Asian vs. Oriental?
Criag
category.
IMHO, Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese can be grouped collectively as
Asians.
Furthermore, they have very similar common physical traits.
I am not sure whether we should call Thais, Filipinos, Malaysians,
Indonesians, Indians and Pakistanis Asians or not.
Because their overall physical appearance is quite different from
Chinese/Taiwanese/Koreans/Japanese.
So I am always confused who belong to Asian and Oriental. I wish to learn
what distinguishes between Oriental and Asian.
What do you think? Craig
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
I believe the answer is different in different English-speaking
countries. In the U.S. (where I live), "Asian" as an ethnic
description generally means the people indigenous to the region from
China to Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It probably also
includes Mongolia and maybe far eastern Siberia (but maybe not the
Ainu). There's also the official term "Asian / Pacific Islander",
which adds islands from New Zealand to Hawaii, but probably not
Australia (though I could be wrong there).
We don't usually use "Asian" for people from the Indian subcontinent
(though we may call them "South Asian", and we have the phrase "Asian
Indian" when there's a possibility of confusion with American Indians).
For other parts of the continent, we have "the Middle East" (which
probably includes Egypt and might even go all the way to Morocco),
"Central Asia", and "Siberia".
"Oriental" is pretty much part of history. If I heard it, I'd guess it
meant about the same as the "Asian" I defined above. I'd also probably
guess that the speaker rather childishly wanted to shock people with
"political incorrectness".
As for physical appearance, that depends a lot on the viewer's
background. I can't tell Vietnamese or Filipinos from Chinese by
appearance, but I can easily tell them from Indians.
Sorry if this is unclear. I'm doing my best to describe confusing
terminology.
Do you know that your signature is "Craig" (a familiar name) and your
e-mail address includes it, but your e-mail nickname (or whatever that
name before your address is called) says "Criag" (which I've never seen
as a name)?
--
Jerry Friedman
Criag
> China to Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It probably also
> includes Mongolia and maybe far eastern Siberia (but maybe not the
It sounds to me that the term Asian is based on the people by geographical
classification not by race.
If that is the case, what you said above is correct. I always thought that
the term is used by race.
Do you recall the movie entitled "Oriental Express"? I thought that the
train did not run to China.
The name sounds otherwise.
Craig
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1165961062.0...@j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Hatunen
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"Oriental" means "east", just as "occidental" means "west". The
question is, "East of where?" The answer has been "East of
Europe" ("East of Greece", really), raising ethnocentric
quesitons about just why the direction should be based on Europe
as the central point. From an American's point of view, the
"East" is to the west.
The linguistic waters are muddied by the fact that "Asia" seems
to mean the place the sun rises.
So-called "oriental rugs" mostly come from what we call the "near
east" or "mid-east".
>As for physical appearance, that depends a lot on the viewer's
>background. I can't tell Vietnamese or Filipinos from Chinese by
>appearance, but I can easily tell them from Indians.
I suspect that may depend on the particular Indians involved
since they don't all look alike. While there is some overlap in
appearance of Asians, a Vietnamese and Filipino are fairly easy
to tell apart (Filipinos are largely austronesian).
Likewise it easy to deistinguish them from a Chinese (depending
on where the Chinese person comes from).
But then, I've lived in a Filipino district not far from some
very large Chinese districts (the San Francisco Peninsula).
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> > description generally means the people indigenous to the region from
> > China to Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It probably also
> > includes Mongolia and maybe far eastern Siberia (but maybe not the
>
> It sounds to me that the term Asian is based on the people by geographical
> classification not by race.
> If that is the case, what you said above is correct. I always thought that
> the term is used by race.
No, it's race. Geographically, Israelis are Asian, but you're unlikely
to hear them called that in the U.S.
Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
(though there's some controversy on the point). In European and
Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
("Asian", formerly "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid"). Indians, Bangladeshis,
etc. are considered to belong to a different race ("Caucasian", though
probably a lot of Americans don't know that). That racial division is
precisely the reason we Americans restrict "Asian" to people from the
Far East.
To you, the racial dividing lines may look different. Our views
probably reflect our cultures, not physical reality. In fact, most
anthropologists would argue that there aren't any physical races, even
loosely defined.
> Do you recall the movie entitled "Oriental Express"? I thought that the
> train did not run to China.
> The name sounds otherwise.
...
I do recall /Murder on the Orient Express/. (The murderer was
[CENSORED].) As I said, the term "Oriental" is now only historical.
The train was named a long time ago, when the word "Orient" included
Turkey. Furthermore, it was named by British people, and as I said, I
was talking about American usage; British usage may be quite different.
Possibly some British people here will explain it to you.
Wikipedia says the current Orient Express runs only from Paris to
Vienna. Nobody considers Vienna part of the Orient.
--
Jerry Friedman
Default User
> Criag wrote:
> Do you know that your signature is "Craig" (a familiar name) and your
> e-mail address includes it, but your e-mail nickname (or whatever that
> name before your address is called) says "Criag" (which I've never
> seen as a name)?
The usual term is "handle". Similar I suppose to the CB radio nicknames
that were called that.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > Criag wrote:
>
> > Do you know that your signature is "Craig" (a familiar name) and your
> > e-mail address includes it, but your e-mail nickname (or whatever that
> > name before your address is called) says "Criag" (which I've never
> > seen as a name)?
>
>
> The usual term is "handle". Similar I suppose to the CB radio nicknames
> that were called that.
>From the still older use of "handle" as slang for "name".
I know "handle" and "moniker" in newsgroups, but if you get an e-mail
from "'Jerry Friedman' <jerry_f...@yahoo.com>", is the first part
of that my handle?
--
Jerry Friedman
Robert Bannister
For me, "oriental" conjures up images of what was once the "mystic
East", a land of spices and colourful costumes and customs. Today, it is
a bad word in America and is not often used (of people) elsewhere.
As to who "Asians" are, I think Jerry answered that. It depends on who's
talking. In Britain, it means people from the subcontinent. In
Australia, it means people from SE Asia from China to Thailand, but
probably not including Indonesians or Filipinos, but it may include the
Japanese and Koreans. Still, "Asia" remains a geographical term that
still includes everywhere from Japan to Turkey.
--
Rob Bannister
dontbother
Asia is a continent, so anyone who comes from that continent is, in
one sense, an Asian, just as anyone who was born and raised in the
USA is an American, regardless of what they look like. For many,
but not all, Westerners, it has nothing to do with "race" or
physical appearance but with geography.
As someone else has already said, the Orient means everywhere east
of Europe (where the huge and racially, ethnically, religiously,
and culturally diverse continent of Asia lies) and the Occident,
everywhere west of the Orient, with the Pacific Ocean dividing the
Orient and the Occident.
People from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are often labeled "west
Asian" or "southwest Asian", based purely on geography, and those
specifically from India are also called "East Indian", to
distinguish them from the misnamed "American Indians" in North and
South America. China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are Far East Asia.
The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos,
Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam are Southeast Asia.
In the West, we usually don't use "Oriental" to describe people
from Asia or the Middle East, but Far East Asians often use that
word to describe themselves, much to the consternation of the pea
under the mattresses in the brains of politically correct
Westerners.
You can safely use the word "Asian" to describe anything and anyone
from the continent of Asia as long as you don't assume that you are
making anything more than a geographically specific statement. It's
almost always better, except when trying to make useful and
appropriate generalizations, to describe people by their personal
cultural background and nationality rather than by any aspect of
their appearance, which almost always smacks of racism.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
Unmunged email: /at/easypeasy.com
"as long as the human population is 90% gullible, violence-prone
dipshits, the last thing you want to do is increase the supply of
unclaimed religious real estate"[i.e., the moon]. Scott Adams, The
Dilbert Blog, December 06, 2006 http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
Mark Brader
> I am from Far East Asia. So I think I belong to the general Asian
> category.
> IMHO, Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese can be grouped collectively as
> Asians.
> Furthermore, they have very similar common physical traits.
Agreed. When I say "Oriental", I'm referring to people with those
physical traits, or the countries they typically originate from.
As someone who doesn't deal with people coming from those countries
on a regular basis, I have trouble telling them apart -- and that's
pretty much my criterion for the term "Oriental". It includes anyone
who is either from one of those ethnic groups or who I might easily
mistake for being from one of them.
Some people in North America now consider the word "Oriental" offensive
and have chosen to substitute "Asian". I am not one of them. In my
usage "Oriental" is a neutral descriptive term with a meaning no less
precise than many other terms applied to physical categories of people.
I would not normally use "Asian" as a descriptive term for people because
I would want to to include anyone from the peoples of Asia, and there are
enough different groups of people that it is not a useful description.
