GROUP NAMES IN ETHNIC SLURS
GROUP NAMES IN ETHNIC SLURS

Summary/Abstract: The slang of ethnic abuse is a rich source of information about the collective self and cultural differences of human communities. Often derogatory, it displays the past and present of social relations in a country and sometimes its terms go to everyday speech and gain a place in the wider linguistic use. Reflecting the prejudice in cultural history, the purpose of an ethnic epithet is to insult and to control the behavior of a minority or of any other group to gain social status and influence the values of society. Manifested in hate speech, neutral mentioning, humorous and unaware uses, ethnic slurs have become a main object of applied linguistics or interdisciplinary research.Ethnic slurs are based on race, nationality, gender, cultural and social differences and occur in language in a variety of forms such as derisive nicknames for groups, metaphors or ethnicons and ethnic jokes. English-speaking nations created names and nicknames for all the groups they had contact or economic and cultural conflict and even created ethnic slurs about themselves. British English slurs based on group names are aimed most frequently at European nations or African and Asian people of the former British Empire or even at their close neighbors inside the country. American English slurs reflect the multicultural structure of American society; almost every group invented and used slurs for others although they are mainly aimed at Blacks, Mexicans, Jews, the Irish, Chinese, Italians. Among these, group names are often used in a variety of forms to express cultural, social and economic conflict among ethnic groups.

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