As it stands, there are three meanings of “Jew”—the stereotype, the religion, and the ethnicity.
You are citing or inventing dubious linguistics. If you look at the meanings of “Jew” found in the dictionary, none of them are the stereotype. Definition 3 at Webster is ethnicity, and definition 4 at Webster is religion. Definitions 1 and 2 are biblical and historical. None of them are the stereotype.
When a group of people is stereotyped, this does not create a new meaning of the name of the group. Let’s review what a stereotype is. Using the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s dictionary, their definition of “stereotype” is:
a fixed idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong
False fixed ideas (beliefs) about group G are not new definitions for the name of the group G. G is not split into two, G(O) and G(S). The false fixed belief is a belief about G(O). The stereotype concerns the (original) group, it does not create a new group.
Imagine if it were otherwise! Imagine if, every time some false belief about some thing T popped into your head, then T split into two, T(O) and T(S). For one thing, you would never again have a false belief, because rather than being a false belief about T(O), your belief would actually be a definition for a new thing T(S) about which it was true.
To put it more briefly, a stereotype is an idea, a belief, about something. A belief can be true or false. In contrast, a definition or meaning is not the sort of thing that can be true or false. So to call a stereotype a meaning is to commit a simple category mistake.
Your whole argument is stated in terms of this category mistake, so to salvage it you would need to toss it and start from scratch.
Actually, your post has caused me to think that a good descriptivist dictionary would include stereotypes if they’re common meanings. This doesn’t mean that anyone would have the guts (or possibly lack of good sense—that lack might be equivalent to guts) to produce such a dictionary.
A concept might be in many people’s minds, and yet be inaccurate. A dictionary might note that while listing the concept.
As for redneck, I’d say it consistently has a regional connotation—it’s not just about doing outdoor work.
Actually, your post has caused me to think that a good descriptivist dictionary would include stereotypes if they’re common meanings.
Merriam Webster and the other good descriptivist dictionaries do include meanings that match particular stereotypes when they are common meanings, which they rarely but occasionally are.
But importantly, it is only particular stereotypes of a given thing that become meanings—it has to be this way, in order to avoid confusion. For example, the verb “to jew” (which you can look up in any sufficiently comprehensive dictionary) has a meaning which matches a particular stereotype of Jews. That particular stereotype is not “the” stereotype of Jews, because to say it was “the” stereotype would be to imply that there is only one stereotype, and there are many stereotypes of Jews.
Also importantly, meanings corresponding to stereotypes are not automatically generated whenever stereotypes arise. It has to be this way, because it’s common that many stereotypes of a given thing arise, and if a meaning were automatically generated for each stereotype, then it would be difficult to tell, among all the stereotypes, which stereotype was meant when the word was used. Nor does a meaning automatically arise that includes all stereotypes together, as we know from the example of the verb “to jew”. Rather, on occasion, certain stereotypes are adopted as meanings. It doesn’t automatically happen, and it ought not blithely be assumed to have happened.
Here’s another pair of examples. Similarly to the verb “to jew”, there is also the verb “to dog”, which corresponds to one particular stereotype about dogs. And the verb “to wolf” (as in to wolf down) corresponds to another particular stereotype about wolves (and, as it happens, about their close relatives the dogs). Had linguistic history taken a different turn, the verbs “to dog” and “to wolf” might have had entirely different meanings, or might not have existed at all.
your post has caused me to think that a good descriptivist dictionary would include stereotypes if they’re common meanings
I seem to recall an Italian dictionary which did give something like “a miser” as one of the definition of ebreo, though with the annotation fig. before it. :-)
As for redneck, I’d say it consistently has a regional connotation—it’s not just about doing outdoor work.
Indeed. in case there has been any confusion, I did not argue otherwise. I wrote: “Someone with a red neck is originally probably a caucasian who works out of doors.” Note my use of the word “originally”. This acknowledges that the term “redneck” has evolved since then. I was speculating about its origin.
It may well be—to speculate further—that the term “red neck” originally arose in the South, possibly applied by the Southern upper, indoors-dwelling (or otherwise sun-protected) classes to the Southern lower, outdoors-laboring classes.
This point does not take away from my argument as far as I can tell. Certainly I was aware of it, hence I used the word “originally”.
