Reclamation of Opprobrious Terms

As numerous entries in this work show, particular outgroups become the object of insults and slurs. These groups are regarded with hostility and stigmatized on the basis of various criteria, such as religion (e.g., papist and bible-basher ), nationality (e.g., frog and wop ), race (e.g., coolie and nigger ), and sexual preferences (e.g., queer and dyke ). Until comparatively recent times the dynamic of stigmatization continued virtually unopposed, and opposition usually had the effect of driving the opprobrious terms underground rather than diminishing their currency. In the case of ethnic slurs there has commonly been a double standard in currency for insiders and outsiders: for instance, Jews will refer to themselves as yids , and American blacks will use the term nigger among themselves, but are offended if an outsider were to take such a liberty.

However, in the past two decades the process of reclamation has begun, by which the stigmatized communities have started to use the terms themselves in public as a form of self-identification and even pride. This has been notably apparent in the use of queer in formulations like Queer Studies, Queer Theory , and so on. Gloria Steinem noted in 1979: “The Feminist spirit has reclaimed some words with defiance and humor. Witch, bitch, dyke , and other formerly pejorative epithets turned up in the brave names of small feminist groups” (“Words and Change”). Jane Mills observed in her study Womanwords : “By the 1980s many lesbians, refusing to accept the myth that they are either butch or femme , began to use dyke , without any negative connotations, to refer to all lesbians” (1989, 71). This process, which is an attempt to disarm prejudice, is unlikely to be extended to terms for religion and nationality. Salman Rushdie’s provocative novel The Satanic Verses (1988) contains the comment: “To turn insults into strengths, Whigs, Tories, Blacks all chose to wear with pride the names they were given in scorn.” Rushdie then proceeds to give “our mountain-climbing, prophet-motivated solitary … the Devil’s synonym: Mahound” (93). This was a xenophobic medieval name for Mahomet.