Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Meta-Aboriginality?
I wonder whether these guidelines for language use when referring to and discussing Aboriginal peoples and their cultures will achieve the desired outcome? While I agree with the content being proposed, and would like to think that I largely adhere to the guidelines, we all know how Australians love to mock and deride political correctness, especially in the form of language planning.
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4 comments:
Sadly, nothing in there to deter people from referring to dialects, when they should be talking about languages...
Well, nothing in the article - unless you went to the documents themselves?
This one interests me:
"Along with more obvious terms to be avoided, such as "black", "white" and "half-caste", the document says "Aborigine" should not be used, and "Aboriginal person" used instead."
Does 'Aboriginal person' sound more polite than 'Aborigine' because it implies that Aboriginality doesn't necessarily wholly define the 'person'? And what about 'Aboriginal' as a noun?
Amongst my colleagues in outreach the terms 'black' and 'white' are perfectly polite and generally preferred over other terms which might come across as contrived. In the city, on the other hand, I would want to avoid them.
I agree, that the taboo on 'black/blackfella' and 'white/whitefella' seems a bit weird. They are regularly used descriptively among my colleagues and acquaintances, but probably only due to familiarity/degree of admission to indigenous society.
Of course these terms are also used maliciously, and I suppose this is what was being referred to in the article: that once terms acquire a negative connotation due to malicious use, they get replaced.
I think this is also what has happened with the shift from Aborigine and Aboriginal (n.) to Aboriginal person. As well as having been used maliciously, Aborigine and Aboriginal (to me at least) have connotations of 'the noble savage', as well as othering - almost to the degree of dehumanising. Whereas Aboriginal person is currently orthophemistic, if something of a mouthful.
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