I’m pretty sure we’re talking past each other here. I think my usage of stereotype was actually reasonably correct, consider for instance:
In the analysis of personality, the term archetype is often broadly used to refer to a stereotype—personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplification of such a type[...]
As it stands, there are four meanings of “Jew”. The first three, the religion, the ethnicity, and the culture, have to do with individuals. The last is a fictional model of an individual comprised of various beliefs (true and false) that the are held, or have been held, in the community recently enough and prominently enough to be recognizable to most members of the community.
I contend that people do, in fact, make reference to these models in communication without necessarily adopting the belief that the model is valid.
This is not to say that I think they should do so; there is legitimate concern about propagating false beliefs when the models are commonly believed, and about bleeding over of associations when they are not.
It fixes part of it but I don’t think you capture what’s really going on. To use a fresh aspect of the concept of the redneck, as Nancy points out “redneck” has a regional component. MW’s definition of “redneck” for example, is: “a white member of the Southern rural laboring class”. That’s an aspect of what you would call Redneck(O). So when you write:
My point was that when people use the term, they predominately use it to mean, and understand it to men, Redneck(S) not Redneck(O).
you’re claiming that when people use the term, they predominantly do not use it to mean “a white member of the Southern rural laboring class”, but rather, the stereotypes which we have been discussing, which were introduced by Sewing Machine, namely:
what people despise about American rednecks, when that term is used pejoratively, is their bigotry.
and elaborated or modified by konkvistador:
it seems to me “Rednecks” are despised because they are poor and dysfunctional
So here we have three stereotypes about rednecks: bigoted, poor, and dysfunctional. These are the stereotypes that were introduced, and that were given as reasons for rednecks being despised. I offered a quite different, and conflicting, theory as to why rednecks are despised, and I claimed that these stereotypes are in fact not reasons, but rationalizations, excuses, for the contempt so often and so publicly and so gleefully expressed about rednecks.
You’ve offered a new theory of the concept of the “redneck”, distinct from that of Sewing Machine and Konkvistador (the negative stereotypes on their expressed view do not constitute the concept, but are merely associated with the category). Your new theory amounts to an almost perfect excuse for the contempt. According to you, when people use the term, they predominantly mean Redneck(S). In context, then, what your statement amounts to, is the statement that when people use the term “redneck”, they mean “someone who is bigoted, poor, and dysfunctional”. If it were true, this would excuse the contempt shown to rednecks, maybe not the “poor” part, but “bigoted” certainly and “dysfunctional” probably. So when people say, “rednecks are bigots” and “rednecks are dysfunctional”, on your view of it, they are merely stating tautologies, i.e., “bigots are bigots” and “dysfunctional people are dysfunctional.”
My view of your theory is that your theory is all too convenient. Your approach to this issue could be applied to excuse pretty much any contempt shown by any group toward any other group. Contempt shown by whites toward blacks, for example.
In fact, the comedian Chris Rock did take something like your approach to a similar issue. He has a monolog in which he takes a common derogatory term for a whole group and redefines it (for the duration of his monolog) as referring only to those members to whom common negative stereotypes apply, and not to all members of the group. This is certainly not how it is normally used, and if you don’t belong to the group yourself, you would be well advised not to start using this term on the theory that it refers only to those members who satisfy the negative stereotypes. Chris Rock’s monolog, from wikiquote:
There’s a lot of racism going on. Who’s more racist, black people or white people? It’s black people! You know why? Because we hate black people too! Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people ,and there’s two sides, there’s black people and theres niggas. The niggas have got to go. You can’t have shit when you around niggas, you can’t have shit. You can’t have no big screen TV! You can have it, but you better move it in at 3 in the morning. Paint it white, hope niggas think it’s a bassinet. Can’t have shit in your house! Why?! Because niggas will break into your house. Niggas that live next door to you break into your house, come over the next day and go, “I heard you got robbed.” Nigga, you know you robbed me. You didn’t see shit ’cause you was doing shit! You can’t go see a movie, you know why? ’Cause niggas is shooting at the screen, “This movie’s so good I gotta bust a cap in here!” You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, “I take care of my kids.” You’re supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? “I ain’t never been to jail!” What do you want, a cookie?! You’re not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!