--
Mark Brader "'A matter of opinion'[?] I have to say you are
Toronto right. There['s] your opinion, which is wrong,
m...@vex.net and mine, which is right." -- Gene Ward Smith
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Hatunen
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Criag wrote:
>> > description generally means the people indigenous to the region from
>> > China to Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It probably also
>> > includes Mongolia and maybe far eastern Siberia (but maybe not the
>>
>> It sounds to me that the term Asian is based on the people by geographical
>> classification not by race.
>> If that is the case, what you said above is correct. I always thought that
>> the term is used by race.
>
>No, it's race. Geographically, Israelis are Asian, but you're unlikely
>to hear them called that in the U.S.
>Some are Asian.
>Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
>(though there's some controversy on the point).
Only from those who really want race to be some sort of defining
characteristic.
>In European and
>Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
>Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
>("Asian", formerly "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid").
That is, of course, rubbish. The peoples of Asia came from many
different gentetic beginnings, sve for being homo sapiens.
>Indians, Bangladeshis,
>etc. are considered to belong to a different race ("Caucasian", though
>probably a lot of Americans don't know that). That racial division is
>precisely the reason we Americans restrict "Asian" to people from the
>Far East.
Hm. Historically, Asains live on the Asian "continent".
What do you call the Turks?
>To you, the racial dividing lines may look different. Our views
>probably reflect our cultures, not physical reality. In fact, most
>anthropologists would argue that there aren't any physical races, even
>loosely defined.
Quite true.
>> Do you recall the movie entitled "Oriental Express"? I thought that the
>> train did not run to China.
>> The name sounds otherwise.
It ran, of course, to Istanbul.
>...
>
>I do recall /Murder on the Orient Express/. (The murderer was
>[CENSORED].) As I said, the term "Oriental" is now only historical.
>The train was named a long time ago, when the word "Orient" included
>Turkey. Furthermore, it was named by British people, and as I said, I
>was talking about American usage; British usage may be quite different.
> Possibly some British people here will explain it to you.
"Oriental" is from the ancient Greeks.
>Wikipedia says the current Orient Express runs only from Paris to
>Vienna. Nobody considers Vienna part of the Orient.
The Ottomans didn't quite conquer it.
Ray O'Hara
"Hatunen" <hat...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:jlaun2h0q550ugd38...@4ax.com...
because it was a European concept held in Europe.
China defined itself as "the middle kingdom".
Anyone who sees Oriental as racist is looking awfully hard for it.
If there is any racism in this post it is on your part.
Ray O'Hara
"Mark Brader" <m...@vex.net> wrote in message
news:12nunl8...@corp.supernews.com...
> "Craig" writes:
> > I am from Far East Asia. So I think I belong to the general Asian
> > category.
> > IMHO, Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese can be grouped collectively
as
> > Asians.
> > Furthermore, they have very similar common physical traits.
>
> Agreed. When I say "Oriental", I'm referring to people with those
> physical traits, or the countries they typically originate from.
>
> As someone who doesn't deal with people coming from those countries
> on a regular basis, I have trouble telling them apart -- and that's
> pretty much my criterion for the term "Oriental". It includes anyone
> who is either from one of those ethnic groups or who I might easily
> mistake for being from one of them.
>
> Some people in North America now consider the word "Oriental" offensive
> and have chosen to substitute "Asian". I am not one of them. In my
> usage "Oriental" is a neutral descriptive term with a meaning no less
> precise than many other terms applied to physical categories of people.
>
> I would not normally use "Asian" as a descriptive term for people because
> I would want to to include anyone from the peoples of Asia, and there are
> enough different groups of people that it is not a useful description.
Europeans are made up of many ethnic types too, Slavs, Celts
,Germanic/Goths, Maygars.
John J. Chew III
Mark Brader <m...@vex.net> wrote:
>"Craig" writes:
>> I am from Far East Asia. So I think I belong to the general Asian
>> category.
>> IMHO, Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese can be grouped collectively as
>> Asians.
>> Furthermore, they have very similar common physical traits.
>
>Agreed. When I say "Oriental", I'm referring to people with those
>physical traits, or the countries they typically originate from.
>
>As someone who doesn't deal with people coming from those countries
>on a regular basis, I have trouble telling them apart -- and that's
>pretty much my criterion for the term "Oriental". It includes anyone
>who is either from one of those ethnic groups or who I might easily
>mistake for being from one of them.
I agree that in Toronto, "Oriental" is a neutral word referring to
someone who would not attract attention if suitably dressed in a
small town in China, Japan or nearby countries with populations of
similar appearance. "Asian" seems vaguer to me, and is sometimes
used here as an abbreviation for "South Asian" when referring to
people from India and its environs.
>Some people in North America now consider the word "Oriental" offensive
>and have chosen to substitute "Asian". I am not one of them. In my
>usage "Oriental" is a neutral descriptive term with a meaning no less
>precise than many other terms applied to physical categories of people.
Most Americans I know find the word "Oriental" offensive. When they
visit Canada, if they become aware that they are in a foreign country,
some begin to wonder what the local term for an "Asian-American" is,
which can lead to any number of different interesting conversations.
1. We don't have a word, because we don't have a bureaucratic
or cultural tradition of requiring people to identify their "race".
2. We call them "Orientals" and don't have a problem with that.
3. We find out what their cultural background is and specifically
identify them as Japanese-, Chinese- or Korean-Canadians, etc.,
sometimes going so far as to identify for how many generations they
have been in Canada.
4. We call them "science majors", "chinks", "japs" or "gooks", depending
on the degree and nature of the offence we wish to cause.
The ones that ask the question never seem to find any of the above
answers completely satisfying.
John
--
John Chew (poslfit on MD) * jjc...@math.utoronto.ca * http://www.poslfit.com
Oleg Lego
>Hm. Historically, Asains live on the Asian "continent".
>
>What do you call the Turks?
Occidental Asians, of course.
The problem with Craig's (Criag's?) question is that he his trying to
figure out the difference between Orientals and Asians, which is
rather like trying to figure out the difference between anglophones
and Canadians.
mb
Criag wrote:
> > description generally means the people indigenous to the region from
> > China to Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It probably also
> > includes Mongolia and maybe far eastern Siberia (but maybe not the
>
> It sounds to me that the term Asian is based on the people by geographical
> classification not by race.
> If that is the case, what you said above is correct. I always thought that
> the term is used by race.
>
> Do you recall the movie entitled "Oriental Express"?
Orient Express
> I thought that the
> train did not run to China.
> The name sounds otherwise.
That's just to you. To others, that would be extreme-oriental, and
Turkey-in- Europe the Near East. There isn't a single way of looking at
it.
Matthew Huntbach
The reason the word "oriental" is suspect is that it was widely used at
a time when racial stereotyping was a normal part of culture and remarks we
would now find offensively racist were a part of normal discourse. So the
word "oriental" would be used with stereotypical and derogatory views about
east Asian people. Compare with the word "nigger", which one could argue just
means "black" and has no explicitly derogatory origin - it's the context
in which that word was used in the past which now makes it unacceptable.
While "oriental" hasn't gone nearly as far as that, it has become a word
some described by it have become uncomfortable about, and I can see the
reason for it and would avoid it myself.
Matthew Huntbach
Matthew Huntbach
> Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
> (though there's some controversy on the point). In European and
> Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
> Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
> ("Asian", formerly "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid"). Indians, Bangladeshis,
> etc. are considered to belong to a different race ("Caucasian", though
> probably a lot of Americans don't know that). That racial division is
> precisely the reason we Americans restrict "Asian" to people from the
> Far East.
In Britain, the usage is precisely the opposite to that. See, for example,
the following page from the Commission for Racial Equality:
http://www.cre.gov.uk/gdpract/em_cat_ew.html
which recommends "ethnic monitoring" forms with one section for
"Asian" (subsections Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), and a separate
section for "Chinese or other ethnic group".
Here the word "Caucasian" refers to someone from the Caucasus. Usage to mean
a wider racial category would only come from extreme wannabe Americans.
That usage comes from discredited racist theories, it is always a surprise
to me to find it is still considered acceptable and widely used in the US.
Matthew Huntbach
Vinny Burgoo
>The problem with Craig's (Criag's?) question is that he his trying to
>figure out the difference between Orientals and Asians, which is
>rather like trying to figure out the difference between anglophones
>and Canadians.
It's more like the difference between Americans and Americans.
--
V
Brad Germolene
<m...@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> wrought:
On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
--
Brad Germolene
athel...@yahoo
Criag wrote:
[ ... ]
> So I am always confused who belong to Asian and Oriental. I wish to learn
> what distinguishes between Oriental and Asian.
As others have pointed out, you are asking for precision where none
exists, and where usage varies widely from place to place. Before I had
lived in the US I probably wouldn't have used the word Oriental at all
to refer to a person. Nowadays, if I use it I tend to use it in the US
sense, i.e. I don't think I'd usually call an Indian an Oriental.
