Spaz! The new S-word

[llcooljabe]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4902432.stm

Golfer Tiger Woods has been criticised for saying he played like 'a spaz'. Can using the word ever be right?

Two years ago I was involved in a linguistic incident at work. I called a disabled colleague a spaz after hearing he'd spilt coffee over yet another expensive bit of computer kit.

My colleague laughed it off. It was a friendly bit of banter - spaz in this case meaning I thought he was being a bit of a stereotype like the helpless disabled people you used to see in telethons and charity posters.

I use the term with irony as someone who was regularly called a "spaz" in the school playground, though I'm visually impaired and not what we once called "a spastic".

To confuse the issue, a non-disabled colleague had overheard and told me that she found that term offensive and thanked me not to use it in front of her. I was offended that she was offended because I didn't feel it was her place to be offended... after all, it's not her word and she wouldn't have been taunted with it.

Bigger punch

There is a history of minority groups reclaiming words once used against them. Gay people refer to each other as queer or queens. Black people use ****** in a friendly way. It's about humour, irony and taking the sting out of once powerful and hurtful taunts. It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it.

So what did Tiger Woods mean when he said: "I was so in control from tee to green, the best I've played for years... But as soon as I got on the green I was a spaz."

He was describing a poor performance. A flawed performance. An impaired performance. Many e-mails to the Ouch! website on Tuesday were from people wanting to point out that spaz means something different in America. "It just means idiot," one reader wrote. Idiot with an etymological nod towards spasticity though?

Is the fact that a nation has lost sight of the origins of the word a good or bad thing? Is it harmful or is it genuinely meaningless now?

ADAPT is America's biggest grassroots disability rights organisation. I rang round some of their members and found out that they didn't even know about the Woods story as it wasn't reported as widely over there. But they did have views on the s-word.

"When people say 'you're such a spaz' they're talking about someone with cerebral palsy," says Nancy Salandra from Philadelphia ADAPT. "People use it all the time but they are wrong. It's part of the language now, like retard, but it doesn't make it right."

"I would think that anybody in the disability community would see it as offensive," says Babs Johnson of National ADAPT. "It would be looked upon as someone having a fit or seizure or something like that. Body movements that you're not able to control."

Ugly

Tiger Woods used the word in a live TV interview. An article on Tuesday in online newspaper The Age tracked the reporting of Woods comments and found that spaz was edited out of subsequent news packages. They also say that an LA Times reporter got Tiger to re-word his sentence replacing spaz with wreck so he could report it with no problems.

In the UK, the words spaz and spastic seem to pack a bigger punch. I think we can firmly place the blame at the door of Blue Peter for this.

Never was its potency or currency so big as when the programme featured Joey Deacon in the early 1980s, believing the story of a 60-year-old man with cerebral palsy overcoming the odds would touch the hearts of under-12s.

Oh, how wrong. It unleashed a monster. Spaz, spastic, spacker, joey, spazmo - all became familiar phrases that year and were still being used years later by gurning children in the playground. Spaz became synonymous with useless incompetence - the type you see in disabled people portrayed badly on TV.

Joey even got a mention in a Human League song and on Minder. Not long after, The Spastics Society famously changed its name to Scope. They should have charged Blue Peter for the re-branding expenses.

Humour

Interestingly though, Scope were criticised by many younger disabled people last October after they came out against a new US brand of wheelchair, The Spazz, which started selling in Britain.

They said: "It may be a good chair but we can't accept the name. If it carries on, it won't be long before children are calling each other 'spazzo' in the playground again."

It was felt that Scope didn't appreciate the irony and humour, used empoweringly, by a company trying to associate something positive with a previously negative word.

Though this golfing incident has whipped up some interesting discussions around language, I'm convinced Tiger never meant to use the word offensively.

But has this whole debate just fanned the flames of those who rail against so-called political correctness or has it made people think about how they might subconsciously be putting disabled people down?

[llcooljabe]

The comments at the end are the funny part, as is this list:

TOP TEN WORST WORDS

1. Retard
2. Spastic
3. Window-licker
4. Mong
5. Special
6. Brave
7. Cripple
8. Psycho
9. Handicapped
10. Wheelchair-bound

[_BullDog_]

I thought 'spaz' was just used in reference to someone who is a little hyper and has a lack of control over ones emotions.

[ressap maxe]

Originally Posted by _BullDog_

I thought 'spaz' was just used in reference to someone who is a little hyper and has a lack of control over once emotions.

Ditto

[Maine-iac]

As a kid, we knew it meant "acted goofy like somebody with CP". It was not a nice term, but slightly better than a swear word. Definitely not a word you used in front of Mom.

[ressap maxe]

I don't see the harm in making fun of someone with a word that describes a condition that they are not. Now, if there is a negative word used against someone who the word describes than that's not so good, but who does that anyway.

No one says, "Hey retard!" to a retarded person (Not that they would know the difference). But if you say it to someone who is not retarded because they did something that a real retarded person may have done, then calling them a retard is just a description, and very funny.

Like Tiger saying he spazzed. A real spastic person probably would have missed those puts. So why can't he use that word to describe his performance.

If some calls an african american the N-word, that is bad. But if someone calls a white person the N-word, who cares. So why is it any different for the word retard or spaz.

Plus, more commonly used words, such as moran and idiot, also describe people with certain mental capabilites (certain IQ levels if my memory serves me) So are we supposed to not say those words so we don't offend anyone meeting the criteria of being a moran or idiot (by the dictionary defintions)? Of course not. There is no offense in making fun of someone by using a word that describes a condition that they may have resembled.

I exclude racist comments from this arguement (i.e. calling a white person the N-word for resembling a racial stereotype, that's just ignorant and not what I am saying at all).

[Frenchie]

Originally Posted by Maine-iac

As a kid, we knew it meant "acted goofy like somebody with CP". It was not a nice term, but slightly better than a swear word. Definitely not a work you used in front of Mom.

I can't speak for everyone, but I always associate it with someone who's just plain uncoordinated...such as...myself! I've never associated it with being a degrading term.

[_BullDog_]

Originally Posted by Maine-iac

Definitely not a work you used in front of Mom.

That reminded me of a time when my younger brother, probably 8-10 at the time called someone a dildo infront of my mom.... She was not impressed by his vocabulary.

[llcooljabe]

I'll take swords for $500, Alex

[Emily]

Originally Posted by ressap maxe

Like Tiger saying he spazzed. A real spastic person probably would have missed those puts. So why can't he use that word to describe his performance.

I exclude racist comments from this arguement (i.e. calling a white person the N-word for resembling a racial stereotype, that's just ignorant and not what I am saying at all).

I really don't see the difference here. Maybe a difference in degree, but it's a good analogy. Unless you're saying all racial stereotypes are untrue. Then I could see your point.