Wednesday, September 18, 2013

"Try being Jewish at a Chelsea match"

Following last year's heated debate about the use of the terms "yids" and "yid army" to describe Tottenham Hotspur's fans, the flames have been fanned further by interventions from both sides.

As The Guardian reports, both the Football Association and David Cameron have waded in, threatening to fine and ban fans on one hand, or to forgive them on the other. David Baddiel (who is Jewish) has also joined in with a provocative and interesting article in The Guardian and a radio discussion with David Aaronovitch (also Jewish) about whether "yid" is a race-hate term or a proud badge of solidarity among Jewish Tottenham fans and their fellow supporters (on this link from about 33 minutes in).

One of Baddiel's key points is that if you're Jewish and have suffered the abuse directed at Jews by some of the minority of racist scumbags from Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham, you're unlikely to view "yid" as a friendly term, however it appears to be used by Tottenham fans, who are historically seen as a club with a strong Jewish following.

As we discussed back in November 2012, this is a language topic that crops up as part of ENGA3 and could well form a good topic for the Language Intervention part of the ENGA4 coursework. Have a look back at the longer post here to see where it all fits in.

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...