Talk:my nigger

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of 11 2007. 21:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

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my nigger

This recently passed RfD. I have been looking into the term a bit and believe that the sense given has not been supported. The reference to the movie Training Day certainly does not unambiguously support the sense given. I didn't remember the usage in the film that way and others writing about the film in print also viewed it differently. The term "nigger", when used by black people to each other, can be "affectionate". (I have inseerted an additional neutral sense of the term in our entry for nigger.) But "my nigger", with the notion of possession, seems to introduce more a possibility of subservience, which is how I interpreted the Training Day use. (Also, a similar use in Pulp Fiction, also said by a black man to a white man, BTW.) OTOH, I don't have any direct experience of the use of the term "my nigger". DCDuring 02:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether I can find print citations, but I can personally attest to its regular use among teens in California, at least. --EncycloPetey 03:31, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

The argument you make seems to be that my nigger = my + nigger, with the latter being in the sense of "a term of address", loosely an equivalent of "friend" in AAVE. I don't belive that argument because "my" does not pragmatically restrict the meaning: "his nigger" etc. would not be analyzed the same way. In my view this would pass the Egyptian pyramid test since the second term does "not have the most general meaning attributable". In fact the literal meaning would be that stated by a slaveholder. However, if you like we can open the RFD back up for discussion. DAVilla

Any use of a personal pronoun is likely to have a different emotional content, isn't it? "My child" is warmer and nicer than "his child". Since literal slave-holding is both illegal and not involved in the fictional relationships under discussion, the word can only refer to some other kind of relationship of subservience. DCDuring 12:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

The quotation listed should stay but as mention doesn't count toward verification; rather the quotation from the movie itslef should be listed. I can't find "my nigger" in Pulp Fiction but DCDuring only said it was similar. DAVilla 04:01, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

A secondary source for the purported Pulp Fiction cite:

• 2000, Christine Gledhill, Linda Williams, Reinventing Film Studies, page 285

  Upon noticing Vince at the bar, Marsellus greets him jauntily as "my nigger"

I don't know what this all means. If we could get more quotes, then perhaps we could understand this a bit better. I any event, we seem to have justification for the less pejorative sense of "nigger" and another sense as figurative slave, someone who has to do someone's bidding. If "nigger" weren't so emotionally charged, the differences in tone wouldn't matter as much. DCDuring 13:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

failed, just as my brother, my homey, my dog etc all fail, SoP. - [The]DaveRoss 02:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)