称呼特殊群体，如何才能做到“以人为本”？ | 经济学人文化 (不看后悔系列）

Culture | Johnson

文化| 约翰逊专栏

Culture | Johnson

文化| 约翰逊专栏

If stigma is the problem, using different words may not help

污名若成症结，代称亦于事无补

New terms can take on the pejorative undertones of the ones they replace

新表述也会附带原词贬义

The associated press(AP) style book’s Twitter feed is not often a source of hilarity. But the wire service recently tweeted: “We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanising ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated.” After the tweet went viral, the AP deleted it and apologised for dehumanising “the French”.

《美联社写作风格指南》的推特简讯通常不会令人发笑。不过，最近美联社发了这样一条推特：“我们建议避免使用笼统且往往剥夺人的属性的标签‘the’，例如穷人（the poor）、精神病人（the mentally ill）、法国人（the French）、残疾人（the disabled）、受过大学教育的人（the college-educated）等等。”该推文上了热搜，然后美联社便将其删掉，并为将 “法国人（the French）”剥夺了人的属性致歉。

Despite the mockery, theap advice has solid reasoning behind it: that of “people-centred” language. English (like many other languages) allows the use of an adjective as a noun: the good, the bad, the ugly. But in contrast to some other languages, it is increasingly considered essentialising to refer to “the poor” or “the disabled”, as though they are nothing else. This especially applies to characteristics that might be considered unfortunate. The ap did not apologise to “the college-educated” as it did to the French, but it did not need to; nobody really minds being lumped in either group. The issue is essentialising combined with stigma.

尽管揶揄不断，这则建议倒是言之凿凿，即“以人为本”的语言逻辑。同许多语言一样，英语可以在一些形容词前加上定冠词转换为名词：比如说好人（the good）、坏人（the bad）、丑陋的人（the ugly）等等。但是与其他一些语言不同，英语越来越频繁地使用这种精简组合来指代所谓的“穷人”或“残疾人”，仿佛这种搭配别无他指。这尤其适用于那些在他人眼中是可怜儿的特征上。美联社没有像对“法国人”那样对“受过大学教育的人”道歉，不过也无需致歉，毕竟没有人会真的介意自己被分到了哪一类。真正的问题在于精简化带来的是污名化。

Some people are also troubled by bare group nouns such as “blacks”, “gays” and “Jews”, though these too seem to be on the decline. Fortunately, it is not hard to add another word without clunking up your prose—either “people” or, even better, something descriptive as in “black veterans”, “gay activists” or “Jewish voters”. These make these phrases a bit more three-dimensional, like the people they point to.

有些人也对鲜明直白的集体名词感到困扰，比如“黑人”、“同志”和“犹太人”，尽管这些词的数量似乎在逐步减少。幸好，添多一个字词倒也不会让行文累句连篇，比如在此类词语后面加个“们”，或使用诸如“黑人老兵”“同志活动家”“犹太选民”等描述性的词组。这样一来，这些短语看起来就更加形象生动，如同其所指向的群体一般。

These are far from the only ideas flowing into journalists’ inboxes today. Suggestions abound: replace “slaves” with “enslaved people”; “minorities” with “minoritised people” or “racialised people”; “addicts” with “drug users” or “people with a substance-abuse problem”; “obese people” with “people with obesity”; “convicts” or “inmates” with “those who are incarcerated”. And so on.

今天涌入各家记者收件箱的想法远不止于此。各种各样的建议层出不穷：用“enslaved people”（受到奴役的人）取代“slaves”（奴隶）；用 “minoritised people” （少数民族人士）或“racialised people”（种族背景人士）取代“minorities”（少数族裔）；用“drug users” （吸毒者）或“people with a substance-abuse problem”（有药物滥用问题的人）取代“addicts”（瘾君子）；用“people with obesity”（患肥胖症的人）取代 “obese people”（胖子）；用“those who are incarcerated”（被监禁的人）取代“convicts”（罪犯）或“inmates”（囚犯）等等。

In each instance, the target is a term that is, or can be seen as, pejorative. The alternative is meant to be less so. But those who encourage theselexical replacements face several problems.

在各个例子中，目标词都是一个含有贬义或者可以视为贬义的词语。使用替代词是为了减弱贬低的意味，但鼓励使用这些替代词的人也面临一些难题。

One is that though a case can be made for each individual change, adopting every one will quickly make a piece of writing lumbering, since every new option is longer than the one it is supposed to replace. It will also make prose seem more unnatural, since the entire point is to replace words in common use with phrases that are not. Good journalism is ideally conversational and accessible, calling for a brisk and compelling style.

