Thursday 1 July 2010

A question about language and culture

In the original and later Faber and Faber editions of Lord of the Flies, Piggy describes Jack's hunters as "a pack of painted niggers" (Golding, 1997, p. 200). In the Perigee edition that we're using, which is for the American and international markets, this has been changed to "a pack of painted Indians" (Golding & Epstein, 1954, p. 180), the word nigger being extremely offensive and generally taboo for non-African American Americans. Even though I agree that it could be offensive, I think it would have been better to retain Golding's original language. What do you think? It seems even sillier to me because using the word Indians in this way would be just as offensive to native American Indians, so all that the editors have done is switch the racist offence.

Should the editors at Perigee have changed the text of Golding's novel because it might be offensive to some readers?
Is it even offensive?  And if it is, is that a good enough reason to censor it?
Is causing offence ever a good reason to censor something? When? Why?

(Although my initial reason for this post was to give you some more examples of how to cite sources in your writing, I do think that the questions are interesting and worth some discussion. And that racial group and their language is something I hope we will be looking at in class tomorrow morning.) 
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References

Golding, W. (1997). Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber.
Golding, W., & Epstein, E. L. (1954). Lord of the Flies. New York: Perigee.  (This is the edition we are using in class.)
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1 comment:

  1. Petch1 July 2010 at 22:44

    I am of the opinion that the editors could have omitted “India", had they been concerned about racism. It sounds like they just avoided offending one race (Perhaps, for sensitivity to the feelings of their own citizens because the number of African Americans outnumbered by those of Indians) by trying to blame the other.

    However, whether we will admit it or not. The fact is that we all discriminate others in some way both consciously and sub-consciously, According to the IAT, designed by Anthony G. Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji and Brian Nosek, gauges people’s subconscious attitudes and behaviors when they are not thinking regarding race and gender. I, moreover, think that it is acceptable to use an offensive word for the real meaning and emotions that the author would like to express through the character. Also, this novel is fictional.

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