#2. Foreign vs Normal

I won't mention who and I won't mention where but someone, somewhere at some time made the following distinction. Normal and foreign.

What was meant by this was the difference between those people who speak English and those who do not.  However, this person did not execute this with the most politically correct terminology.

Now I don't believe there is anything wrong with the word "foreign", when someone is not from Great Britain, there is nothing wrong with saying foreign.....within the right context. However, we should not presume that because someone is not speaking English they are foreign and on the same note, just because a person does not speak English, we should not separate them from "normal" as doing so would suggest that they are in fact "abnormal".

The person who made the distinction did not hesitate in doing so. It was a quick, un-thought-out utterance and probably on reflection they would change their terminology. However, if there is some way in which we can see into someone's thoughts and mind by the language they use, I think we just found a mild racist.  It has been said that we speak the truth when we are drunk or tired, what if we're  not monitoring what we are saying, is that the truth? If so, this person made a bit of a blip.

On the other hand, language uses us. If a man wants to create a friendly common ground with another man he may call him "mate" or "pal" or (insert masculine friendly term here).  However, what can he call a woman in the same situation, "honey" or "love"? Possibly not.  A woman may and undoubtedly has on occasion heard such an expression being aimed her way and taken offence and found it patronising and belittling. The man was not meaning to patronise, he was trying to put her at ease and create a friendly atmosphere, but in doing so, language has used him and he has had no easy alternative to "mate" or "pal".

Was the Foreignversusnormalgate a case of language using the speaker? It is possible. The utterance began with "foreign" and then the speaker had to counter this with mentioning those that are not foreign but was unable to.  It would have been easier to say "those that speak English and those that do not" but that was not mentioned.

I seem to think that while this could be a case of language using the speaker, whereby they had to quickly counter "foreign" with something and could not find in their lexicon the relative word, in fact, the use of language displayed the mind of the speaker - There are those that speak English and there are those that don't and those that do are "normal".

It is possible that I am thinking far too much into it and in fact nothing whatsoever was meant by what was said. I just found it quite interesting.