Outside the English-speaking world there is even less uniformity than
there is within it. Uruguayans refer to themselves as Oriental (the
official name of their country being The Oriental Republic of Uruguay,
where "Oriental" just means on the east bank of the river), though
admittedly they mainly use this term among themseves, knowing that the
rest of us will be confused.
athel
nanc...@verizon.net
jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I know "handle" and "moniker" in newsgroups, but if you get an e-mail
> from "'Jerry Friedman' <jerry_f...@yahoo.com>", is the first part
> of that my handle?
I would refer to that as your "screen name."
Oleg Lego
I suppose it depends on what you consider the three terms (Asian,
Occidental Asian, and Oriental Asian) to mean.
I take them to mean:
Asian: referring to all of Asia, the continent
Oriental Asian: referring to east Asia, whether it be geographically,
culturally, or racially split.
Occidental Asian: referring to every part of Asia not considered
Oriental Asia.
Occidental Asian is more specific than Occidental used by itself,
Oriental does not seem to be.
So I stand by my contention that asking the difference between Asian
and Oriental, is like asking the difference between thing one, which
is included in, and part of, thing two.
Craig
> a land of spices and colourful costumes and customs. Today, it is a bad
> word in America and is not often used (of people) elsewhere.
This is a bit surprising. I never felt the word Oriental offended me or
other Asians.
The word Oriental always reminds me of "Oriental rug". I thought that
Oriental rug was mainly made in Persians (i.e. Iran).
I never thought that Persians were called Orientals or Asians. But as
others described, the word Oriental does not bear much significance as the
word Asian. At home, I address us as Asians but my wife, Orientals. I
noticed that the word Oriental has been seldom used in media in the US. I
wonder whether the word Oriental is a dyeing word in the US except for
referring to Oriental Rugs. Craig
"Robert Bannister" <rob...@it.net.au> wrote in message
news:4u8uhtF...@mid.individual.net...
dontbother
>> For me, "oriental" conjures up images of what was once the
>> "mystic East", a land of spices and colourful costumes and
>> customs. Today, it is a bad word in America and is not often
>> used (of people) elsewhere.
>
> This is a bit surprising. I never felt the word Oriental
> offended me or other Asians.
It doesn't offend Asians, but it does offend Asian-Americans and
all the non-Asian-American Americans who have chosen to take
surrogate offense for Asian-Americans. Like the Western
missionaries who are determined to convert the world to their brand
of theocracy, they are convinced that anyone not them is weak and
incapable of taking offense all by themselves and that they need
surrogate parents to guide them to the right path.
> The word Oriental always reminds me of "Oriental rug".
Oriental carpet.
> I thought that Oriental rug was mainly made in Persians
> (i.e. Iran).
Persia (old name for Iran). Persian rug.
> I never thought that Persians were called Orientals or
> Asians.
They are inhabitants of the continent of Asia.Therefore, they are
Asians. That was the Orient for Europeans who named it the Orient.
Therefore, they are Orientals.
> But as others described, the word Oriental does not bear much
> significance as the word Asian.
It is an obsolete term in the West, but not in the Far East.
> At home, I address us as Asians but my wife, Orientals.
> I noticed that the word Oriental has been seldom used in
> media in the US.
The media in the US do not want to be accused of using racist or
otherwise discriminatory language. It is considered a demeaning
term in the USA.
> I wonder whether the word Oriental is a dyeing word in the US
Only when referrring to coloring the wool used to make Oriental
carpets. They are dyed. But the word is "dying" (i.e., it is
moribund) in politically correct society in the US.
> except for referring to Oriental Rugs.
Most Asian-Americans don't want the word used for anything but
Oriental carpets.
Craig
I am not quite understood on this one, unless you are an Asian American
yourself.
I don't get it why it offends Asian Americans.
We are Asian Americans too.
I felt that non-Asian Americans are overly sensitized on this one.
IMHO, after reading all those postings, the word Oriental seems to be too
vague even between Europeans/British and Americans.
That could be reason why its usage has expired a long ago.
Craig
"dontbother" <dontb...@mushmail.mom> wrote in message
news:Xns9898ECE...@139.175.55.249...
Donna Richoux
> On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
> are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
> coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
> of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
> of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
> following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
> school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
> of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
> lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
[In case it is not a Big Deal elsewhere -- five prostitutes have been
murdered in the last few days in England, and British TV has talked of
little else.]
The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
LFS
AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Donna Richoux
Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within that world
or outside of it?
Roland Hutchinson
Writers of cop shows on American TV, for one.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Craig
After posting the previous reply, I now have a second thought about this.
In the past, nobody ever addressed me an Oriental.
If someobody calls me an Oriental, I won't be amused because I am not an
Oriental but an Asian.
I was not born in Iran, Turkey or Inida but born in Asia. That is the only
reason why I would be upset not because of the political correctness.
It's like calling your wife or girl friend a wrong name.
That simple!
Craig
Frances Kemmish
>
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
> CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>
It's widely heard on US TV these days - perhaps it's a term that became
popular after you moved to the Netherlands.
I don't think you'll hear "police chief" used in British police circles
- but that might have changed since I moved away.
Fran
the Omrud
> Brad Germolene <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
> > are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
> > coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
> > of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
> > of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
> > following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
> > school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
> > of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
> > lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
Letters to Radio 4 have complained about the use of "prostitute" but
the BBC has stuck to its guns and not attempted to change it. An
academic lady was on this morning arguing that it shouldn't be used
but I think she lost the point.
> [In case it is not a Big Deal elsewhere -- five prostitutes have been
> murdered in the last few days in England, and British TV has talked of
> little else.]
And this has happened in one of the most peaceful corners of England,
and in only two weeks, which is unprecedented anywhere in the UK.
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
> CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
"working girl" is very common slang for a prostitute, especially
amongst those who come into contact with them, e.g. police, social
services, lawyers. "girls" is another common way of describing them
collectively.
--
David
=====
dontbother
>> > asked the police chief a question, using the phrase "working
>> > girls" three times. I have *never* heard "working girl" being
>> > used to mean anything sexual -- it refers to honest work in
>> > offics and factories and the like. Msybe the CNN reporter
>> > mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>>
>> AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>
> Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within
> that world or outside of it?
And people have accused me of being out of it. I've known that term
for ages. I don't know when it was first introduced. OED has 1968 as
its first citation:
[quote]
1968 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Fall 52 Working girl, n., a
prostitute. 1971 N.Y. Times 9 Aug. 33/5 They call themselves
‘working girls’.... Their work is a ‘business’, or even...a ‘social
service’.... By the prostitute's code, prostitution is moral. 1984
Chicago Sun-Times 26 Mar. 12 U.S. Prostitutes has estimated that
thousands of ‘working girls’ will travel to San Francisco for
business generated by the convention.
[/quote]
K. Edgcombe
LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>
I've come across it before; indeed I thought it was fairly widespread. I've
also seen "professional" tout court, though not
"professional women", which I thought was people like Laura and me.
Katy
Brad Germolene
wrought:
Not mistakenly, since "working girl" is a fairly common euphemism,
leading to some confusion (and perhaps no small amount of
disappointment) when the Melanie Griffith flick with that title came
out in the UK.
Other common BrE terms include the BillBrE "tom" and the TelegraphBrE
"tart" (see today's for too many examples of that). Meanwhile, one
Suffolk resident was even reported somewhere in something I read this
morning as saying he preferred to call them "ladies of the night" out
of "respect". Er, yes. Fine.
--
Brad Germolene
Brad Germolene
wrought:
>LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
Both. I wonder whether it might have originated from their traditional
greeting: "Lookin' for business, love?"
--
Brad Germolene
andy M
jerry_f...@yahoo.com schrieb:
> Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
> (though there's some controversy on the point).
Actually I amazed to see someone claim this - There is no controversy
whatsoever outside of the shaven-headed combat-booted lunatic fringe.
"Race" as a scientific concept is utterly debunked now that it has been
shown that individuals that would be regarded as being of the same
"race" can have bigger genetic differences than groups of different
"race". Even the idea of cultural race is pretty comic if you look at
most of the world. Does a US WASP belong to the same "race" as a UK
geordie?
> In European and
> Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
> Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
> ("Asian", formerly "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid").
Thats certainly not universally (if at all) true for European culture.
"Asian" would usually refer to someone of roughly Japanese/Chinese
appearance. In the UK in particular it would refer to someone who would
appear to be of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi etc descent. "Mongolian"
is someone who looks completely different. I only know the word
"Mongoloid", whatever its correct use, as a frowned-on and probably
obsolete description of people with Downs-Syndrome, but I may be very
out of date on that.
> To you, the racial dividing lines may look different. Our views
> probably reflect our cultures, not physical reality. In fact, most
> anthropologists would argue that there aren't any physical races, even
> loosely defined.
Indeed. There are people with similar external appearance, but thats
about it.
> As I said, the term "Oriental" is now only historical.
