The passage is worth considering alongside something like, "Artists come in many forms.
To me, an artist is anyone who can eat fifty eggs in one sitting".
This redefinition of
artist is decidedly nonstandard, but an audience
is likely to accept the special usage.
In one famous incident, the audience's interpretation held sway even when
that interpretation was agreed to be basically incorrect by all
involved. In 1999, a Washington D.C. mayoral aide resigned after using the word
niggardly. The aide himself
told the
Washington Post,
"Although the word, which is defined as miserly, does not have any racial connotations, I realize that staff members present were offended by the word."
Niggardly has neither historical nor semantic links with any racial
epithet. Yet the fact that some speakers were
offended sufficed to generate controversy.
Why are the meanings of expressive content items basically out of their
users' control? The answer probably lies in the fact that they are a
kind of
performative word. Peformatives permit speakers
to accomplish certain acts merely by uttering them. The verb
promise
is a typical example: uttering
I promise to take out the trash just
is the act of promising to take out the trash. Similarly,
in uttering the word
nigger, Garcia expressed an extreme form of
disapprobation. The damage was done even before he had reached the verb
phrase offering his redefinition. The flap over
niggardly shows that
even origin and meaning can be beside the point if the word's sound pattern
has certain properties.
Thus, it is surprising that lawyers arguing against the name
Redskins
did not win their case merely by presenting evidence that
redskin
is likely to be interpreted by a large segment of the audience as offensive.
The court's assumption seems to have been that
every possible use of a word must be offensive in order to make it
an inappropriate brand name. But this just isn't how the conventions of
language work.
Posted by Christopher Potts at October 11, 2003 07:51 PM