Wog

Wog is a slang word in the idiom of Australian English and British English. In the UK, it is usually employed as an ethnic or racial slur, and considered derogatory and offensive. In Australia, it may be used as a slur, but to some extent has been reclaimed and is used as a self-descriptor.

In British English, "wog" is an offensive racial slur usually applied to Black, Middle Eastern, South Asian or Southeast Asian peoples. In Australian English, "wog" is a term used as a racial slur mostly for people from Southern Europe and the Mediterranean region in general (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek), including the Mediterranean region of the Middle East (i.e., the Eastern Mediterranean or the Levant and North Africa: Jews and Arabs) as well as Eastern Europe.

Origin

The origin of the term is unclear. It was first noted by lexicographer F.C. Bowen in 1929, in his Sea Slang: a dictionary of the old-timers’ expressions and epithets, where he defines wogs as "lower class Babu shipping clerks on the Indian coast."[1] Many dictionaries say "wog" derives from the golliwogg, a blackface minstrel doll character from a children's book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg by Florence Kate Upton, published in 1895; or from pollywog, a dialect term for tadpole that is used in maritime circles to indicate someone who has not crossed the equator.[2]

Suggestions that the word is an acronym for "wily Oriental gentleman", "working on government service", or similar, are examples of false etymology.[3][4]

Use in British English

"Wog", in the UK, is a derogatory and racially offensive slang word referring to a non-white, Jewish, or darker-skinned white person, including people from the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, other parts of Asia such as the East Indies, or the Mediterranean area, including Southern Europeans.

The saying, "The wogs begin at Calais" (implying that everyone who is not British is a wog), appears to date from the First World War but was popularised by George Wigg, Labour MP for Dudley, in 1949 when in a parliamentary debate concerning the Burmese, Wigg shouted at the Conservative benches, "The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all 'wogs'. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [i.e., Winston Churchill] thinks that the 'wogs' begin at Calais."[5]

As reported by English-Jewish journalist Linda Grant, people in England have referred to Jews and Israelis as "wogs", as well.[6]

In Season 1 Episode 6 - 'The Germans' episode of Fawlty Towers (a 1975 funny British TV show), Major Gowen specifically refers to "wog" as meaning any person from India (when speaking about the India vs England cricket game at the Oval to Basil Fawlty).

Use in Australian English

In Australia, the term "wog" refers to residents of Southern European, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European ethnicity or appearance. The slur became widely diffused with an increase in immigration from Europe and the Levant, mainly Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Italy, France, Lebanon, Macedonia, Malta, Serbia, Spain and Turkey after the Second World War. These new arrivals were perceived by the majority population as contrasting with the larger predominant Anglo Protestant/Anglo-Australian/Anglo-Celtic Australian culture. The term expanded to include not just Southern European peoples, but immigrants from the Mediterranean region of the Middle East as well.

Today, "wog" is used particularly in places in Australia with substantial Southern European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern populations, mainly Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. As with other slang and prima facie profanity used in contemporary Australian English,[7] the term "wog" may be employed either aggressively or affectionately within differing contexts.

In Australian English, "wog" can also be used as a slang word for an illness such as a common cold or influenza, as in: "I'm coming down with a wog". Such usage is not perceived as derogatory.[8]

In the media

More recently, Southern European-Australian performing artists have taken ownership of the term "wog", defusing its original pejorative nature. The popular 1980s stage show Wogs Out of Work, created by Nick Giannopoulos and Simon Palomares, is an early example. The production was followed on television with Acropolis Now, starring Giannopoulos, Palomares, George Kapiniaris, and Mary Coustas, and films such as The Wog Boy and Wog Boy 2: Kings of Mykonos, and parodies such as those of Santo Cilauro (Italian), Eric Bana (Croatian-German), Vince Colosimo (Italian), Nick Giannopoulos (Greek), Frank Lotito (Italian), Mary Coustas (Greek), and SBS Television's offbeat Pizza and later Here Come the Habibs. TV series have continued this change in Australian cultural history—with some even classifying a genre of "wogsploitation" of pop culture products being created by and for a proudly "wog" market.[9] Recent works of the genre have been used by Australians of non-English speaking backgrounds to assert ethnic identity rather than succumb to ethnic stereotypes.[10] Upon the release of Wog Boy 2, Giannopoulos discussed the contemporary use of the term "wog" in the Australian context:

I think by defusing the word 'wog' we've shown our maturity and our great ability to adapt and just laugh things off, you know... When I first came [to Greece] and I started trying to explain to them why we got called 'wog' they'd get really angry about it, you know. They were, "Why? Why they say this about the Greek people?" You know? But then when they see what we've done with it—and this is the twist—that we've turned it into a term of endearment, they actually really get into that...

Thus, in contemporary Australia, the term "wog" may, in certain contexts, be viewed as a "nickname" rather than a pejorative term[11]—akin to the nicknames ascribed within Australian English to other historically significant cultural groupings such as the English ("Poms"), the Americans ("Yanks") and New Zealanders ("Kiwis").

Use in Canada

In Canadian military slang used by combat arms units (that is, front line fighting forces), "wog" is a derogatory term for any rear echelon personnel and those who are not members of the combat arms.

Use in the United States

Duane Clarridge, a former CIA officer, explained that the term "wog factor" was used by the CIA "to acknowledge that the motivations that shape decision-making in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent are very different from our own."[12]

Scientology

The word "wog" is used by Scientologists to refer to non-Scientologists. Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard defined wog as a "common, everyday garden-variety humanoid ... He 'is' a body. [He] doesn't know he's there, etc. He isn't there as a spirit at all. He is not operating as a thetan."[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "'Golliwog' is not connected with 'wog'". The Daily Telegraph. London. 5 February 2009.
  2. ↑ "Wog". Your Dictionary. October 24, 2017. Retrieved October 24, 2017.
  3. ↑ Wilton, David (2008). Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends. Oxford University Press.
  4. ↑ "Wog"". WordOrigins.org. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  5. ↑ "Hansard". House of Commons 5th series. 467. col 2845.
  6. ↑ Grant, Linda (2009). The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel. London, England: Hatchette Digital. |access-date= requires |url= (help) "It started at once, [Ophir] said, with the geography teacher, 'who we used to call Bullet, who had a map on the wall where Israel appeared as Palestine and to my face he called Jews and Israelis 'terrorist wogs'... As for calling Jews 'wogs,' Ophir was to understand that there was nothing derogatory in the term, it simply meant Western Oriental Gentleman."
  7. ↑ e.g., "bastard" and "cunt"
  8. ↑ "Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms". Australian National University. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
  9. ↑ Dale, David (17 May 2003). "Wogsploitation makes its mark in mainstream". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  10. ↑ http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:828;jsessionid=1F4182ECBFF260960D2D5796D1E1BE08
  11. ↑ Clark, Andrew (12 October 2005). "A bad word made good". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Clarridge, Duane (August 13, 2002). A Spy For All Seasons: My Life in the CIA. Scibner. p. 105. ISBN 978-0743245364.
  13. ↑ Saint Hill Briefing Course-82 6611C29
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