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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.nlang
Subject: Re: One for our side
Message-ID: <348@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Oct-85 14:46:11 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.348
Posted: Thu Oct 31 14:46:11 1985
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Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
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In article <1385@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
>there is no word in the English language for inhabitant of the United States
>other than American.  I can understand how Latin Americans and Canadians
>might not like this, but it is a fact.  I'll be damned if I'm going to
>call myself a Unitedstatesian (ugh!).  It is unfortunate that the same
>word, American, has more than one meaning, but it takes someone like jeff m.
>to convert this into a sign of US hegemony over the West.  Spare us.
>-- 
>Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan

It's natural for people who are on top to defend ambiguities in language
that favor them by saying "there is no word other than" the ambiguity.
It's also natural for people who aren't on top to criticize ambiguities in
language which they perceive as threatening.

That there's "no other word than American" in English (I dunno, just use
more than one word, maybe) for an inhabitant of the US means that
there's very little rhetorical defense against people who use "American"
as a buzz word for national destiny, etc..  Again, no surprise that
the language is built so that anti-nationalistic sentiments can't
be expressed in simple language.  Languages in most countries are
social constructions codified by national official agencies.

Re hegemony: the weapons given by a language for rhetoric are often
enhanced by some physical ammo.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw