Newspeak writ large - from The Tennessee Star:
Michigan State Professor: ‘Wuhan Virus’ Is an Example of ‘Linguistic Racism’
Michigan State University recently highlighted linguistics professor Peter De Costa’s study about “linguistic racism.”
To explain the concept, De Costa cited the phrase “Wuhan virus” as an example.
The university’s official news service, MSU Today, interviewed De Costa following the publication of his study, “Linguistic racism: Its negative effects and why we need to contest it.”
De Costa said that “linguistic racism” is “magnified when a speaker is multilingual and shuttles between different languages and language varieties.” He explained that “nationalist and hate-mongering efforts to label the virus as the ‘China virus’ or the ‘Wuhan virus’” are an example of linguistic racism.
He told MSU Today that the term “Wuhan virus” “fueled xenophobic resentment toward people of Chinese ethnicity across the globe.”
Picked the worst example. There has been a long historical precedent for naming diseases after their place of origin. Spanish Flu, Ebola (a River in Zaire), Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The Chinese wanted to save face and not have this new coronavirus be named after them. Especially since they developed it and that it escaped their lab by accident.
This moke is a University Professor? Who approved that hire?
Leave a comment