Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Qinella]

Is it because it's only relatively recently been discontinued as a clinical word, and is still sometimes used that way?

Compare it to other words that most people use with abandon:

idiot

A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

imbecile

A person of moderate to severe mental retardation having a mental age of from three to seven years and generally being capable of some degree of communication and performance of simple tasks under supervision. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

moron

A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

(definitions from answers.com)


These are all words which in the past were legitimately used to describe people with mental handicaps. But now, since no doctor calls a patient a "moron" to describe his mental level, it's okay to use the word pejoratively, right? Does any doctor still refer to patients as retards? I doubt it, but am not sure.

Some people who have family members that are mentally handicapped (or whatever the current PC term is) are really quick to be offended if you say "retard" around them. My brother once had a woman in a store excoriate him when she overheard him use the word in a conversation. Does that woman actually refer to her son or daughter as a retard? If not, then why the offense?

I'm sure there's a good reason why "retard" should be an offensive word, and I'm just not seeing it. Please enlighten me.

Q.

[Guri Guy]

[Hollywoodaction]

Okay, Qinela. Would you like it if someone called you 'The Retard'.

[Novernae]

I think, and feel free to correct if you find sources to the contrary, retard is a slang that developed from the clinical word retarded to be used in a depreciatory way towards people with mental retardation. It's offensive in that its original use was meant to offend, kind of like the offensiveness of Jap, rather than Japanese, or Spic rather than Hispanic.

(The Oxford classifies retard as slang, and gives no indication of it ever having been a clinical term)

[jajdude]

I don't know. In these PC days any word or phrase can be deemed incorrect. A few years ago I believe a guy was in trouble or even resigned from his political post after using the word "niggardly" .....

an extreme example, but it was in the papers or magazines....

[Dan The Chainsawman]

The only time Retard is offensive is when some whiner takes it that way.

[philthy]

It is derogatory (by use) and has been used extensively. My co teacher talked about the "retarded" class, to which I had to correct her, as that word is not appropriate anymore. I told her they are called "special students" now (whether Down Syndrome or learning dissabled).

When I was young, "retarded" meant trisomy-21 or Down Syndrome as my aunt has it.

The bad part is now Korean students are calling people "special" if they don't understand or pay attention, so the word "special" now has a derrogatory connotation to it! Equal to "retarded."

They're just words and whatever the PC jargon is, it will need to be changed repeatedly to avoid this problem.

Maybe "PC" isn't the answer and we need to accept words that call a spade a spade and let it rest.

[Novernae]

[Qinella]

I think everyone except Philthy has missed my point.

Of course retard is meant to be offensive to the target. What I'm saying is, why is it offensive to other people.

What made me think about this was when (iirc) Laogaiguk got upset at Dan the Chainsaw Man for using the word pejoratively, and he cited a sibling as reason for his offense. Does Laogaiguk refer to his sibling as a retard or as retarded? If not, why is it offensive?

[philthy]

[daskalos]

Yeah. I don't think Retard has ever been a word we could call someone in polite company. Mentally retarded was and still is an acceptably PC and, for that matter, technically correct way to speak of someone who, in fact, is mentally retarded. Retarded or Mentally Retarded hasn't yet made its way into being a very generous way of talking about someone who isn't mentally retarded, though. For that we have lots of other words that aren't nice but which do the job -- stupid, dumb, and, as Qinella the Retard pointed out, idiot, imbecile and moron, which have all made their into common usage to speak of someone who isn't retarded in a clinical sense but just ... stupid.

Not, of course, that this will make any difference either to people who think calling someone retarded is okay or to people who have kittens over it. Still, it's good to know, isn't it, whom we are offending when speaking offensively?

Also, from what I gather from a friend of mine in a wheel chair and whose degree is in rehab services, the completely PC way to talk about people with disabilities is to talk about people with disabilities. That is, not to talk about the people as though they are their disabilities, i.e., that retarded guy. Thus, it's a person with mental retardation, a person with cerebral palsy, a person with butt-ugliness. Also, on handicapped, it's just one of those things people with ... handicaps have mostly learned to live with, but in truth it's not the greatest of words, since its origin is all about a cripple sitting on the sidewalk with his cap in his hand hoping somebody will drop some money into it, because in that era people with disabilities were deemed so useless by society that they couldn't for the most part get actual, honest work.

The really startling thing to learn about ... these people, is that they don't all get together every year to decide what words are offensive and then defend their position to the person. As with people who don't have disabilities, any given one of them can be less or more sensitive to language than any other. Just ask my friend with crippledness, and he'll tell you that as long as you're not an a$$hole about it, you can lighten up. It's mostly a matter of intent. He'll also tell you that calling someone a retard, whether he has mental retardation or not, is pretty lame. Even if he does giggle at the Saturday Night Live sketch "Still 'Tarded."

The real point is, do you care? Take the woman who accosted someone in the grocery store over his use of Retarded. If it bothers you that someone with a mentally retarded child might overhear you and be upset, don't use it. If it doesn't bother you, go ahead and use it, just don't feign surprise when someone very emotionally involved in the issue calls you on it, and don't expect that your admonition for her to "get over it" is going to go over at all well. Go ahead and use "retard" but just suck it up when someone gets upset over it, and don't, for godsake, climb onto your soapbox and try to convince that person that your usage is perfectly acceptable. Because in polite society, it's really not.

[Beej]

I prefer to just shorten it to tard.

[laogaiguk]

Does anyone use retard in a non-insulting way? I doubt it very much.

"Ya, I have a couple retards in my class. The retards are hard to handle, but I have a retard assistant to help with the worst one."

or

a: "What does you sister do?"
b: "Oh, nothing. She lives at home. She's a retard."

If anyone went home and said those, I am pretty sure if they weren't called on it, they would atleast be thought of as crass. It is only used in a negative light nowadays, thereby making it insulting. Does anyone truly think there is no problem with the above statements?

[Beej]

When you have been using a term for your whole life its very hard to change. Case in point: When the powers that be decided that black people were no longer black but were now African American. I still say black and have found it very dificult to switch over to African American. Maybe it would be easier if I worked in an office environment in the USA.

[tiger fancini]

I think it is offensive, in that it portrays people with learning disabilities in a negative light. I usually see it being used as an example to display stupidity.

"Oh that was a really retarded thing to do"

or

"I was such a retard."

To me, it compares stupidity and foolishness to people who have learning disabilities, and therefore increases prejudice against them. This does not help the cause of trying to increase the rights of people with learning disabilities.

The worst example of this prejudice I have seen on this board (and I see the word being used quite a lot) was when OTIS said something along the lines of "he was retarded so shouldn't have been in a bar".