Labelling of individual words

retarded is labelled even less frequently than imbecile, it is accurate to claim that it is sometimes offensive.

Table 4: The number of labels applied to individual terms

cretin crazy demented hysteric idiot imbecile insane lunatic mad maniac mental moron neurotic nuts psycho psychopath retard retarded schizo schizophrenic

1. 0 0 0 1 3 4 0 2 2 1 3 3 0 1 1 1 8 4 3 1

2. 3 2 1 2 3 1 1 3 1 1 3 2

T 3 2 1 1 5 5 1 3 3 1 3 5 2 1 1 1 8 4 3 1

A 5 2 1 1 8 10 1 4 7 4 5 10 2 2 2 1 13 4 4 1

1. Medical sense labelled 2. Extended sense labelled

T Number of dictionaries labelling or using other indications of negative attitude with one or both senses A Number of all labels applied

The terms which are most often considered to convey a negative attitude are retard, moron, idiot and imbecile. These are all terms which refer to low intelligence caused by mental retardation, as opposed to some other terms on the list which refer to mental illnesses and their effects on behaviour. As Table 3 suggests, retard is considered to be offensive by all eight dictionaries, and of the four most commonly labelled terms, it is the only slang expression, although originally a medical term. Idiot, imbecile and moron on the other hand, all refer to low intelligence and have been used in medicine, but are not slang expressions. The fifth most frequently labelled term in the list is retarded, labelled by half of the dictionaries. Like the previous terms, also retarded refers to an illness which affects the level of intelligence of a person. As opposed to retard, however, retarded is not slang. In addition, retarded is an adjective, while all the previous terms are used as nouns. The level of offensiveness may be related to the word class, as retarded has often been used in formations such as “He is a retarded person”, instead of the more blunt “He is a retard”.

While the terms labelled in eight to four dictionaries are all related to low intelligence, the ones labelled in only three dictionaries are more varied in their meaning and other characteristics. The group includes two comparatively old former medical terms, cretin and lunatic. While cretin refers to an illness which affects intelligence and more colloquially

to a stupid person, lunatic is not related to intelligence, but rather, to abnormal and crazy behaviour or way of thinking. While cretin and lunatic are old medical terms which have acquired some negative connotations over time, the group also includes mental and schizo, which were informal and slang to begin with, and have been used for only a short period of time. The group also includes the fairly non-specific term mad, which has not been used in medicine to refer to any particular illness, and is still used to denote people who are mentally ill in general terms. It is not particularly surprising that mad is labelled in only three

dictionaries, as it is very common in every-day language and its meaning is very non-specific.

The words which are labelled in one or two dictionaries include some older and some more recent medical terms, such as maniac, hysteric, neurotic and schizophrenic. All of these terms refer to a specific mental illness, and in a more extended sense, to someone’s behaviour. In addition, these words are generally not considered to be slang or informal language. Similarly, one of the rarely labelled terms is insane. Some words which are, on the other hand, considered more informal or slang, can also be found in the group of the least labelled terms. Such words are nuts and psycho, and interestingly, although they receive a label in only one dictionary, the label applied to them is highly offensive. Yet, none of the other dictionaries seem to agree with the terms being offensive at all. One might also point out that it is interesting why psycho and schizo are labelled quite differently, although they are basically quite similar: both terms are abbreviated forms of medical terms, and are formally similar.

The division of terms according to how frequently they are labelled suggests that terms related to low intelligence are likely to acquire more offensive overtones than some other words referring to mental illness. Moreover, the terms which have been used in

medicine and which are thought to be the most offensive, are most often marked as being outdated in their original sense. The majority of dictionaries label most terms related to low

intelligence, although some dictionaries have left them without a warning of negative attitude.

Some of these dictionaries do, however, provide currency labels with terms such as idiot.

Even though the most frequently labelled terms all denote low intelligence of some degree, the rest of the terms on the list are not evenly labelled according to their meaning or whether they are outdated or not. For example, very general terms such as mad and crazy, terms referring to specific mental illnesses and their impact on behaviour such as neurotic, and finally, some slang terms such as schizo and nuts are all among the least labelled terms. In addition, some of them are considered outdated, some not. The differences in the numbers of labels applied to the terms also suggests that, as Norri (2000, 84) also notes, unlike attitude, style is not strictly related to offensiveness. It is apparent that labelling of the terms, and pejoration in general, is primarily determined by other factors than style. The most and the least offensive terms include examples of slang expressions, and on the other hand,

stylistically more unmarked terms.

Finally, although labels are apparently not applied randomly to different terms and there is some indication as to which terms are regarded as the most offensive, there are still vast differences between dictionaries. Retard is the only term which is fully agreed upon.

The labelling of individual terms does not seem to be dictated by the type or the country of publication of the dictionaries. None of the terms seem to be considered offensive only in North America, or only in Britain. British learner’s dictionaries do, however, label crazy while other dictionaries do not. Nevertheless, this can hardly be considered a regional difference as OALD also labels crazy as being especially North-American English.