经济学人下载: 约翰逊专栏--种族歧视用语(1)

Books & arts 

文艺板块

Johnson 

约翰逊专栏

Justice and just slips 

公平与失言

The battle against racist language is too important to trivialise

反对种族主义用语十分重要，不容轻视

Back in 2002 The Economist mused about the rise of Brazil’s left-wing president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. “The meaning of Lula”, ran the cover line, prompting a great deal of mail—much of it from amused South Asian readers who wrote to say that the meaning of “lula” in Urdu is “penis”. 

早在2002年，《经济学人》就曾剖析过巴西左翼候任总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦的崛起。当时的封面标题是“卢拉的意义”。为此我们收到了大量的邮件，其中很多信件来自于南亚的读者，他们觉得我们的标题很好笑，并在邮件中写道，在乌尔都语中，“lula”的意思是“生殖器”。

Amused—not outraged. It would have been absurd not to cover a soon-to-be president because his name is naughty in Urdu. Yet another complaint about a verbal coincidence, involving the trace of a graver kind of obscenity, recently had serious consequences at the business school of the University of Southern California (USC). Greg Patton, who teaches communication, was describing how repeating “erm, erm” can undermine a speaker’s effectiveness. He noted that other languages have similar pause-fillers; Chinese people, he mentioned, use the equivalent of “that, that, that”, or in Mandarin, “nei ge, nei ge, nei ge”. 

他们是觉得很好笑，而并不是被激怒了。如果仅仅是因为一位即将上任的总统的名字在乌尔都语中有下流的意味，就不加以报道的话，那也太荒谬了。但是，最近发生了另外一起有关发音巧合的投诉事件，这次的事件涉及到的猥亵程度更深，而且在南加州大学商学院造成了严重的后果。格雷格·巴顿是教授传播学的老师，他在课堂上描述重复使用“呃，呃”是如何削弱说话者的有效性的。他指出，其他语言也有类似的填充词。他提到，中国人会相应地使用“那个，那个，那个”，用普通话说就是“内个，内个，内个”。

Then came the whirlwind. An anonymous complaint from an unknown number of black students said that their “mental health has been affected”. The dean of the business school removed Mr Patton from the class, excoriating him in a leaked letter: “It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalise, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students.” 

巴顿的课掀起了轩然大波。一些数量未知的黑人学生写了封匿名投诉信，表示他们的“心理健康受到了影响”。商学院院长对巴顿进行了停课处理，在一封外泄的信中，他对巴顿进行了严厉的批评：“我们完全无法接受教师在课堂上使用一些边缘化的词语来有损并伤害我们学生的心理安全。”

Veterans of these brouhahas will recall a case from 1999 in which a Washington official was disciplined for using “niggardly” in a meeting. (The word probably comes from medieval Scandinavia and is unrelated to the racial slur.) Philip Roth turned a true story from 1985 into the crux of his book “The Human Stain” (2000). A professor inquires after two missing students, wondering aloud if they are “spooks”, meaning ghosts. But that term is also an old anti-black insult. The students are black (as, secretly, is he), and the fracas ends his career. 

经历过这些闹剧的老手会想到1999年的一个案例，当时一名华盛顿官员因为在会议中使用了“吝啬的”一词而受到纪律处分。（这个词可能源于中世纪的斯堪的纳维亚半岛，且与种族歧视无关）。菲利普·罗斯则将1985年发生的真实事件作为关键改编成了《人性污点》一书，于2000年出版。书中一名教授询问两名缺课的学生，大声质问他们是否是“spooks”，意为幽灵。但“spooks”同时也是很久以前就出现的，带有侮辱之意的歧视黑人的词汇。因为他的学生们都是黑人（他自己也有着黑人血统，但没有公之于众），这次纠纷给他的职业生涯画上了句号。

Firestorms like the one at USC are set to become more frequent. America and other countries are wrestling with a history of racism, and language is part of those reckonings. Some renamings and reframings are justifiable, even overdue. Others hit the wrong target, but do little damage. In a few counter-productive cases, aspersions are cast on well-intentioned people. 

类似南加州大学发生的争议风暴事件会发生的更加频繁。美国和其他国家正在全力解决种族歧视这一历史遗留问题，而语言也是那些进行清算的问题之一。有些表达的重新命名和重新架构合乎情理，甚至早就该进行。有些表达遭到了错误的打击，但也没有造成什么严重后果。然而，在一些案例中却适得其反，明明是出于善意的人却遭到了诽谤。