Talk:oriental

Offensiveness

I've never heard of Asian or East Asian as being offensive. I suppose it might be considered such as a noun, but it seems like as an adjective, it could only be considered offensive if the context was offensive, and that the words themselves are never problematic. Can anyone counter this? Jun-Dai 09:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Asian" can be offensive when it suggests an association with India. Your comment that being offensive depends on the context also applies to "oriental". Since this matter was raised I've brought it up with three oriental people (a native Chinese businessman who frequently travels there for business, a male flight attendant who works on trans-Pacific routes to various cities, and a lady civil engineer who immigrated from Shanghai seven years ago); none of them found the term offensive. One needs to be careful to avoid having a perfectly good word being renderred taboo by the forces of political correctness. Except for words that are overt and intentional racist epithets (nigger, chink, kike, etc.) I believe that we should encourage the proper use of words in appropriate contexts rather than banning them altogether because a few people choose to find offense in all cases of their use. Eclecticology 07:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I know I'm about 2 years late for this discussion (lol!) but I just wanted to say I am in complete agreement with you both. Terms like "Oriental" and "Asian" should only be considered offensive if in offensive contexts (i.e. I hate all Asians, I hate all Orientals), but otherwise they should be acceptable terms. This idea that they are offensive because they are a blanket terms is oversensitive. If you didn't know a person was Korean, it would be better to refer to them as "Oriental" than try to guess their nationality and call them Chinese or something! Now that would be considered offensive (but not unforgivable)! I think it is mainly America that is trying to redefine these terms as offensive. In Britain, for example, the term "Asian" is used exclusively for Indian and Pakistani people, so when we want to specify someone from the Far East of Asia we would use the term "Oriental" (i.e. "Do you know the name of that new Oriental supermodel?") There is no offence intended, and there is no offence taken. We should reclaim these words from people who would use them abusively, they have no right to sully them and transform them into words of hate. 212.139.110.204 13:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

There are two common objections. First, that "Oriental", meaning "Eastern" (a term once prevalent in British English - Ringo refers to an "Eastern Bird" in Help!) is Eurocentric. Second, that "Oriental" was used to imply "mysterious" and/or "inscrutable" (e.g. in film, Charlie Chan and Seven Faces of Doctor Lao - both using European or European American actors playing the "mysterious Oriental").--DaveDixon 17:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I still agree with Eclecticology's sentiments. Also, I don't really agree that Eurocentrism in European (or American) countries should be offensive. Westerner is not considered a disgustingly offensive term for Europeans/Americans, yet it is more or less the counterpart of Oriental when used by Easterners. The same agrument could be made against it for being Eastern-centric, but we're not that sensitive. Oriental may also have some shady implications, but linguistic implications are very unstable and subjective. 79.74.105.111 01:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Often it isn't the term, it's the mere fact of ascribing to an individual characteristics derived from one's experience (or from hearsay) of a group of which one believes the individual is a member. There are several possibilities for outright error: individual is not average or typical, experience likely to be biased, hearsay adds extra unreliability, assignment of individual to group may be erroneous. Furthermore many people simply prefer to be treated as individuals. DCDuring TALK 17:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

But what does bigotry have to do with the use of generalising terms? Blanket terms have valid uses and are even impossible to avoid in numerous cases, such as when you talk about a person you don't know any specifics about; it baffles me how anyone could deny that. Also, how exactly does the use of a blanket term automatically conflict with people's individuality? That's a point advocates of "political correctness" consistently fail to address. You need to consider concrete, individual (ha!) cases of usage and address them on a point-by-point basis; you'll likely find that most of them are perfectly reasonable and inoffensive, and otherwise, the difference has nothing to do with the terminology.

Consider the absurdity of Americans taking offence at the use of generic blanket terms such as "American", "Californian", "Angeleno", etc. (after all, every such term is a de-individualising, imprecise blanket term that lumps countless completely different people together on the mere basis of origin, birthplace or current place of habitation), and insisting on always be referred to with their individual names. That would be patently ridiculous and impossible to do! Often, you just need to talk about a group, or a generic, unspecified, unknown or undetermined member of a group! And generalisations, although often wrong in the individual case, are also often right, and anyway just happen: They are not just human nature, but inevitable for human cognition and language to work, and also a central part of the scientific method. Without generalisation, science would not be possible. That doesn't mean that when you generalise, you are necessarily taking the conclusion as fact and are unaware of its limitations. Generalising and stereotyping is not the same. Nor does the mere use of a generic term in reference to you mean that your individuality is somehow denied, questioned or limited.

I just don't get this obsession with inoffensiveness and political correctness that seems so widespread among Americans these days. You and everyone else are not only individuals, but also members of more or less arbitrarily drawn up groups, and you will be assigned to them without being asked for approval, just like you will assign others to them without asking them for approval, every single day. That does not automatically mean you are belittled or stereotyped. Deal with it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for verification discussion 1

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Rfv-sense This can be considered objectionable in American English if it is used as a way of racially identifying a person. However, the word only means Eastern and this is absolutely correct usage of it.
— This unsigned comment was added by 173.166.136.81 (talk) at 19:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC).

Did you read the section headed "Usage notes"? (That section isn't referenced, and you're certainly entitled to disagree with it; but then, I don't understand why you're only objecting to the one-line notes.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The whole entry needs a good cleanup, you can't rfv usage notes, as they're not definitions. You might as well rfv a template. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Striking. I'll add a further note to the RFC discussion. —Ruakh_TALK 16:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for verification discussion 2

From oriental at Wiktionary:Requests for verification:

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Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
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oriental

Rfv-sense: a zoögeographical region of southeast Asia.

This sense is marked as "capitalized", so this should only be at Oriental. I request attestation of the lowercase "oriental" used in this way. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:35, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

RFV failed. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 22:56, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for Cleanup (2009)

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oriental

Most of the content needs to be moved to Oriental. —Ruakh_TALK 14:41, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, an anon at RFV objected to the interlinear usage notes, on the grounds that oriental can only be considered objectionable when used as a racial term, not when used otherwise. (Use as a racial term doesn't have distinct sense lines.) —Ruakh_TALK 16:56, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

{{ping|Ruakh}} I am aware that -sche (talk • contribs) has already moved the contents to Oriental, as well as removed the {{rfc}} tag. Should this request now be archived? --kc_kennylau (talk) 07:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)