2022-12-14
30 分钟From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and I want to start with something ripped from the headlines, so to speak.
And then, as per what might be one of my patterns, I want to extend it.
I want to pull the camera back and discuss something that I am now and then asked about.
It may seem a little weird where I'm going to start, but I need to start here.
I think I need to help provide a service here as a linguist, and this time, yeah, a black one.
There's something getting around in the Twitterverse and beyond.
And no, I'm not talking about the problems with Mr. Musk, etc. It's more specific.
A claim has been made about the term, if I may, knocked up.
The idea is that knocked up is a term that we should start avoiding,
that it's racist, because it traces to slavery.
The idea is that women who were being sold, African women who were being sold,
could have their sales value increased, knocked up, if the woman was made pregnant.
The auctioneer or somebody would make this woman pregnant and that therefore her price would be knocked up
because she was about to create another person.
That this was promoted as some kind of deal for buyers.
And I'm sorry to have to refer to something like that.
But it's getting around that knocked up meant knocking up the price of an African slave.
And that therefore we shouldn't talk about.
knocked up we shouldn't use the term knocked up because it's referring to something that hideous now