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- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!rpi!usenet.coe.montana.edu!news.u.washington.edu!hardy.u.washington.edu!kaygee
- From: kaygee@hardy.u.washington.edu (Kevin Giansante)
- Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
- Subject: Re: Is this offensive?
- Date: 22 Jan 1993 04:41:57 GMT
- Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
- Lines: 20
- Message-ID: <1jntulINNodc@shelley.u.washington.edu>
- References: <1993Jan15.011348.4849@samba.oit.unc.edu> <1993Jan20.031221.27197@til.til.com> <1jlvihINN9t8@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: hardy.u.washington.edu
-
- In article 21857, keis@psy.uwa.oz.au (Keis Ohtsuka)
- reflects:
-
- >I have never heard "Nip" used by Americans except in war-time
- >movies. "Nip" somehow sounds more British or Australian to
- >my year. It evokes an image of Japanese soldiers rampaging
- >through Asia. I use an adjective, "nippy," during winter or
- >go to a hardware store to buy a "nipper" but have never
- >wondered what people think of me using "nip-" stem word.
-
- >Hearing a word fragment such as "nip-", associated
- >lexicons such as "nip" are activated in the mind of a
- >listener. If the listener notices that a speaker appears
- >to be an Asian possibly a Japanese, the listener may
- >realize an unfortunate pun with the uttered word. Of course,
- >the contextual information inhibits run-away associations
- >in most cases.
-
- When I hear the word "nip", I think of Cheeze Nips, those tasty, bite-
- sized little morsels of salty yellow carboard. I associate the word
-