The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #130853 Message #2946869
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
17-Jul-10 - 04:48 PM
Thread Name: BS: offensive words
Subject: RE: BS: offensive words
The offence lies in the intent, whether that is an intent to insult, or an assumption of some kind of inferiority - but where a word is used frequently enough with an offensive intent, it is liable to convey that offensive intent even where it is not present. That is when it can become advisable to abandon it and use a word that doesn't have those associations.
Of course sooner or later it is liable to pick up those associations, since the people with the intent to offend will still be around degrading the language and the planet. So the caravan has to move on.
Alongside this there is the phenomena of people who seek to find offensive associations in words which do not in fact have such associations - essentially they are playing power games, sometimes with pretty sick motives.