首先，尽管每个词的变化都有各自的理由，但鉴于每个新表达都比原来的版本冗长，不加筛选地采纳很快就会使文章臃肿拖沓。同时，用不常用短语替代常用词是改用新表达的要义，而文章也会因此变得更加生硬。在理想情况下，好新闻就如同对话，通俗易懂，追求的是简明利落、引人注目的文风。

Changing the world is hard; changing the language is a lot easier, which is why linguistic engineering can tempt people who may feel they have no other tools at hand apart from their keyboards. But it does not seem to work out as hoped. Replacing a stigmatised word often merely results in the stigma attaching to the new word. “Retarded” was once a polite way of saying “feeble-minded”; it was in long-standing clinical use before becoming a playground insult and, ultimately, deeply offensive. “Special needs” came next, but now “special” is a mean-spirited taunt too.

改变世界很难，但改变语言要容易得多，所以语言工程就可以吸引那些自以为手上只有键盘这种工具的人。但结果似乎并不如预期。替换一个带有污名含义的单词往往只会给新词烙印上污名。“retarded”一词（智力发育迟缓的）曾经是“feeble-minded”（低能的）的礼貌说法，在临床医学领域的运用已久，后来变成游乐场上的一种侮辱表达，最终成为极为刺耳的冒犯用语。“Special needs（特殊需求）”紧随其后，但现在“特殊”也成了一种刻薄的嘲讽。

In the same vein “handicapped” was a kinder replacement for “crippled”, and “homeless” for “vagrant”. Now “handicapped” is out and “disabled” is in (or, better yet, “person with a disability”). “Unhoused” is gaining ground over “homeless”. This “euphemism treadmill” has been observed since at least the 1970s. Nevertheless, people still hope to remake the world through language.

同理，用“handicapped”（残障人）代替“crippled”（瘸子）；“homeless”（流浪汉）代替“vagrant”（乞丐），听起来就没那么刺耳。如今，“handicapped”又被“disabled”（残疾人）取代，或者更委婉的“person with a disability”（患有残疾的人）；“unhoused”（居无定所）也取代了“homeless”一词。这种现象被称为“委婉语跑步机”，早在上个世纪七十年代就已经引起了人们的注意。然而，人们依然希望通过语言来重塑世界。

注释：

委婉语跑步机（euphemism treadmill）：由著名认知心理学家、语言学家史蒂文·平克（Steven Pinker）于1974年提出。指的是随着时间的推移，委婉语本身会通过语义变化而变成禁忌词。旧的委婉语被污名化，就催生出新的委婉语。

Some groups have taken another tack, and reclaimed older terms. “African-American” had a 30-year heyday, but now “black” is back, and even given a capital B by many. Though “hearing-impaired” is still in medical parlance, many “Deaf” people proudly refer to themselves as such, also with a capital D. Other activists have decided there is nothing wrong with being “fat”, and have wholeheartedly embraced the term. As with reclaimingslurs, the idea seems to be that showing pride is likely to be more effective than swapping words.

有些人群另辟蹊径，重新启用旧词语。比如，“African-American”（非裔美国人）这个词流行了30年，但是“black”（黑人）卷土重来，很多人甚至让首字母B大写。医学领域还有“hearing-impaired”（听力障碍）的说法，但不少人很骄傲地自称为“Deaf”（聋人），同样也使用大写字母D。另有一些活动家认为“fat”（胖）完全不是问题，并且全然接受这个词。想要纠正污名，引以为傲似乎比换个词更有效。

As for writers,good work should humanise whatever it is about, which is why stories often begin with a named person before going into causation and abstraction. If such writing is sharply as well as humanely done, it will be compelling to readers, and may even be of benefit to its subjects. To that end, the language of everyday conversation is likely to be at least as useful as the latest terminology recommended by activists. People-centred writing is indeed a good thing—but there is more than one way of putting people at its heart. 

对于作者而言，不论什么主题，好作品都要表现出对人的关切。因此，故事通常会以一个有名有姓的人物展开，随后再论述因果关系或抽象概念。如果一部作品既入木三分又富有人情味，就能引发读者的共鸣，甚至能对其主题有所裨益。要体现人文关怀，日常的对话语言也许毫不逊色于活动家推崇的新鲜词汇。以人为本的写作固然好，但它不是用心关注人的唯一方式。

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