It has a slightly quaint sound, but its perfectly common usage, if
mostly used to decribe a style. I wouldnt use it to decribe a person,
but I would use it to describe a bed or the furnishings of a room,
whereby the actual style could be anything from chinese to Indian and
any combination.
> The train was named a long time ago, when the word "Orient" included
> Turkey.
I would assume the train is so named because it went to Istanbul, which
is partly built on the Asian continent and so was probably considered
"gateway to the orient".
> Furthermore, it was named by British people, and as I said, I
> was talking about American usage; British usage may be quite different.
Indeed.
andy M
R H Draney
Paul McCartney (not yet Sir), first line of "Honey Pie", on the "White Album",
1968....r
--
"Keep your eye on the Bishop. I want to know when
he makes his move", said the Inspector, obliquely.
Matthew Huntbach
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
> CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
Google shows examples of both usages, but the "prostitute" usage seems to be
the more common, I think is very widely understood, to the point where one
should be very careful about using the phrase "working girl" in its literal
meaning.
Matthew Huntbach
R J Valentine
...
} word to describe themselves, much to the consternation of the pea
} under the mattresses in the brains of politically correct
} Westerners.
...
Yikes!
--
rjv
Matthew Huntbach
No, Iran, Turkey and India are part of Asia. When the word "oriental" was
more widely used to mean a type of person, it was often used to mean
a person of Chinese or other east Asian origin, precisely to distinguish
them from a person of south or west Asian origin.
Matthew Huntbach
Jacqui
> Other common BrE terms include the BillBrE "tom" and the TelegraphBrE
> "tart" (see today's for too many examples of that). Meanwhile, one
> Suffolk resident was even reported somewhere in something I read this
> morning as saying he preferred to call them "ladies of the night" out
> of "respect". Er, yes. Fine.
That was, I believe, the father of one of the
then-missing-now-declared-dead girls. Who might be forgiven for not
wanting to think of his daughter as a tart.
The objection to the term, as I've heard it, is that they are being
described as prostitutes first and women second, in many reports. That
is not entirely consistent with how the media treats other missing
people or found corpses. (We do hear of 'missing schoolgirls', but we
don't hear 'missing teacher' or 'missing retail assistant' as primary
descriptors.)
Jac
HVS
> Brad Germolene wrote:
>
>> Other common BrE terms include the BillBrE "tom" and the
>> TelegraphBrE "tart" (see today's for too many examples of
>> that). Meanwhile, one Suffolk resident was even reported
>> somewhere in something I read this morning as saying he
>> preferred to call them "ladies of the night" out of "respect".
>> Er, yes. Fine.
>
> That was, I believe, the father of one of the
> then-missing-now-declared-dead girls. Who might be forgiven for
> not wanting to think of his daughter as a tart.
>
> The objection to the term, as I've heard it, is that they are
> being described as prostitutes first and women second, in many
> reports.
It seems to be very much a media thing -- as far as I've heard, the
police spokesbods have consistently referred to them simply as
"women".
> That is not entirely consistent with how the media
> treats other missing people or found corpses. (We do hear of
> 'missing schoolgirls', but we don't hear 'missing teacher' or
> 'missing retail assistant' as primary descriptors.)
I'm not sure about that -- it's not occupational, but they do tend
to insist on writing about "missing mothers/grandmothers" and
"feisty grandmother fights back" (but not, of course, "missing
father/grandfather", etc.)
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
the Omrud
That's true when there is only one, but if somebody had murdered five
geography teachers in 10 days, that would become one of the major
factors in the reports.
--
David
=====
Wood Avens
>The objection to the term, as I've heard it, is that they are being
>described as prostitutes first and women second, in many reports. That
>is not entirely consistent with how the media treats other missing
>people or found corpses. (We do hear of 'missing schoolgirls', but we
>don't hear 'missing teacher' or 'missing retail assistant' as primary
>descriptors.)
That's argument works well if there's only one of them. But if it's
five women with the same profession, then that profession becomes much
more significant. As the interviewer on the Today programme remarked,
if it had been five librarians or five bank managers no-one would have
queried it.
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
Brad Germolene
Point taken, but if serial killers targeted just teachers or just
retail assistants, surely we would, wouldn't we?
And even if that is the objection to "prostitute", what good is being
done or harm avoided by calling them "street sex workers". Isn't that
still putting their (oldest) profession before their human condition?
--
Brad Germolene
HVS
-snip-
> Point taken, but if serial killers targeted just teachers or
> just retail assistants,
On another usage issue, I've heard at least one discussion on the
news that made a distinction between a "serial killer" and a "spree
killer". (They weren't sure which this one was, but were pulling
towards "spree" rather than "serial".)
I'd not come across the latter term before, but I think I can see the
utility of distinguishing between the two types.
Skitt
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> Indians, Bangladeshis,
>> etc. are considered to belong to a different race ("Caucasian",
>> though probably a lot of Americans don't know that). That racial
>> division is precisely the reason we Americans restrict "Asian" to
>> people from the Far East.
>
> Hm. Historically, Asains live on the Asian "continent".
>
> What do you call the Turks?
Well, some of the women might be referred to as being ornamental.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
Brad Germolene
wrought:
>On 13 Dec 2006, Brad Germolene wrote
>
>-snip-
>
>> Point taken, but if serial killers targeted just teachers or
>> just retail assistants,
>
>On another usage issue, I've heard at least one discussion on the
>news that made a distinction between a "serial killer" and a "spree
>killer". (They weren't sure which this one was, but were pulling
>towards "spree" rather than "serial".)
>
>I'd not come across the latter term before, but I think I can see the
>utility of distinguishing between the two types.
Aren't spree killers ones who go postal, having a particularly bad
bad-hair day? And don't they usually top themselves with their last
bullet?
--
Brad Germolene
John Dean
I first heard it used by representatives of one or other of the
organisations which looks to represent prostitutes to the media. That was
where I also heard "sex worker". OED has "working girl" as US slang from the
60s. It may be there was an effort to emphasise the difference between
female and male prostitutes.
See, eg,
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/crossroadswomenscentre/ECP/ecphome.htm
http://tinyurl.com/ds4ak
--
John Dean
Oxford
John Dean
I think it's pretty common. A quick search of the Guardian archive shows
"missing teacher" or "missing doctor" to be fairly standard, especially in
headlines. "Missing father" makes several appearances.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Fred
"R H Draney" <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:elpch...@drn.newsguy.com...
> Donna Richoux filted:
>>
>>LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>>> >
>>> > The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
>>> > police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times.
>>> > I
>>> > have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything
>>> > sexual --
>>> > it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe
>>> > the
>>> > CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>>>
>>> AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>>
>>Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within that world
>>or outside of it?
>
> Paul McCartney (not yet Sir), first line of "Honey Pie", on the "White
> Album",
> 1968....r
>
>
Peter Duncanson
There as a piece in _The Times_ today by the columnist Libby Purves
for whom Ipswich is her local town, at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2736-2500725,00.html
As police hunt the killer of as many as five prostitutes, Libby
Purves describes how the Ipswich she knows so well can never be
the same again
Normally, says a lecturer at Suffolk College, it is hard to keep
the girls calm at this time of year. "Usually they'd be all
excitable about Christmas, partying, wanting to get away and out
on the town". Not this year. College feels safer just now than
the familiar streets. IT groups read the news online minute by
minute, and as days go by with more bodies and missing girls and
no arrest yet, the unease rises.
"We were going to let the girls go home early, before dark" says
the lecturer. "But we've been told not to. A lot are only 16,
parents need to know where they are. A lot are picking them up
--> from the bus stops." Most notably and typically, she has not
heard a single voice tutting about prostitution. "It isn't even
mentioned, among staff or girls. These were ordinary girls, like
them."
...
[Descriptions of Ipswich, and of the dead girls.]
...
These are not the hardened streetwise tarts of urban legend,
prowling the concrete jungle in leather miniskirts: they went
missing in jeans, zip jackets, trainers, beanie hats. Ordinary
girls: probably not all that wary of the pathetic local punters
they picked up down the Portman Road.
--> Suffolk gentleness also marks the responses of the people on the
village fringes of Ipswich. There is no censure from the
middle-aged shopkeepers and retired couples who walk their dogs
in the Nacton woodlands and the marshy pathways by streams where
the first bodies were found. "Poor young things, bless them,
such pretty girls, so young." Covertly censorious talk of "vice
girls" is confined, it seems, to journalists.
Most reactions ignore any such stigma, in a way that tracks a
fascinating change in mores and expectations since the days when
the Yorkshire Ripper drew real alarm only when he started
picking on non-prostitutes. A local businessman, Graeme
Kalbraier, offers GBP50,000 as a reward for information, saying
robustly: "I have a teenage daughter aged 17, I also have an
Ipswich workforce of 300, many of whom are girls in their teens
and early twenties. They all frequent the town centre and they
have all got mums and dads. I just want this person caught and
off the streets." Amen to that.
