Thought I'd post some comments, hope you don't mind. Assume anything I don't touch on I love and think perfect. Also assume every paragraph below ends with a smiley face and a winking face.
What, you didn't include the "I can has cheezburger?" one? It's a classic!
The argument that the grammatical errors are racist didn't convince me. You generalized the grammatical errors as mimicking typical Asian mistakes without a survey, argument, or good citation. The grammatical errors may very well characterize people of any culture or nationality who is not a native English speaker or even a native, English-speaking child. Furthermore, grammatical errors may not be a product of racism but instead may merely be the intent to recreate the often humorous mistranslations we see all the time. Are we racist for laughing at the mistranslations we see those who didn't learn English as a first language make innocently all the time? I don't think so. It amounts to laughing at cute and innocent things babies and children do and say. Are we racist for laughing at or even recognizing mistranslations? Of course not. We laugh at "I can has cheezburger?" because it's funny, not because deep down we think we're better than the Asian guy down the block.
You cited Urban Dictionary (UD). UD is just as reliable as Wikipedia, which in turn is just as reliable as a published encyclopedia; in other words, it is unreliable. These kinds of resources are meant to be used as a starting point to be cross referenced with and validated by other sources. Basing arguments solely upon them makes your arguments unreliable. Besides, the process by which UD determines a "best" definition is faulty. [/scolding]
The phrase "Now that it is understood why the macros use animals..." implies the racism inherent in the pictures was intended and carefully designed, which conflicts with the tone of the rest of the paper.
1 comment:
Thought I'd post some comments, hope you don't mind. Assume anything I don't touch on I love and think perfect. Also assume every paragraph below ends with a smiley face and a winking face.
What, you didn't include the "I can has cheezburger?" one? It's a classic!
The argument that the grammatical errors are racist didn't convince me. You generalized the grammatical errors as mimicking typical Asian mistakes without a survey, argument, or good citation. The grammatical errors may very well characterize people of any culture or nationality who is not a native English speaker or even a native, English-speaking child. Furthermore, grammatical errors may not be a product of racism but instead may merely be the intent to recreate the often humorous mistranslations we see all the time. Are we racist for laughing at the mistranslations we see those who didn't learn English as a first language make innocently all the time? I don't think so. It amounts to laughing at cute and innocent things babies and children do and say. Are we racist for laughing at or even recognizing mistranslations? Of course not. We laugh at "I can has cheezburger?" because it's funny, not because deep down we think we're better than the Asian guy down the block.
You cited Urban Dictionary (UD). UD is just as reliable as Wikipedia, which in turn is just as reliable as a published encyclopedia; in other words, it is unreliable. These kinds of resources are meant to be used as a starting point to be cross referenced with and validated by other sources. Basing arguments solely upon them makes your arguments unreliable. Besides, the process by which UD determines a "best" definition is faulty. [/scolding]
The phrase "Now that it is understood why the macros use animals..." implies the racism inherent in the pictures was intended and carefully designed, which conflicts with the tone of the rest of the paper.
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