Should we censor historical language?

Using words to attack someone is no different from using anything else, except that the wounds are not so easily seen. You can own a hammer without breaking the law, it is when you hit someone over the head to it that it becomes an offensive weapon. (Yes, I know that threatening someone with it is anti-social too)

With it, not to it. I really should check my posts before pressing send.

(Nanaej) I stand corrected.

I am presently reading a detective novel written recently but set in the 1950s.

The author has captured the spirit of those times very well. There are non pc attitudes to class/servants, gender and race. The 'n' word crops up quite a bit but the author has contrived to make any character who uses the word unsympathetic.

Should the 'n' word have been left out or is it better to aim for authenticism and 'showing it like it was'.

I'd go for 'showing like it was' because that is the truth, however unpleasant the truth is. Knowing the truth about past attitudes is what helps us develop better attitudes and move on. Pretending things were not bad when they were is dishonest as well as pointless. What does it achieve?

Just what I was thinking thatbags

Brenda don't feel bad..it was widely promoted and a lot of fuss was made but as ever the retraction/apology never made such a big splash in the press as the original story!!

Please I am not sure what a slippery slope argument is (but don't tell me because it has apparently been discussed at great length) but if I am guilty of starting/adding to one I do apologise. There are too many pitfalls within major discussions on here so I think I shall stick to safe subjects in the future.

Sadly nanaej the suggestion that the words to 'baa baa black sheep' were sensored is not an urban myth. I remember very clearly when I started work for nottingham city council in the late 80s that this really happened in council day nurseries at the time. Maybe they had read the myth and thought they had to do it. I was also told off for saying that someone drank black coffee There were many things happening at that time and in that place which defied belief and distracted from the use of genuinely offensive terms.

Censored not sensored

At the same time my husband worked in a neighbouring authority and he was also taken to task for using the term 'black coffee'. When he asked how on earth that was offensive he was told that black coffee was deficient in something ie. milk, and therefore the implication was that a black person might also be deficient in something It was a white person who told him that. I would suggest that they might have been deficient in something but that would not be very PC

Nightowl Yes I experienced that as well. Baa Baa Blue sheep does not sound right either. Seriously it shows appalling ignorance of the issues of language use.

So Brenda , you did not need to be corrected !!

An Italian friend of ours says coffee should be drunk black. As far as he's concerned, black coffee is the only proper kind. Deficient indeed! How astronomically silly! Whoever dreamt that up must have been just looking for something to be offended at. They must have had a very dull life. I would have laughed in anyone's face who'd tried that nonsense with me.

I can fully accept that it started as an urban myth, but unfortunately some organisations were not clever enough to recognise that and perhaps took it as an example to be followed.

Yes bags there were some astronomically silly people about. Fortunately there were lots of sensible ones about as well and they ensured that the real issue of inappropriate language was properly considered and things did change for the better.

Oh dear nightowl how very old you have made me feel. I worked in Nottingham City nurseries but it was in the mid 50s to the mid 60s and Little Black Sambo was being read at that time.

Sorry ann! Actually I have maligned Nottingham City Council. Although I worked in the city my employer was in fact Nottinghamshire County Council until local government reorganisation in the late 1990s. Sadly, by then the council run nurseries were being transformed into family centres and I'm not sure you would have recognised anything that was going on there in the end. Some of it was good but there seemed to be a loss of the good nursery care that the old council run nurseries had provided.

We had that story at home. I loved it and read it over and over again. I wanted to be Little Black Sambo.

I loved it too. When the tiger went round and round the tree and turned into ghee it was such a satisfying end to him!

I wanted the pancakes!

Enid Blyton was a good story writer and children will find her whether they are put in front of them or not. DGD, aged 6, has discovered the Secret Seven and loves them.

I do think with books for younger children should have individual words changed where they are now deeply deeply offensive, like n****r. We would not want them reading books saying f**k or c**t p**i and the n****r word is as, if not more, offensive and there is always the danger that they would use the words in conversation and get themselves unknowingly deeply into trouble.

Older children and adults are capable of understanding that they represent the language and attitudes of a previous age that not now current. Bear in mind we use words and have attitudes now that will deeply shock people of 2113, and they are probably not the ones we would think of.

What's p**i?

An insult to Pakistani people, Petallus

Oh of course!