Language /
IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]
Personally, I never thought 'paki' was racist, I always thought it was just an abbreviation of 'pakistani', like 'brit' is short for Briton. However, I'm not the one who was getting called 'paki', so I wouldn't have known if it was offensive
You've hit the nail on the head here. Making some sort of equivalence between 'brit' and 'paki' is commonly used when defending racist statements and, from the point of view of language, they are both abbreviations. However, the usage is of course different - I don't remember seeing 'Brits out. or f**k off Brits' painted on my house or hearing it shouted when bricks came through my window, as has been the experience of many British Asians with Paki (which incidentally seems to be a bucket term for all people from South Asia)!
Language becomes offensive when it offends, and racist language is ugly because it is designed to offend and is perceived to be so.
The question is whether murzyn falls into this category. It certainly marks someone as different but does it do so in an offensive way?