Someone who is not black would be well advised to avoid saying:
You can’t have shit when you around niggas, you can’t have shit. … Why?! Because niggas will break into your house.
If we were to apply your theory of “redneck” to “nigga”, then the above statement would be an empty tautology, since it would mean essentially, “black people who break into your house, break into your house.” This is indeed what this means in the context of Chris Rock’s monolog. But it’s not what it would mean in everyday language. It is no empty tautology.
Same applies to “redneck”. Redneck means what the dictionary says it means (yes, the dictionary can be wrong, but in this case it’s not). You might be able to cook up a comedy monolog in which “redneck” means “bigoted person”, but it’s not what it means in everyday English. Someone tweaked me for referring to a dictionary—if MW agrees with me, I must be right. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but I do think that dictionaries are usually very good evidence about what words mean.
I’m pretty sure Chris Rock didn’t invent the pattern of people in an out-group attacking the members of their own group who most resembled the negative stereotype. I’ve heard of (but not heard directly) Jews complaining about “kikes”.
I’m pretty sure Chris Rock didn’t invent the pattern
I didn’t intend to imply otherwise. The question isn’t what he did or did not invent. The question is, what is the everyday, common meaning. I brought up Chris Rock to illustrate what it would be like if dlthomas’s analysis of “redneck” applied to “nigga”. Everybody would all the time be talking the way that Chris Rock talks in his monolog without any negative consequences since they would not be implying anything about blacks in general. But clearly, that is not the case. Furthermore, Chris Rock explains his own meaning early in his monolog where he contrasts “black people” with “niggas”, which demonstrates that he does not expect his audience to apply that meaning as a default. Evidently, then, Chris Rock’s meaning is not the default common, everyday meaning of “nigga”.
As with your earlier response, I wonder whether there was some miscommunication, since you brought up a point that I don’t recall denying explicitly or implicitly.
The Orthodox Jewish community I grew up in didn’t do this… we mostly ignored the Jewish stereotypes in the larger culture altogether. But the queer community I attached myself to as a late adolescent did have something like this.
I’ve never heard of anything like that in my jewish community either. Though honestly I’ve almost never heard the term “kike” actually used before. Even anti-semites just use the word Jew as far as I know.
My view of your theory is that your theory is all too convenient. Your approach to this issue could be applied to excuse pretty much any contempt shown by any group toward any other group. Contempt shown by whites toward blacks, for example.
That is a ridiculously Platonic view of language. These aren’t categories that apply entirely or not at all—applicability of words is gradual. If someone fits every connotation of “redneck” except “racist”, people will apply the label to them and they clearly do not deserve the portion of the contempt associated with the label on the basis of it’s containing the connotation of “racist”. Typically, showing contempt or praise to groups whose membership is not strict is messy enough to be a bad idea.
You are citing or inventing dubious linguistics. If you look at the meanings of “Jew” found in the dictionary, none of them are the stereotype. Definition 3 at Webster is ethnicity, and definition 4 at Webster is religion. Definitions 1 and 2 are biblical and historical. None of them are the stereotype.
Well, if Messrs. Merriam and Webster are on your side, you can’t be wrong!
You are citing or inventing dubious linguistics. If you look at the meanings of “Jew” found in the dictionary, none of them are the stereotype. Definition 3 at Webster is ethnicity, and definition 4 at Webster is religion. Definitions 1 and 2 are biblical and historical. None of them are the stereotype.
When a group of people is stereotyped, this does not create a new meaning of the name of the group. Let’s review what a stereotype is. Using the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s dictionary, their definition of “stereotype” is:
False fixed ideas (beliefs) about group G are not new definitions for the name of the group G. G is not split into two, G(O) and G(S). The false fixed belief is a belief about G(O). The stereotype concerns the (original) group, it does not create a new group.
Imagine if it were otherwise! Imagine if, every time some false belief about some thing T popped into your head, then T split into two, T(O) and T(S). For one thing, you would never again have a false belief, because rather than being a false belief about T(O), your belief would actually be a definition for a new thing T(S) about which it was true.
To put it more briefly, a stereotype is an idea, a belief, about something. A belief can be true or false. In contrast, a definition or meaning is not the sort of thing that can be true or false. So to call a stereotype a meaning is to commit a simple category mistake.
