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The Chinese government has banned George Orwell's dystopian satirical novella Animal Farm and the letter 'N' in a wide-ranging online censorship crackdown.
Experts believe the increased levels of suppression - which come just days after the Chinese Communist Party announced presidential term limits would be abolished - are a sign Xi Jinping hopes to become a dictator for life.
The China Digital Times, a California-based site covering China, reports a list of terms excised from Chinese websites by government censors includes the letter 'N', Orwell's novels Animal Farm and 1984, and the phrase 'Xi Zedong'.
The latter is a combination of President Xi and former chairman Mao Zedong's names.
[...] It was not immediately obvious why the ostensibly harmless letter 'N' had been banned, but some speculated it may either be being used or interpreted as a sign of dissent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @10:23PM (9 children)
but the ban on the n word also removes niggard from the polite lexicon and niggard is the perfect word to designate a cheap ungenerous person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @11:13PM (3 children)
Oh noes polite society will gasp as they try to figure out if you said nigger or niggard!! ZOMG the huge manatees!
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:23AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:43AM (1 child)
Ah, but ignorance vs. facts... I'm afraid to say which wins the most.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:48PM
Well, that is why I keep up the good fight. Its cool, I'm taking it back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 06 2018, @10:55AM (3 children)
And yet it hasn't stopped black people getting white people fired and shamed [wikipedia.org] for using that word, despite its being a perfectly legitimate one with no racial connotations.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 09 2018, @08:23AM (2 children)
That's like a guy complimenting a woman holding a couple cantaloupes on her nice melons, and then protesting that he was just remarking on the produce she'd selected. You can argue until your blue in the face; we're still going to assume you were using the cover of the innocuous interpretation to deliver the suggestive one at the same time. We're simply not buying that you didn't realize someone might, ahem, 'misunderstand'.
Likewise, when you call someone a niggard at work... either you were
a) deliberately playing on the homophone to deliver both a 'safe' and unacceptable message at the same time, and are now transparently trying to shield yourself from the consequences.
or
b) you're a complete idiot, because that's the only other excuse for using a pretty obscure word (even at its peak of popularity) that is a virtual homophone for the most reviled word in the english language, without anticipating the blindingly obvious: that you would presumed to be ... see a) above
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 09 2018, @02:28PM (1 child)
That's why you have to look at context. If the guy commenting on melons is regularly doing that kind of thing, then, yes, he's using it as cover for his sexism. But using "niggardly" in a situation where it is germaine, and having done no similar thing before or since? That's somebody purposely taking offense and manufacturing a crisis as part of a power play.
Relative frequency of a word is no guide, either. English is a language with a big vocabulary and many words carry degrees of precision that render them not generally applicable, but make them absolutely perfect in certain situations. We cannot reward illiteracy by disallowing precise usage in our speech.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 09 2018, @05:31PM
"Relative frequency of a word is no guide, either."
Relative frequency is suggestive of how widely it appears in the audience vocabulary. Surely you would agree that most people don't know what niggardly means, and fewer still know the two words don't even share an etymology. That's important, because it means if you say 'niggard', a lot of people are going to assume its either the word they know or at least closely related to it. As a speaker or writer, I would know this.
"We cannot reward illiteracy ..."
Rule 1 of communication is "know your audience". The ultimate purpose of speech is to communicate. As a communicator, the the use of word niggardly is almost invariably a big distraction; and the only good reason to use it right now would be if you specifically wanted that overlay misunderstanding to be part of your intended message.
If provoking that inevitable misunderstanding was not part of your intended communication, then you've failed to communicate effectively.
"... by disallowing precise usage in our speech."
The speech isn't 'disallowed' but it's not efficient to use a word that isn't well known, and which will be interpreted as being another (offensive) word. If your intention is to clearly and precisely communicate you should be actively avoiding obvious double meanings, ambiguous sentence structures, and anything else that is going to muddle your message. Choosing to use the word niggard if you actually want to be understood as referencing stingy and ungenerous with no racial overtone is pretty much self-sabotage.
"That's somebody purposely taking offense and manufacturing a crisis as part of a power play."
They'd have to know what the word means to pick up on it and manufacture a crisis out of it. Most people don't. In most cases the crisis is legitimate misunderstanding.
But even for the people that DO KNOW, they wouldn't be able to manufacture a crisis out of it most other people knew what it means. Most people don't. That's why the crisis play works.
No matter how you look at it, you can see the trap coming a mile away so its pretty much on you if you still walk into it.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:33PM
So is "Scrooge."