An analysis of the lexem "nigger" under the aspect of the ongoing debate about Political Correctness

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen, course: Views of Linguistic Correctness, language: English, abstract: This thesis deals with the lexeme ¿nigger¿ under the aspect of the ongoing debate about political correctness. The aim is to show, how the word has developed from a neutral meaning to a taboo word and why and where it arouses a great deal of interest in public. Furthermore, I want to analyse, using the example of ¿nigger¿, how offensive words are objectively described and how that is documented in some important monolingual dictionaries of the English language.

The lexical field about and around the word ¿nigger¿ has aroused people¿s interest in the last two decades. More and more people from Africa immigrate to Europe due to war, poverty, etc. in their home countries. Expressions for addressing and talking about black people are used more often than in the past and therefore these words gain people¿s attention. Especially the term ¿nigger¿ has led and still leads to discussions in public today.

Several incidents have contributed to the growing interest about the word, too. To only name one example amongst hundreds, the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012, caused a worldwide discussion about racial discrimination. The African-American student was shot by the 28-year-old neighbourhood watch George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man, who was responsible for the gated community where Martin was living. During an altercation Zimmerman shot the boy who was unarmed. The neighbourhood watch claimed he had acted in self-defence. The fact that he was not charged with murder, due to lack of evidence, made the huge debate about racial discrimination worse (McVeigh 2012). There are a lot of other examples that could be mentioned, where (innocent) black people have been abused by white people with racist motives, even by police force but this is not part of the term paper.