Your whole argument is stated in terms of this category mistake, so to salvage it you would need to toss it and start from scratch.
Actually, your post has caused me to think that a good descriptivist dictionary would include stereotypes if they’re common meanings. This doesn’t mean that anyone would have the guts (or possibly lack of good sense—that lack might be equivalent to guts) to produce such a dictionary.
A concept might be in many people’s minds, and yet be inaccurate. A dictionary might note that while listing the concept.
As for redneck, I’d say it consistently has a regional connotation—it’s not just about doing outdoor work.
Merriam Webster and the other good descriptivist dictionaries do include meanings that match particular stereotypes when they are common meanings, which they rarely but occasionally are.
But importantly, it is only particular stereotypes of a given thing that become meanings—it has to be this way, in order to avoid confusion. For example, the verb “to jew” (which you can look up in any sufficiently comprehensive dictionary) has a meaning which matches a particular stereotype of Jews. That particular stereotype is not “the” stereotype of Jews, because to say it was “the” stereotype would be to imply that there is only one stereotype, and there are many stereotypes of Jews.
Also importantly, meanings corresponding to stereotypes are not automatically generated whenever stereotypes arise. It has to be this way, because it’s common that many stereotypes of a given thing arise, and if a meaning were automatically generated for each stereotype, then it would be difficult to tell, among all the stereotypes, which stereotype was meant when the word was used. Nor does a meaning automatically arise that includes all stereotypes together, as we know from the example of the verb “to jew”. Rather, on occasion, certain stereotypes are adopted as meanings. It doesn’t automatically happen, and it ought not blithely be assumed to have happened.
Here’s another pair of examples. Similarly to the verb “to jew”, there is also the verb “to dog”, which corresponds to one particular stereotype about dogs. And the verb “to wolf” (as in to wolf down) corresponds to another particular stereotype about wolves (and, as it happens, about their close relatives the dogs). Had linguistic history taken a different turn, the verbs “to dog” and “to wolf” might have had entirely different meanings, or might not have existed at all.
I seem to recall an Italian dictionary which did give something like “a miser” as one of the definition of ebreo, though with the annotation fig. before it. :-)
(Wait… by produce you meant “exhibit” not “manufacture”, right?)
Indeed. in case there has been any confusion, I did not argue otherwise. I wrote: “Someone with a red neck is originally probably a caucasian who works out of doors.” Note my use of the word “originally”. This acknowledges that the term “redneck” has evolved since then. I was speculating about its origin.
It may well be—to speculate further—that the term “red neck” originally arose in the South, possibly applied by the Southern upper, indoors-dwelling (or otherwise sun-protected) classes to the Southern lower, outdoors-laboring classes.
This point does not take away from my argument as far as I can tell. Certainly I was aware of it, hence I used the word “originally”.
I’m pretty sure we’re talking past each other here. I think my usage of stereotype was actually reasonably correct, consider for instance:
from the wikipedia page on Archetype
But it is probably better to simply taboo it:
I contend that people do, in fact, make reference to these models in communication without necessarily adopting the belief that the model is valid.
This is not to say that I think they should do so; there is legitimate concern about propagating false beliefs when the models are commonly believed, and about bleeding over of associations when they are not.
To your mind, does it fix things if you read “model of a stereotypical X” for “stereotype”? That is closer to how I intended it.
It fixes part of it but I don’t think you capture what’s really going on. To use a fresh aspect of the concept of the redneck, as Nancy points out “redneck” has a regional component. MW’s definition of “redneck” for example, is: “a white member of the Southern rural laboring class”. That’s an aspect of what you would call Redneck(O). So when you write:
you’re claiming that when people use the term, they predominantly do not use it to mean “a white member of the Southern rural laboring class”, but rather, the stereotypes which we have been discussing, which were introduced by Sewing Machine, namely:
and elaborated or modified by konkvistador:
So here we have three stereotypes about rednecks: bigoted, poor, and dysfunctional. These are the stereotypes that were introduced, and that were given as reasons for rednecks being despised. I offered a quite different, and conflicting, theory as to why rednecks are despised, and I claimed that these stereotypes are in fact not reasons, but rationalizations, excuses, for the contempt so often and so publicly and so gleefully expressed about rednecks.