...
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Evan Kirshenbaum
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three
> times. I have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean
> anything sexual -- it refers to honest work in offics and factories
> and the like. Msybe the CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was
> following local custom?
I've known it for a long time. I first see it in the _NY Times_ in
1971:
The girls also suffer under the knowledge that they are doing
something most people say is immoral. To cope with it, they have
developed their own set of mores, and their own vocabulary.
They call themselves "working girls," or, if they are call girls,
"courtesans." Their customers are "tricks" and "johns" and
"dates." Their work is a "business," or even, to someone like
Jackie, a "social service." [8/9/1971]
I don't doubt that it's older.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Theories are not matters of fact,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |they are derived from observing
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fact. If you don't have data, you
|don't get good theories. You get
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |theology instead.
(650)857-7572 | --John Lawler
Oleg Lego
I can vouch for it "being around", at least in Canada, in September of
1961, both among prostitutes and non-prostitutes.
I had already heard the term at some time prior to Sep 1961, but
cannot remember when it was; definitely before the white album.
In late Sep 1961, I was on leave from the RCAF (basic training), and
sitting with a friend in a bar on Queen St.. A young lady came in and
sat alone at a table. She was soon approached by a young man (one of
several), who tried to pick her up. She tried many ways to inform him
that she was a prostitute, one of which was saying "I'm a working
girl.", to which he replied, "Oh. What do you do for a living."
This brought smiles and chuckles from folks at other tables who
noticed the exchanges. Eventually she told him clearly that she
charged for dates, and he got quickly to his feet, red in the face,
and hearing the laughter around him, beat a hasty retreat, out to the
street.
Hatunen
wrote:
>The Vinny Burgoo entity posted thusly:
>
>>In alt.usage.english, Oleg Lego wrote:
>>
>>>The problem with Craig's (Criag's?) question is that he his trying to
>>>figure out the difference between Orientals and Asians, which is
>>>rather like trying to figure out the difference between anglophones
>>>and Canadians.
>>
>>It's more like the difference between Americans and Americans.
>
>I suppose it depends on what you consider the three terms (Asian,
>Occidental Asian, and Oriental Asian) to mean.
>
>I take them to mean:
>
>Asian: referring to all of Asia, the continent
>
>Oriental Asian: referring to east Asia, whether it be geographically,
>culturally, or racially split.
>
>Occidental Asian: referring to every part of Asia not considered
>Oriental Asia.
Classically, the land now known as Turkey was "oriental", and
turkey is a source of oriental rugs. It didn't stop the Ottoman
Empire from being known as the "Sick man of Europe", though. But
since "Asian" refers to the lands of the Asian part of the
Eurasian continent, it is impossible for any part of Asia to be
part of the Occident.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Hatunen
>Brad Germolene <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
>> are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
>> coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
>> of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
>> of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
>> following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
>> school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
>> of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
>> lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
>
>[In case it is not a Big Deal elsewhere -- five prostitutes have been
>murdered in the last few days in England, and British TV has talked of
>little else.]
>
>The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
>police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
>CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
Interesting. I've heard the term "working girl" as a euphemism
for "prostitute" most of my life (I'm 69).
Hatunen
Richoux) wrote:
>LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>>
>> > Brad Germolene <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >>On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
>> >>are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
>> >>coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
>> >>of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
>> >>of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
>> >>following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
>> >>school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
>> >>of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
>> >>lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
>> >
>> >
>> > [In case it is not a Big Deal elsewhere -- five prostitutes have been
>> > murdered in the last few days in England, and British TV has talked of
>> > little else.]
>> >
>> > The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
>> > police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>> > have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>> > it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
>> > CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>> >
>>
>> AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>
>Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within that world
>or outside of it?
Just last week I appeared in a run of the stage musical
"Cabaret", written in the 1960s, and the song "Don't Tell Mama"
has a line about working girls; the meaning is clear to almost
anyone in the audience save, apparently, someone like you.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com schrieb:
>
>
> > Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
> > (though there's some controversy on the point).
>
> Actually I amazed to see someone claim this - There is no controversy
> whatsoever outside of the shaven-headed combat-booted lunatic fringe.
See Bamshad and Olson, "Does Race Exist?" /Scientific American/, Dec.
2003.
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00055DC8-3BAA-1FA8-BBAA83414B7F0000>
Abstract (answering the title question): "If races are defined as
genetically discrete groups, no. But researchers can use some genetic
information to group individuals into clusters with medical relevance."
I didn't find the article completely convincing and I didn't read the
letters in the next issue. Nevertheless, I think I'm right in saying
that there's some controversy outside the Aryan Nation.
> "Race" as a scientific concept is utterly debunked now that it has been
> shown that individuals that would be regarded as being of the same
> "race" can have bigger genetic differences than groups of different
> "race".
For me it would take more than that. If genetic similarity correlates
fairly well with identified race and the exceptions are rare, race
could still be a scientifically useful concept.
> Even the idea of cultural race is pretty comic if you look at
> most of the world. Does a US WASP belong to the same "race" as a UK
> geordie?
Nobody has advanced that kind of concept in this thread. (I mentioned
culturally /defined/ races.) However, I think most people from the Far
East and sub-Saharan Africa would answer your question "yes".
> > In European and
> > Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
> > Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
> > ("Asian", formerly "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid").
>
> Thats certainly not universally (if at all) true for European culture.
> "Asian" would usually refer to someone of roughly Japanese/Chinese
> appearance.
Missing a "not"?
> In the UK in particular it would refer to someone who would
> appear to be of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi etc descent. "Mongolian"
> is someone who looks completely different.
Sorry, let me rephrase what I said.
"In European and Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as
Asians, from
Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
(known in the U.S. as 'Asian')." Better? I guess I could still be
wrong about European views. I should add that a minority of Americans
don't recognize the existence of races (considerably smaller, I would
bet, than the minority who say they don't.)
> I only know the word
> "Mongoloid", whatever its correct use, as a frowned-on and probably
> obsolete description of people with Downs-Syndrome, but I may be very
> out of date on that.
No, as I said, "Mongoloid" in this sense is "former", and I'd add that
it's farther out of date than the use for Down's Syndrome. (By the
way, Down is the person who named that syndrome "Mongolian idiocy".)
The 1933 OED says Thomas Huxley was the first to use "Mongoloid" as a
racial description. (Good think I happen to be in a library.) The
previous term, invented by someone named Blumenbach, was "Mongolian".
By the way, the only surviving PC race-related use of "Mongolian" that
I know of is "Mongolian spot". At least, I don't know another word for
that.
> > To you, the racial dividing lines may look different. Our views
> > probably reflect our cultures, not physical reality. In fact, most
> > anthropologists would argue that there aren't any physical races, even
> > loosely defined.
>
> Indeed. There are people with similar external appearance, but thats
> about it.
>
> > As I said, the term "Oriental" is now only historical.
>
> It has a slightly quaint sound, but its perfectly common usage, if
> mostly used to decribe a style. I wouldnt use it to decribe a person,
> but I would use it to describe a bed or the furnishings of a room,
> whereby the actual style could be anything from chinese to Indian and
> any combination.
Again, I should have said its use /for people/ is obsolete in the U.S.
and many other places.
> > The train was named a long time ago, when the word "Orient" included
> > Turkey.
>
> I would assume the train is so named because it went to Istanbul, which
> is partly built on the Asian continent and so was probably considered
> "gateway to the orient".
...
The 1933 OED defines "Orient" as "...usually those countries
immediately to the east of the Mediterranean or of Southern Europe,
which to the Romans were 'the East', the countries of South-western
Asia, or of Asia generally. Now /poetic/ or /literary/." So Turkey
was considered part of the Orient.
--
Jerry Friedman
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006, jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > Race is often said to be culturally rather than scientifically defined
> > Euro-American culture, all the peoples I named as Asians, from
> > Manchuria to Java (or so), are considered to belong to one race
> > etc. are considered to belong to a different race ("Caucasian", though
> > probably a lot of Americans don't know that). That racial division is
> > precisely the reason we Americans restrict "Asian" to people from the
> > Far East.
>
> the following page from the Commission for Racial Equality:
>
> http://www.cre.gov.uk/gdpract/em_cat_ew.html
>
> which recommends "ethnic monitoring" forms with one section for
> "Asian" (subsections Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), and a separate
> section for "Chinese or other ethnic group".
>
> Here the word "Caucasian" refers to someone from the Caucasus. Usage to mean
> a wider racial category would only come from extreme wannabe Americans.
> That usage comes from discredited racist theories, it is always a surprise
> to me to find it is still considered acceptable and widely used in the US.
Just to clarify, what I doubt most Americans know is that the
nineteenth-century divisions on which our terminology is based put
South Asians in the same race as Europeans (which is a reason not to
use "white" for that group--that leaves us with "Caucasian"). The
white race as defined in American culture and known to every American
doesn't include South Asians.
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Page
wrote:
>In article <4uamhqF...@mid.individual.net>,
>LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>>> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>>> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>>
>>AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>
>I've come across it before; indeed I thought it was fairly widespread. I've
>also seen "professional" tout court, though not
>"professional women", which I thought was people like Laura and me.
>
In another context that might refer to a certain type of feminist
who insists on bringing gender into every conceivable issue.
(The other day, I noticed how few female PhD supervisors we have.
Is it the same elsewhere?)
Mike Page
Roland Hutchinson
> Just to clarify, what I doubt most Americans know is that the
> nineteenth-century divisions on which our terminology is based put
> South Asians in the same race as Europeans (which is a reason not to
> use "white" for that group--that leaves us with "Caucasian"). The
> white race as defined in American culture and known to every American
> doesn't include South Asians.
Is that really the case? What, for example, was the legal status of South
Asians in the Jim Crow South?
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Donna Richoux
Ouch, that "someone like you" sounds cold. I'm not sure what someone
like me is, except someone who has never heard "working girl" as a
synonym for "prostitute" until today, and someone who finds that it
might degrade all the women of the past who proudly called themselves
(or were called) "working girls" and who were *not* prostitutes.
However, since you and others assure me this phrase has been around for
decades, it can't have caused much confusion thus far. Of course, since
"girl" has been out of fashion for decades, too, the straight sense of
the phrase isn't as popular as it was long ago.
Note please I still do sympathize that prostitutes work hard in
unpleasant conditions, but that's a separate matter.
I just looked up the lyrics you mention. It's been many years since I
saw Cabaret, but I have no reason to think Sally Bowles was a
prostitute. The words go like this:
SALLY BOWLES:
Mama
Thinks I'm living in a convent
A secluded little convent
In the Southern part of France
Mama
Doesn't even have an inkling
That I'm working in a nightclub
In a pair of lacy pants
So, please, sir,
If you run into my mama
Don't reveal my indiscretion
Give a working girl a chance
Hush up, don't tell mama
[snip more]
Unless you say that working in a nightclub, lacy pants or no, is the
same as prostitution. I don't.
--
Donna Richoux
Donna Richoux
> Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> >
> > The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> > police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> > have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> > it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
> > CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
> >
>
> It's widely heard on US TV these days - perhaps it's a term that became
> popular after you moved to the Netherlands.
>
> I don't think you'll hear "police chief" used in British police circles
> - but that might have changed since I moved away.
>
No, that was my term. I know his title had "chief" in it, and I think
also "detective" and something else, but I didn't want to try to make up
the entire phrase. He was running a major press conference, so he wasn't
just any old detective.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>>
>> > Brad Germolene <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >>On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
>> >>are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
>> >>coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
>> >>of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
>> >>of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
>> >>following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
>> >>school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
>> >>of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
>> >>lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
>> >
>> >
>> > [In case it is not a Big Deal elsewhere -- five prostitutes have been
>> > murdered in the last few days in England, and British TV has talked of
>> > little else.]
>> >
>> > The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
>> > police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>> > have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>> > it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
>> > CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>> >
>>
>> AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>
>Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within that world
>or outside of it?
I can offer at least a personal anecdote...in the STD clinic where my
wife works, "working girl" is the term of choice in conversations
about some clients. Not on reports, but in conversations.
"Is she a working girl?" is not a question about where the client is
employed.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
Sara Lorimer
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like.
I've always (well, not as a babe in arms) known it to mean
"prostitutes."
--
SML
HVS
re: Cabaret and working girls
> I just looked up the lyrics you mention. It's been many years
> since I saw Cabaret, but I have no reason to think Sally Bowles
> was a prostitute. The words go like this:
>
> SALLY BOWLES:
> Mama
> Thinks I'm living in a convent
> A secluded little convent
> In the Southern part of France
> Mama
> Doesn't even have an inkling
> That I'm working in a nightclub
> In a pair of lacy pants
> So, please, sir,
> If you run into my mama
> Don't reveal my indiscretion
> Give a working girl a chance
> Hush up, don't tell mama
> [snip more]
>
> Unless you say that working in a nightclub, lacy pants or no, is
> the same as prostitution. I don't.
I was always under the impression that the Sally Bowles character
did more than just perform in the cabaret -- that she was
benefitting from extracabaretial activities, and was an "undeclared
but de facto" prostitute.
Wasn't Holly Golightly in the same category? (Honest question --
haven't watched the movie for decades.)
Robin Bignall
wrote:
>Frances Kemmish <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote:
Detective chief superintendent.
There's a lot of hypocrisy floating around at the moment. Also from
Today's Times is the following article "How we let Gemma and Tania
down" by Alice Miles about the legalisation of prostitution, for it
seems clear that the actions of the local police, and of government
this year, have pushed those women into dangerous back alleys off the
beaten track.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1058-2500930,00.html
<quote>
One thing I can predict with utter certainty: neither the Conservative
nor Labour parties will propose the sort of steps that would have
protected Gemma and Tania and Anneli and, as looks grimly inevitable,
Paula and Annette. The solutions are too unpalatable for polite
politics, which relies on middle-class votes in “nice” areas like
Suffolk for election.
First, brothels: proper, clean, large-as-you-like, licensed knocking
shops, with medical checks and protection for the girls. And tax
credits too. Not all prostitutes would want to join one, but at least
they would have a choice. At the beginning of this year Labour
launched a “prostitution strategy”, after the most thorough review of
the law in half a century. It abandoned ideas for managed zones in
non-residential areas and instead prescribed a crackdown on kerb
crawling, early intervention, efforts to tackle demand and new
attempts to help women to escape from the lifestyle. It would be
laughable if it weren’t so serious and so sad: a pathetic range of
tried and failed “policies”. The only promising proposal was to allow
up to three women to operate from the same premises in sort of
mini-brothels without facing prosecution; but there has been no sign
since of the legislation needed to implement it.
What there has been in a concerted focus on kerb crawling, with
zero-tolerance zones and the increased use of ASBOs — recently
introduced against women working as prostitutes in Ipswich — which
have forced the women into ever darker corners and more quickly into
strange men’s cars in order to evade arrest. And that, according to
prostitutes in Ipswich and elsewhere, has left them more vulnerable
than ever. Funny how silent Home Office ministers have been this week;
it normally takes but a headline or two for John Reid to pop up
flashing a stiffer sentence or a fundamental review.
</quote>
--
Robin
Herts, England
Robert Bannister
>
> "Oriental" means "east", just as "occidental" means "west". The
> question is, "East of where?" The answer has been "East of
> Europe" ("East of Greece", really), raising ethnocentric
> quesitons about just why the direction should be based on Europe
> as the central point. From an American's point of view, the
> "East" is to the west.
This becomes even more obvious with terms like "western
civilisation/culture/country". Australia is usually counted as a
"western" country, and yet I live in the same time zone as Hong Kong,
and America is definitely to the East. Moreover, the huge state I live
in is often referred to as "The West", and we revel in calling those
from the Canberra-Sydney-Melbourn triangle "Eastern Staters". Should I
start calling John Holmes and Peter Moylan "orientals"?
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> The reason the word "oriental" is suspect is that it was widely used at
> a time when racial stereotyping was a normal part of culture and remarks we
> would now find offensively racist were a part of normal discourse. So the
> word "oriental" would be used with stereotypical and derogatory views about
> east Asian people.
Of course, the usual accompanying adjectives (wily, cunning,
inscrutable) didn't help matters, although "wise" may well have been
found too.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like.
I think you must have allowed yourself to get out of touch. "Working
girl" has had this meaning for some time.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> I've come across it before; indeed I thought it was fairly widespread. I've
> also seen "professional" tout court, though not
> "professional women", which I thought was people like Laura and me.
Although most people are careful about calling a woman a "pro", except
perhaps in golfing circles.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> The objection to the term, as I've heard it, is that they are being
> described as prostitutes first and women second, in many reports. That
> is not entirely consistent with how the media treats other missing
> people or found corpses. (We do hear of 'missing schoolgirls', but we
> don't hear 'missing teacher' or 'missing retail assistant' as primary
> descriptors.)
I know what you're trying to say, and such discrimination does occur in
other fields, but I don't think you're correct here. "Missing
politician, writer, composer, businessman, etc." are pretty commonplace.
Journalists like to stick labels on people.
--
Rob Bannister
Donna Richoux
> K. Edgcombe wrote:
What, is "she handled it like a pro" yet another hilarious double
entendre? As far as I know, it's a compliment meaning "she acted with
professional skill."
--
Bemused -- Donna Richoux
Vinny Burgoo
>The Vinny Burgoo entity posted thusly:
>>In alt.usage.english, Oleg Lego wrote:
>>>The problem with Craig's (Criag's?) question is that he his trying to
>>>figure out the difference between Orientals and Asians, which is
>>>rather like trying to figure out the difference between anglophones
>>>and Canadians.
