From: Sarah Marr (sarah.marr@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 1996 - 09:37:12 MDT
At 14:23 25/08/95 GMT, Nilas Bostrum wrote:
<snip>
> >Sarah Marr wrote
> >"Stupid" is a highly emotive word.
>
> Exactly. But if we used it as if it weren't, then the
> emotive connotation might wear off.
It's very difficult to use the word 'stupid' in such a way as to make it
clear that you do not intend it to be degrading and emotive; which means it
would be difficult to change its connotations by usage alone.
Compare this to the reclaiming of 'queer' by the gay community: they have
been able to do this by using the word to describe _themselves_.
I can see how 'stupid' might become emotionally-neutral if people who
considered themselves stupid called _themselves_ stupid, but not if others
call them stupid. Even if those others were careful to qualify their
statements, I believe it would smack of sentences which begin "I'm not
homophobic but...", etc. and still not achieve anything.
Sarah
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sarah Kathryn Marr
sarah.marr@dial.pipex.com http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/sarah.marr/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:35:43 MST