(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2008 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSimon and I were discussing, amongst other things, a term for non-mutants in X-Men.
(If you don't know, in X-Men, there's an X-gene which gives people various invariable useful if often inconvenient special powers. These people are called Mutants, and everyone else is referred to as Human by exclusion, although human would by any sane definition include both as well.)
Peter won, in my opinion, with a suggestion in the pub last night, "Wild type" which in biology means "members of a species not having interesting mutations" (very roughly, someone give a more precise definition below).
But it got me thinking. What do the following terms all have in common:
Human (as in non-mutant)
Carnivore/Omnivore (as in non-vegetarian)
Neurotypical (as in non-autistic)
Heteronormative
Cis (as opposed to trans- or trans-gender)
Atheist
They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group. And hence don't really have any cohesion within themselves. And so the terms can be used literally, but most are generally used with either a grin or a sneer, admitting non-X doesn't just mean non-X, but "what I find annoying about non-X people, particularly their opinions of X people" and "lets see how they like being labelled". To magneto, human is an insult.
I don't know if it's relevant, but I think no-one ever means vegans when they say "non-vegetarians" :) (So a term meaning sometimes-meat-eating is actually more accurate.)
"Wild type", apart from sounding a hell of a lot cooler than "human" and lacking existing prejudice, seems to do a nice job of describing a default state, without implying anything about it as a whole. Of course, it's probably too obscure a term to catch on, but I like it.
I know sometimes it can be difficult to decide which is a group and which isn't. For instance, traditionally religion-X might consider people not of religion X to have more in common than not (and to some extent be right, if religion X is true). But I was enchanted by the analogy between atheist and neurotypical, etc. I'm sure it says something (though I'm not yet sure what).
(If you don't know, in X-Men, there's an X-gene which gives people various invariable useful if often inconvenient special powers. These people are called Mutants, and everyone else is referred to as Human by exclusion, although human would by any sane definition include both as well.)
Peter won, in my opinion, with a suggestion in the pub last night, "Wild type" which in biology means "members of a species not having interesting mutations" (very roughly, someone give a more precise definition below).
But it got me thinking. What do the following terms all have in common:
Human (as in non-mutant)
Carnivore/Omnivore (as in non-vegetarian)
Neurotypical (as in non-autistic)
Heteronormative
Cis (as opposed to trans- or trans-gender)
Atheist
They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group. And hence don't really have any cohesion within themselves. And so the terms can be used literally, but most are generally used with either a grin or a sneer, admitting non-X doesn't just mean non-X, but "what I find annoying about non-X people, particularly their opinions of X people" and "lets see how they like being labelled". To magneto, human is an insult.
I don't know if it's relevant, but I think no-one ever means vegans when they say "non-vegetarians" :) (So a term meaning sometimes-meat-eating is actually more accurate.)
"Wild type", apart from sounding a hell of a lot cooler than "human" and lacking existing prejudice, seems to do a nice job of describing a default state, without implying anything about it as a whole. Of course, it's probably too obscure a term to catch on, but I like it.
I know sometimes it can be difficult to decide which is a group and which isn't. For instance, traditionally religion-X might consider people not of religion X to have more in common than not (and to some extent be right, if religion X is true). But I was enchanted by the analogy between atheist and neurotypical, etc. I'm sure it says something (though I'm not yet sure what).
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 04:18 pm (UTC)For the purposes of this, can I just invent a couple of terms?
Inclusive semantics: when a word describes the group X belongs to.
Exclusive semantics: when a word describes the group X is ezxcluded from (thereby categorising X specifically as 'not a member of the group').
There's surely a difference between words whose semantics was obviously originally intended to be exclusive (e.g. 'atheist' with its alpha privative construction), and ones that acquired exclusive semantics at a later stage (AFAIK 'carnivore' meaning specifically 'not vegetarian' is a very recent development).
But I do think the trend is interesting. I think it's more marked when the alternatives for X are *not* binary (and mutually exclusive) though. Because if they are binary (I was going to say male vs. female would be a good example, but I spent some of this morning reading an article about a book about a hermaphrodite, thus making me more aware than usual of the not necessarily binaryness of gender), then expressing one is necessarily also necessarily expressing exclusion of the other.
Something like 'neurotyprical' would be a good example of the not binary set, I guess - becase you could be non-neurotypical in several different ways.
But the way such a word is constructed is often quite predictable. E.g. if you add the increasingly productive suffix -typical to a word (or stem) then you're saying that the thing described by the word does not possess any of e.g. a known set of defects. Or, more commonly, the not possessing of something might be expressed by prefixes such as a- or un- or in- or non-. It's almost more interesting when the word isn't contructed like this but just happens to be a completely independent invention that the speakers of the language deemed necessary because the sentiment is not one you could live without possessing :)
This reminds me of QI last night (an old one) - there's a sort of second generation rhyming slang word 'listerine' that means 'someone who hates Americans' - because the rhyming slang for American is 'septic' (septic tank = yank), so if you hate Amnericans you're anti-septic... :)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 05:11 pm (UTC)ROFL. I think rhyming slang often goes through several iterations, but I like that one :) Confusing though, when all of a sudden in a politic debate you call someone listerine, and then suddenly have to go off and have a footnote :)
There's surely a difference between words whose semantics...
Thank you, that sounds like a good description. Though I'm not sure if we've thought of my conclusion yet :)