>>
>>It's more like the difference between Americans and Americans.
>
>I suppose it depends on what you consider the three terms (Asian,
>Occidental Asian, and Oriental Asian) to mean.
>
>I take them to mean:
>
>Asian: referring to all of Asia, the continent
>
>Oriental Asian: referring to east Asia, whether it be geographically,
>culturally, or racially split.
>
>Occidental Asian: referring to every part of Asia not considered
>Oriental Asia.
>
>Occidental Asian is more specific than Occidental used by itself,
>Oriental does not seem to be.
>
>So I stand by my contention that asking the difference between Asian
>and Oriental, is like asking the difference between thing one, which
>is included in, and part of, thing two.
Consider also:
American, thing one - a citizen of the US of A.
American, thing two - an inhabitant of the Americas.
(I know: it's not a good parallel in other ways. I was just stirring.)
--
V
Vinny Burgoo
[...]
>Other common BrE terms include the BillBrE "tom" and the TelegraphBrE
>"tart" (see today's for too many examples of that). Meanwhile, one
>Suffolk resident was even reported somewhere in something I read this
>morning as saying he preferred to call them "ladies of the night" out
>of "respect". Er, yes. Fine.
Also "brass" (b. nail, tail), which I heard for the first time only a
week or two ago, possibly in a historical drama.
"Treacle" (t. tart) is used quite a lot, but I don't know whether it
would be applied to a tart proper. I've only heard it used (probably
only on the telly) to mean "young woman who might be up for it".
--
V
Oleg Lego
>On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:18:43 -0600, Oleg Lego <rat@atatatat..com>
>wrote:
>
>>The Vinny Burgoo entity posted thusly:
>>
>>>In alt.usage.english, Oleg Lego wrote:
>>>
>>>>The problem with Craig's (Criag's?) question is that he his trying to
>>>>figure out the difference between Orientals and Asians, which is
>>>>rather like trying to figure out the difference between anglophones
>>>>and Canadians.
>>>
>>>It's more like the difference between Americans and Americans.
>>
>>I suppose it depends on what you consider the three terms (Asian,
>>Occidental Asian, and Oriental Asian) to mean.
>>
>>I take them to mean:
>>
>>Asian: referring to all of Asia, the continent
>>
>>Oriental Asian: referring to east Asia, whether it be geographically,
>>culturally, or racially split.
>>
>>Occidental Asian: referring to every part of Asia not considered
>>Oriental Asia.
>
>Classically, the land now known as Turkey was "oriental", and
>turkey is a source of oriental rugs. It didn't stop the Ottoman
>Empire from being known as the "Sick man of Europe", though. But
>since "Asian" refers to the lands of the Asian part of the
>Eurasian continent, it is impossible for any part of Asia to be
>part of the Occident.
In your dialect, presumably. Much has been written of "Occidental
Asia".
Oleg Lego
>There's a lot of hypocrisy floating around at the moment. Also from
>Today's Times is the following article "How we let Gemma and Tania
>down" by Alice Miles about the legalisation of prostitution, for it
>seems clear that the actions of the local police, and of government
>this year, have pushed those women into dangerous back alleys off the
>beaten track.
That's particularly jarring to Canadians this week. The jury selection
for the trial of Robert Picton, a pig farmer in Port Coquitlam, BC ,
started a few days ago. He is accused of murdering many prostitutes,
most of which disappeared from the streets of Vancouver over a number
of years. I don't remember how many went missing, or how many he is
charged with, but it's quite a number
There is a common perception that the Vancouver Police did not look
into it with sufficient vigour, in that they were 'only' prostitutes,
and mostly aboriginal.
Oleg Lego
>Robert Bannister <rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
>
>> K. Edgcombe wrote:
>
>> >
>> > I've come across it before; indeed I thought it was fairly widespread. I've
>> > also seen "professional" tout court, though not
>> > "professional women", which I thought was people like Laura and me.
>>
>> Although most people are careful about calling a woman a "pro", except
>> perhaps in golfing circles.
>
>What, is "she handled it like a pro" yet another hilarious double
>entendre?
It would not be used in that way if the intent was to label the lady
as a prostitute.
> As far as I know, it's a compliment meaning "she acted with
>professional skill."
Yes, but two people, seeing what they thought was a prostitute, say,
in a bar, might discuss the likelihood of her being a 'pro'.
"Look at her! Wow!"
"I've seen her in here a lot. I think she's a pro."
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[...]
> There is a common perception that the Vancouver Police did not look
> into it with sufficient vigour, in that they were 'only' prostitutes,
> and mostly aboriginal.
"aboriginal prostitutes" = Indian whores, n'est-ce pas?
~~~ Rey ~~~
Brad Germolene
wrought:
Yes, I think "tart" -- like "floozy" -- has always been a fairly vague
term, referring to general slag/slapperdom as well as the pros.
Now, where did "on the game" come from, anyone?
--
Brad Germolene
Brad Germolene
wrought:
>In late Sep 1961, I was on leave from the RCAF (basic training), and
>sitting with a friend in a bar on Queen St.. A young lady came in and
>sat alone at a table. She was soon approached by a young man (one of
>several), who tried to pick her up. She tried many ways to inform him
>that she was a prostitute, one of which was saying "I'm a working
>girl.", to which he replied, "Oh. What do you do for a living."
>
>This brought smiles and chuckles from folks at other tables who
>noticed the exchanges. Eventually she told him clearly that she
>charged for dates, and he got quickly to his feet, red in the face,
>and hearing the laughter around him, beat a hasty retreat, out to the
>street.
The time-honoured wording used by News of the World reporters would
have been "made an excuse and left".
--
Brad Germolene
Matthew Huntbach
> Frances Kemmish <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote:
>> I don't think you'll hear "police chief" used in British police circles
>> - but that might have changed since I moved away.
> No, that was my term. I know his title had "chief" in it, and I think
> also "detective" and something else, but I didn't want to try to make up
> the entire phrase. He was running a major press conference, so he wasn't
> just any old detective.
The phrase "police chief" was used on at least two occasions in today's
Daily Mail (I don't purchase the paper, but it's the paper of choice on
the commuter train I get into London, I rarely get a seat and when I stand
and glance around me there's several Daily Mails I can read, and usually
a few Suns as well).
Matthew Huntbach
Matthew Huntbach
> Ouch, that "someone like you" sounds cold. I'm not sure what someone
> like me is, except someone who has never heard "working girl" as a
> synonym for "prostitute" until today, and someone who finds that it
> might degrade all the women of the past who proudly called themselves
> (or were called) "working girls" and who were *not* prostitutes.
I assume the term "working girl" was adopted by prostitutes themselves
as a way of de-emotionalising the sex - labelling it as "work" is, I
guess, a way of switching off from what it really is.
Matthew Huntbach
Eric Schwartz
> Is that really the case? What, for example, was the legal status of South
> Asians in the Jim Crow South?
Largely nonexistent, I believe.
-=Eric
Peter Duncanson
But surely, "working" is exactly what it is. It is a means of
earning money.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/work?view=uk
work
* noun
1 activity involving mental or physical effort done in order
to achieve a result.
2 such activity as a means of earning income.
...
Repeating what you wrote:
>a way of de-emotionalising the sex - labelling it as "work" is, I
>guess, a way of switching off from what it really is.
I have no personal experience of prostitutes and prostitution, but
from what I have read, heard, and seen, including from one or two
male acquaintances, the girls tend to have a very clear idea of what
it "really is".
According to reports this appears to be particularly the case with
the street prostitutes in Ipswich. It is said that most, if not all,
of them have drug addictions and do what they do to raise money for
drugs. You might have seen a TV news report of one of them out on
the street trying to earn money to be able to pay a fine of GBP200.
And yes, the fine was for doing the same in the past.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Brad Germolene
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrought:
In some cases it may be as simple as that, but not all. Many start
taking heroin or crack after starting to work as prostitutes, get
hooked and find themselves in a vicious circle. The drugs make it
harder to get out, definitely, but they're by no means always the
reason they got in.
I've been rather irked by several op-ed pieces I've seen over the last
few days that seem to suggest that young women in Ipswich wouldn't be
getting murdered if drug use was stamped on harder.
--
Brad Germolene
Peter Duncanson
wrote:
>Frances Kemmish <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote:
That would be Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull, who is
leading the investigation. The police force in which he serves is
the Suffolk Constabulary.
http://www.suffolk.police.uk/
Unfortunately management-speak has entered into policing in the UK,
making DCS Gull "Head of Crime Management".[1]
Concerning police ranks:
http://www.police-information.co.uk/Docs/careerinformation/rankstructure.html
The ranks within the police service are, in descending
order of seniority:
Chief Constable (Most Senior Police Officer)
Deputy Chief Constable
Assistant Chief Constable
Chief Superintendent
Superintendent
Chief Inspector
Inspector
Sergeant
Constable
The ranks in the second part of the list may be prefixed "Detective"
if the officer is a detective.
