the thing about offensive words
is that they don't need a logical argument to make them offensive, and you can't logic the offensiveness away. Part of their meaning is the illocutionary force that they carry.
So while it's probably kind of rude in general to say "You play the ocarina like a homosexual,"
it's plainly offensive to lots of gay people to say "You play the ocarina like a faggot."
The spaz thing isn't about whether the comparison says something true or untrue about people with cp, it's about whether the word is offensive.
As far as I can tell, in UK English 'spaz' and various forms of 'spastic' are all offensive because of the strong negative illocutionary force they carry there. In American English 'spaz' doesn't carry that force, but I'm pretty sure that the noun 'spastic' still does.
( , Tue 5 Aug 2014, 14:06, Share, Reply)
is that they don't need a logical argument to make them offensive, and you can't logic the offensiveness away. Part of their meaning is the illocutionary force that they carry.
So while it's probably kind of rude in general to say "You play the ocarina like a homosexual,"
it's plainly offensive to lots of gay people to say "You play the ocarina like a faggot."
The spaz thing isn't about whether the comparison says something true or untrue about people with cp, it's about whether the word is offensive.
As far as I can tell, in UK English 'spaz' and various forms of 'spastic' are all offensive because of the strong negative illocutionary force they carry there. In American English 'spaz' doesn't carry that force, but I'm pretty sure that the noun 'spastic' still does.
( , Tue 5 Aug 2014, 14:06, Share, Reply)