Over the past few years there has been some controversy over the word "retarded." Looking at this word from a linguistic standpoint, it is merely the verb "retard" - which means "to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede" - used in the past tense as an adjective. This is harmless enough in itself. However, modern vernacular seems to have changed the meaning to "stupid," and created the slang noun "retard."
The problem with saying things like, "How could you get such an easy question wrong? Are you retarded?" or "That's not how you play defense, retard!" lies not only in the offensive nature of these words, but also in the way they make the speaker look unintelligent. Calling someone "retarded" as an insult is inappropriate because it is wrong to compare someone who has made a dumb mistake to someone with a legitimate mental disability, and also because it is using the word incorrectly. Plus, the noun "retard" is not an actual word.
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| For some reason, I doubt this cat actually has anything wrong with his brain. He is merely being a cat. |
"Retarded" is not the only word that gets this treatment. Another word that I constantly see and hear used incorrectly in a similar manner is "gay." "Gay" has two grammatically correct meanings - "happy" and "homosexual" - and yet people have tacked on a third one: "stupid." If you complain about your phone being "gay" for not having enough battery power, you sound kind of ridiculous. This may come as a bit of a shock, but your phone is an inanimate object. It is incapable of feeling happy or having a sexual orientation. (Even if your phone did come to life and fall in love with a person, the phone has no gender itself, so the relationship would be neither homosexual nor heterosexual. Just sayin'.) Therefore, you are using the word "gay" improperly.
However, going back to the word "retarded," it has been seen as somewhat of a slur recently, and I don't completely agree with that. People are comparing "retarded" to the N-word, but I personally believe there is a huge difference between the two. The N-word comes from a time when black people were seen as inferior and went through a lot of hardships, and using it nowadays, in my opinion, is disrespectful to all those who suffered under slavery and the Jim Crow laws. "Retarded," on the other hand, is not necessarily a mean-spirited word (though it is sometimes used as such). Picking on the mentally challenged is like an adult bullying a child, so most people wouldn't do it, and anyone who does looks like a total jerk. So if a person is referred to as being mentally retarded (and actually is), I do not find it rude. It simply means that this person is "slow" compared to others, which is not saying he is stupid or inferior; it is simply stating that his brain works differently. For this reason, I don't think it was necessary to have the word removed from federal health, education and labor laws under Rosa's Law. Going back to what I said in my earlier post about swear words, words in themselves are not bad; it is the manner in which people use them that causes hurt feelings.
Pictures courtesy of therword.org and cheezburger.com.
Check out the following websites:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/07/living/end-r-word/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://www.r-word.og
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