2019年经济学人 约翰逊语言专栏--政治对语言的影响(3)（在线收听）

The evolution of insults is the subject of Philip Gooden’s new book, “Bad Words”. He recounts in one neat reversal the turn in the history of invective. The Sun, a British tabloid, was once in the habit of outing gay people, and even publicly defended its use of “poof” in doing so (because, the paper argued, its readers used the word, too). How times change. After abandoning the practice of outing in 1998, in 2018 the paper led a campaign to track down a bus-driver who called a reality-show star a “poofter”. What it once considered lighthearted banter is now verboten homophobia.

菲利普·古登的新书《脏话》以侮辱性词汇的演变为主题。他讲述了谩骂史上一个巧妙的逆转。英国小报《太阳报》曾经有曝光同性恋者的习惯，甚至还公开为自己在这样做时使用“poof”一词进行辩护(该报认为，因为读者也使用了这个词)。时间飞逝。在1998年放弃户外活动后，《太阳报》在2018年发起了一场运动，追查一位称真人秀明星为“搞同性恋的poofter”的巴士司机。曾经被认为是愉快的玩笑，现在是被禁的恐同症。

Not everyone is happy with this modulation in the unacceptable. Some think it is a humourless and thin-skinned world that can’t handle a risqué dig now and again. Those purported stalwarts of robust free speech have inaugurated a new catalogue of insults: the “snowflake” who can’t take the heat; the “libtard” who can’t think beyond progressive dogma; the “social-justice warrior”, once a term applied by left-leaning types to themselves, now appropriated as a smear.

并不是每个人都乐意接受这种调制方式。有些人认为，这是一个缺乏幽默感、脸皮薄的世界，无法应对时不时的下流挖苦。那些所谓的自由言论的中坚分子开创了一个新的侮辱目录：不能承受压力的“雪花”； 不能超越进步教条的“自由主义者”；“社会正义战士”，这个曾经被左倾分子用来形容他们自己的词，现在被用作诽谤。

Such people consider themselves “redpilled”, named after the red pill in “The Matrix” that allows characters to see the world as it truly is. When Hillary Clinton, running for president, unwisely referred to some Americans as “deplorables”, some of her critics embraced that term as a badge of honour—an ironic stance meant to contrast with their supposedly po-faced adversaries.

这些人认为自己是“redpilled”，以《黑客帝国》中能让角色看到真实世界的红色药丸命名。当竞选总统的希拉里?克林顿不明智地把一些美国人称为“可悲的人”时，她的一些批评者把这个词当成了荣誉的象征——这是一种讽刺的姿态，旨在与他们理应面无表情的对手形成对比。

In a less buttoned-up age, some venerable slurs are in decline. Less happily, they are being superseded by tags based on identity politics. “Deplorables” versus “snowflakes”: in place of the old neuroses, the new lexicon of insults captures worrying divisions.

在一个不那么沉默寡言的时代，一些受欢迎的脏话正在消失。不幸的是，它们正被基于身份政治的标签所取代。“可悲的人”与“雪花”：取代了旧的神经症，新的侮辱词汇却抓住了令人担忧的分歧。