Although this is not relevant in the Ipswich area, the London
Metropolitan Police is much larger than others and has more ranks at
the top:
Commissioner
Deputy Commissioner
Assistant Commissioner
Deputy Assistant Commissioner
Commander
Chief Superintendent
Superintendent
Chief Inspector
Inspector
Sergeant
Constable
[1] To me "Head of Crime Management" suggests that the bearer of the
title is responsible for organising crime in his or her area.
Dick Chambers
Donna Richoux wrote
>>>
>>> AHD appears to have it as slang for a prostitute. As does OED.
>>
>>Well I'll be. I wonder who uses it that way -- people within that world
>>or outside of it?
>
> Both. I wonder whether it might have originated from their traditional
> greeting: "Lookin' for business, love?"
When I was much younger, and less sensible, I went to a pub at the wrong end
of Leeds where there were a couple of strippers. After the performance -
which was quite good, as I remember - I decided to have a final pint of
shandy. While I was drinking it, a young lady came and sat next to me,
opening the conversation with a friendly:-
-- Are you here on business, love?
-- No, not really. I'm a scientist, actually, not a businessman.
I was puzzled when she immediately got up and left.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Django Cat
Mathew, I feel your pain. Our one and only trip to the USA took
advantage of the Mail's promotion offering free transatlantic tickets.
This involved buying two copies of the paper every day for six weeks.
After I while I also took to buying a copy of the Daily Sport, which I
could wrap around the copies of the Mail I was carrying home, thus
avoiding embarrassment if I bumped into anybody I knew.
DC
Django Cat
the Omrud wrote:
> Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> had it:
>
> > Brad Germolene <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On a similar note, has anyone else noticed how the trendier UK meeja
> > > are desperately trying to avoid using the word "prostitute" in their
> > > coverage of the Ipswich serial killings? Apart from the ridiculous use
> > > of "street sex worker", the Indy today even referred to the decision
> > > of one of the victims to "work in prostitution", as if she was
> > > following up on some careers-guidance advice she got when leaving
> > > school. They rather spoiled the squeaky-clean effect when they talked
> > > of the same woman "plying her trade", which sounds like something
> > > lifted from a 1950s News of the World story.
>
> Letters to Radio 4 have complained about the use of "prostitute" but
> the BBC has stuck to its guns and not attempted to change it. An
> academic lady was on this morning arguing that it shouldn't be used
> but I think she lost the point.
>
I heard that, too. I don't usually get het up about people attempting
to introduce PC language - usually they're just trying to ease a
discriminatory situation - but in this case, I did. Prostitution is
nasty, dangerous, and degrading to both parties involved. I really
feel this is *not* a case for calling a spade a two-handed digging
implement.
The other point that came up was that the BBC shouldn't just be
describing the murdered women as 'prostitutes', as if this was all that
could be said about them - but then, as the presenter said, if a
succession of bankers or lawyers had been murdered, the BBC would also
have reported this using the words 'bankers' or 'lawyers'.
DC
HVS
> the Omrud wrote:
>> Letters to Radio 4 have complained about the use of
>> "prostitute" but the BBC has stuck to its guns and not
>> attempted to change it. An academic lady was on this morning
>> arguing that it shouldn't be used but I think she lost the
>> point.
>>
>
> I heard that, too. I don't usually get het up about people
> attempting to introduce PC language - usually they're just
> trying to ease a discriminatory situation - but in this case, I
> did. Prostitution is nasty, dangerous, and degrading to both
> parties involved. I really feel this is *not* a case for
> calling a spade a two-handed digging implement.
I noticed that the 7 a.m. news item on R4 used "sex workers" followed
by "prostitutes" in the same story -- and that a remote report did
the same in reverse.
My guess is that this was careful and intentional: that they know
they'll be slated by both usage camps, so they might as well have a
policy of "equal offensiveness".
Django Cat
> >The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
> >police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
> >have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
> >it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
> >CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>
> leading to some confusion (and perhaps no small amount of
> disappointment) when the Melanie Griffith flick with that title came
> out in the UK.
>
> Other common BrE terms include the BillBrE "tom"
Yes, what *is* that about? Do the scriptwriters make these things up,
or has anybody in the Real World ever used the term "tom"? Is it
supposed to be rhyming slang? If so....?
DC
Django Cat
HVS wrote:
> On 14 Dec 2006, Django Cat wrote
> > the Omrud wrote:
>
> >> Letters to Radio 4 have complained about the use of
> >> "prostitute" but the BBC has stuck to its guns and not
> >> attempted to change it. An academic lady was on this morning
> >> arguing that it shouldn't be used but I think she lost the
> >> point.
> >>
> >
> > I heard that, too. I don't usually get het up about people
> > attempting to introduce PC language - usually they're just
> > trying to ease a discriminatory situation - but in this case, I
> > did. Prostitution is nasty, dangerous, and degrading to both
> > parties involved. I really feel this is *not* a case for
> > calling a spade a two-handed digging implement.
>
> I noticed that the 7 a.m. news item on R4 used "sex workers" followed
> by "prostitutes" in the same story -- and that a remote report did
> the same in reverse.
But then, as Roy Greenslade said in the later discussion, not all
people who could be described as "sex workers" are prostitutes.
>
> My guess is that this was careful and intentional: that they know
> they'll be slated by both usage camps, so they might as well have a
> policy of "equal offensiveness".
>
You're probably spot on there.
DC
Matthew Huntbach
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:17:13 +0000, Matthew Huntbach
> <m...@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> wrote:
>> a way of de-emotionalising the sex - labelling it as "work" is, I
>> guess, a way of switching off from what it really is.
> I have no personal experience of prostitutes and prostitution, but
> from what I have read, heard, and seen, including from one or two
> male acquaintances, the girls tend to have a very clear idea of what
> it "really is".
Physically yes, in all its variants. But I would suggest what it "really"
is is something that has complex emotional attachments, to which a
prostitute must switch off; I understand becoming neither emotionally
attached to nor disgusted by the clients is a key aspect of the job.
Time for the old joke again. An Irish schoolmistress is asking her class
what they intend to do in their future careers.
"And Mary, what do you intend to become?"
"A prostitute, miss".
"WHAT?!"
"A prostitute"
"Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought you said 'a protestant'".
Matthew Huntbach
Peter Duncanson
>Frances Kemmish <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > The term that startled me today: A CNN (American) reporter asked the
>> > police chief a question, using the phrase "working girls" three times. I
>> > have *never* heard "working girl" being used to mean anything sexual --
>> > it refers to honest work in offics and factories and the like. Msybe the
>> > CNN reporter mistakenly thought he was following local custom?
>> >
>>
>> It's widely heard on US TV these days - perhaps it's a term that became
>> popular after you moved to the Netherlands.
>>
>> I don't think you'll hear "police chief" used in British police circles
>> - but that might have changed since I moved away.
>>
>No, that was my term. I know his title had "chief" in it, and I think
>also "detective" and something else, but I didn't want to try to make up
>the entire phrase. He was running a major press conference, so he wasn't
>just any old detective.
"Police Chief" is used by the news media as a generic term. It is
not restricted the the most senior officer in a police force.
Dick Chambers
>> the Omrud wrote:
>
>>> Letters to Radio 4 have complained about the use of
>>> "prostitute" but the BBC has stuck to its guns and not
>>> attempted to change it. An academic lady was on this morning
>>> arguing that it shouldn't be used but I think she lost the
>>> point.
>>>
>>
>> I heard that, too. I don't usually get het up about people
>> attempting to introduce PC language - usually they're just
>> trying to ease a discriminatory situation - but in this case, I
>> did. Prostitution is nasty, dangerous, and degrading to both
>> parties involved. I really feel this is *not* a case for
>> calling a spade a two-handed digging implement.
>
> I noticed that the 7 a.m. news item on R4 used "sex workers" followed
> by "prostitutes" in the same story -- and that a remote report did
> the same in reverse.
>
> My guess is that this was careful and intentional: that they know
> they'll be slated by both usage camps, so they might as well have a
> policy of "equal offensiveness".
It could simply have been stylistic, trying to avoid the repetition of the
same word within one sentence.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Pat Durkin
"Matthew Huntbach" <m...@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64.06...@frank.dcs.qmul.ac.uk...
I can recall that, in reply to my test question regarding the English
Bill of Rights (I don't recall now, but I think it was the one from
1649), a student started one clause with "The rights of prostitutes to
bare arms, etc." I got too good a laugh to investigate whether a friend
had read the answer to her over the phone the night before, or had
whispered it to her during the test.