A friend and I were driving through campus here one day, and when he mentioned the charms of a girl, I responded with the question, "You mean that Oriental girl?"
He replied that was an insensitive word to use, and that I should call her "Asian."
This was the first I’d heard that Oriental was an objectionable term, but maybe I don’t get out much (and I don’t have much need to call my Chinese friends "Oriental" to their face(s)). However, I had researched the names of the continents shortly before this incident, so my reply was, "Oh, I’m not supposed to use a word that comes from Latin for Eastern, but I can use a word that comes from the Assyrian word for Eastern?" His reply was neither memorable nor elucidating.
I suppose I am old-fashioned, but I think there is a trend to delegitimize any term of classification (or most of them.) For instance, someone in another post mentioned vertically-challenged for short.
I wonder, is there a one-word term for this process (that of ghettoizing a descriptive term because of either real or perceived attitudes)?
[quote author=agatsu link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#0 date=01/12/03 at 22:13:26]I wonder, is there a one-word term for this process (that of ghettoizing a descriptive term because of either real or perceived attitudes)?
stupidity from Latin stupiditas, foolish, irrational.
Usage Note: Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Orientalmeaning "eastern"is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.
I don’t want to go back to the euphemism thread, but to me the previous note will depend on the intention of the speaker. I have Asian / Oriental friends and they don’t really care what they are called if it is with respect. Thus, changing the word but keeping the derogatory intention is just a euphemism and does not change anything.
[quote author=uncronopio link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#2 date=01/12/03 at 22:29:03]
I don’t want to go back to the euphemism thread, but to me the previous note will depend on the intention of the speaker. I have Asian / Oriental friends and they don’t really care what they are called if it is with respect. Thus, changing the word but keeping the derogatory intention is just a euphemism and does not change anything.
The instantaneous act of word substitution is euphemism; I wondered about the process across time of finding umbrage in a descriptive term.
It seems the process is continual: retarded becomes mentally-disabled becomes mentally-challenged becomes differently-abled.
I now try to make sure I have elided the word Oriental from my vocabulary except when it comes to mountain ranges and the like, but I wouldn’t mind if the process itself were understood. I suppose naming it is a step in that process.
[quote author=agatsu link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#3 date=01/12/03 at 23:03:50]
The instantaneous act of word substitution is euphemism; I wondered about the process across time of finding umbrage in a descriptive term.
It seems the process is continual: retarded becomes mentally-disabled becomes mentally-challenged becomes differently-abled.
An interesting issue in your example is that Retarded, Moron, Imbecile and Idiot are all technical terms too. I would like to see a psychology textbook using politically correct language for its definitions :D
What exactly do Asian, oriental and the Orient refer to?
To me, oriental primarily meant people from the Far East – Japan, China, Korea, etc. Asian would mean people from anywhere in Asia. Thus, to refer to only the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc., we’d have to say East Asian, wouldn’t we?
Didn’t the Orient originally designate the Middle East or Arab countries? Harems, sultans, water pipes, 1001 Nights, that kind of thing?
Also, do the Australians and New Zealanders count as Asian?
[quote author=ilka link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#5 date=01/13/03 at 00:40:09] What exactly do Asian, oriental and the Orient refer to?
Strictly speaking, Asian is an adjective that qualifies or limits an aspect of the continent of Asia. Orient comes from a Latin word meaning ‘rising’ and refers to the east, the direction the sun rises from. (Occident, the west, comes from a Latin word meaning ‘setting.’) As a European word, the Orient referred loosely to the non-Christian parts of the Old World excluding Africa (although perhaps including Egypt), and its adjective Oriental, used as a noun, referred to any of the inhabitants of that region.
In our globalized world, it seems that using Oriental to describe a person is no longer PC, and that East Asian, South Asian, etc. are more appropriate terms.
Didn’t the Orient originally designate the Middle East or Arab countries? Harems, sultans, water pipes, 1001 Nights, that kind of thing?
It probably did, back in the days when, to a European, anything southeast of Vienna was something akin to an uncharted wilderness. Remember that at one time the Ottoman Empire did almost reach Vienna!
The AHD offers an interesting Usage Note:
—————————————
Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning "eastern"—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.
[quote author=Agoraphile link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#8 date=01/13/03 at 22:12:50] . . . exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. . . .
Hmmm. Sounds like Europe, which, if I have myself oriented properly, is East of North American.
While I can understand that referring to someone or somewhere else as eastern is eurocentric and might be offensive to anyone sensitive to such things, I can’t see how that applies to oriental, whose alternative is occidental.
I have a certain sensitivity to the latter word describing me, as I fear it bundles up too many peoples and cultures into a too simple term. So oriental would be guilty of the same failing. But if we are to ever finish meaningful discussions, we need to have some verbal shortcuts.
referring to someone or somewhere else as eastern is eurocentric and might be offensive
It doesn’t seem strange to me that someone sitting in the middle of Europe should be Eurocentric. What else would they be? I’m quite certain the Chinese are sinocentric. The eskimos are probably boreocentric. I’m certainly Texocentric. Surely, in our PC world, we’re not pretending we don’t have a viewpoint?
Maybe we should use left and right instead of west and east. Translate into Latin (naturally) and we’d get:
There’s that sinister guy in the cowboy hat. I prefer the dexterous guy selling egg rolls.
[quote author=uncronopio link=board=what;num=1042427606;start=0#2 date=01/12/03 at 22:29:03]From the yD site:
I have Asian / Oriental friends and they don’t really care what they are called if it is with respect. Thus, changing the word but keeping the derogatory intention is just a euphemism and does not change anything.
Yes, any term can be used as a put-down. Some students having lunch in my classroom one day started dicussing some "gooks… " I interrupted and reminded them of my room rules of not putdowns. They startde their story anew saying "Vietnamese" with exactly the emphasis they’d used on "gooks." I don’t think they really understood why I stopped them again.
