Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

"This is a great examination of the n-word. It’s a little bit of a history and a lot of legal examination of how people have used this word and under which cases is it okay, under which cases is it illegal, and under which it is immoral. It looks at the valences of the word—how it can be negative, how it can be positive, and how that changes. It was published in 2002 and it has the word spelled out in the title, but today I can’t imagine—in the cultural climate of America today—that you could publish it with the word spelled out now. In public discourse, the word is even more radioactive than it was. I think he would have to call it “the N-word” today. He’s very much a free speech advocate and a critic of what he sees as academic hysteria about language being able to hurt people. He’s written about that going on in college campuses. I think the way most people define it, even if they don’t explicitly think about it that way, is the Steven Pinker way: as words that “kidnap the attention.” These words have this extra power, and, as we discussed, are stored and processed differently in the brain. The n-word certainly fulfils all of those criteria; it’s definitely associated with the more emotional centres of the brain. If you see that word on a word recall list, that will be number one—you will remember it, even if you can’t bear to write it down. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s not very far into its journey into a non-literal word. It doesn’t have a lot of non-literal uses. Swear words usually go on a journey from the literal to the non-literal. They get their power because they refer to a particular taboo. “Fuck,” for example, at first just meant “to have sex,” but gradually its meaning expanded, and now it can be used in hundreds of ways, as The F Word demonstrates. Right now, the n-word doesn’t have many non-literal uses; it’s either a derogatory term for African-Americans or, spelled with an “a,” a positive term for African-Americans. “In public discourse, the word is even more radioactive than it was. I think he would have to call it “the N-word” today” But it is starting that journey towards the non-literal. A couple of linguists did studies of how it is being used in African American communities and found that people were using it to refer to all sorts of non-human things, including cats and insects. They recorded examples like “My cat fell in the toilet; damn that nigga dumb.” Not super neatly. It’s related to human bodies, I suppose. The category of racial slurs is quite new. Making fun of people’s ethnicities used to be seen as perfectly fine, so the words weren’t necessarily horrible words. Probably until the 1940s in the US, even the n-word wasn’t that big of a deal. It has been derogatory for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t offensive . In the 1930s there was this Movie Production Code that stipulated all sorts of things—no profane language, no obscene language, a man and a woman couldn’t sit on a bed together, you couldn’t make fun of the flag, but racial slurs weren’t forbidden. When Gone with the Wind was filming, they were going to include the n-word until hundreds of people protested. Yes, when it’s spelt as “nigga”, it’s a term of group solidarity and a term of pride—that this is a person who is upright and has all sorts of good qualities that are outside white society. That’s that use of the word. But when spelt with “-er”, it’s a term of degradation. Yes. I don’t want to sound like a free speech nut, but I think he’s right. Yes, it’s a bad, hurtful word but I don’t think we should legally ban people from saying it. It just seems un-American. Britain actually does have laws where you can be imprisoned for racially aggravated harassment, which can in certain cases amount to being put in jail for swearing. A Welsh student spent a few months in jail for tweeting offense things about a black soccer player who had had a heart attack; another man was charged for calling a police surgeon a “paki.” “It’s a bad, hurtful word but I don’t think we should legally ban people from saying it. It just seems un-American” I guess I feel like you shouldn’t be jailed for things you say, basically—First Amendment and all that. I’m very leery because, as the history of swearing shows, these words change all the time. Yes, although in the United States, that’s very geographically and class-dependent. But, yes, in most places. I can’t imagine hearing that term used as a slur in Massachusetts. I’ve only ever heard people use with the “a” spelling—in a positive sense, or neutrally, simply to mean “person.” Yes, that’s another thing. “Cunt” is much further along on its journey to this non-literal use that I was talking about. In Britain or Australia, people use it with much more variety. Here it’s just a really nasty name for a woman. Women aren’t calling each other “cunts”—although they might be starting to—but, in Britain, men are calling each other “cunts”; they’ll talk about things being “cunty.” It’s being used as an adjective and a verb. It just has much more flexibility. I think that once swear words start to get that flexibility, it’s the beginning of the decline of their power. Yes. It’s interesting to look at when it does happen and whether it’s a conscious choice. “Queer” seemed to have been a very conscious thing in the gay community to really take that word back. “Bitch” seems a bit less conscious, although there were some feminists activists that tried to reclaim that word. I attribute that mostly to teenage girls appropriating “bitch!” as a term of endearment."