You’ve offered a new theory of the concept of the “redneck”, distinct from that of Sewing Machine and Konkvistador (the negative stereotypes on their expressed view do not constitute the concept, but are merely associated with the category). Your new theory amounts to an almost perfect excuse for the contempt. According to you, when people use the term, they predominantly mean Redneck(S). In context, then, what your statement amounts to, is the statement that when people use the term “redneck”, they mean “someone who is bigoted, poor, and dysfunctional”. If it were true, this would excuse the contempt shown to rednecks, maybe not the “poor” part, but “bigoted” certainly and “dysfunctional” probably. So when people say, “rednecks are bigots” and “rednecks are dysfunctional”, on your view of it, they are merely stating tautologies, i.e., “bigots are bigots” and “dysfunctional people are dysfunctional.”
My view of your theory is that your theory is all too convenient. Your approach to this issue could be applied to excuse pretty much any contempt shown by any group toward any other group. Contempt shown by whites toward blacks, for example.
In fact, the comedian Chris Rock did take something like your approach to a similar issue. He has a monolog in which he takes a common derogatory term for a whole group and redefines it (for the duration of his monolog) as referring only to those members to whom common negative stereotypes apply, and not to all members of the group. This is certainly not how it is normally used, and if you don’t belong to the group yourself, you would be well advised not to start using this term on the theory that it refers only to those members who satisfy the negative stereotypes. Chris Rock’s monolog, from wikiquote:
Someone who is not black would be well advised to avoid saying:
If we were to apply your theory of “redneck” to “nigga”, then the above statement would be an empty tautology, since it would mean essentially, “black people who break into your house, break into your house.” This is indeed what this means in the context of Chris Rock’s monolog. But it’s not what it would mean in everyday language. It is no empty tautology.
Same applies to “redneck”. Redneck means what the dictionary says it means (yes, the dictionary can be wrong, but in this case it’s not). You might be able to cook up a comedy monolog in which “redneck” means “bigoted person”, but it’s not what it means in everyday English. Someone tweaked me for referring to a dictionary—if MW agrees with me, I must be right. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but I do think that dictionaries are usually very good evidence about what words mean.
I’m pretty sure Chris Rock didn’t invent the pattern of people in an out-group attacking the members of their own group who most resembled the negative stereotype. I’ve heard of (but not heard directly) Jews complaining about “kikes”.
I didn’t intend to imply otherwise. The question isn’t what he did or did not invent. The question is, what is the everyday, common meaning. I brought up Chris Rock to illustrate what it would be like if dlthomas’s analysis of “redneck” applied to “nigga”. Everybody would all the time be talking the way that Chris Rock talks in his monolog without any negative consequences since they would not be implying anything about blacks in general. But clearly, that is not the case. Furthermore, Chris Rock explains his own meaning early in his monolog where he contrasts “black people” with “niggas”, which demonstrates that he does not expect his audience to apply that meaning as a default. Evidently, then, Chris Rock’s meaning is not the default common, everyday meaning of “nigga”.
As with your earlier response, I wonder whether there was some miscommunication, since you brought up a point that I don’t recall denying explicitly or implicitly.
I’m not sure about miscommunication—I may be trying to read too fast, and doing some pattern-matching.
The Orthodox Jewish community I grew up in didn’t do this… we mostly ignored the Jewish stereotypes in the larger culture altogether. But the queer community I attached myself to as a late adolescent did have something like this.
I’ve never heard of anything like that in my jewish community either. Though honestly I’ve almost never heard the term “kike” actually used before. Even anti-semites just use the word Jew as far as I know.
If you hear from a member of group X that group X says Y, it is usually true.
If you hear that group X says Y, from those who do not like group X, it often true.
If you hear that those who don’t like group X say Y, from those who don’t like those who don’t like group X, it is seldom true.
That is a ridiculously Platonic view of language. These aren’t categories that apply entirely or not at all—applicability of words is gradual. If someone fits every connotation of “redneck” except “racist”, people will apply the label to them and they clearly do not deserve the portion of the contempt associated with the label on the basis of it’s containing the connotation of “racist”. Typically, showing contempt or praise to groups whose membership is not strict is messy enough to be a bad idea.
Well, if Messrs. Merriam and Webster are on your side, you can’t be wrong!