美國政客教你如何用英語優雅的罵人

In the run-up to today’s mid-term election, observers of American politics have lamented that the nation’s political landscape is more divided than ever. A Pew Research Center report released this year concluded that “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines—and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive—than at any point in the last two decades.” As anyone who has ever looked through comments on a political blog can attest, this polarization often translates into venomous language, with Republicans and Democrats slinging insults at each other over the partisan divide.
在今天的中期選舉拉開序幕前，美國政治觀察家紛紛哀嘆於國家政治格局的空前分裂。皮尤研究中心今年發佈的一項調查認爲“共和黨和民主黨在意識形態方面的分歧越發明顯，黨派間的相互反感愈演愈烈，爲二十年來之最。”無論是誰，只要看了政治博客上的評論，都會知道這種兩極分化必會引發一場罵戰，會使共和黨和民主黨在黨派分歧上互相詆譭。

American English has a specialized vocabulary of insults based on party affiliation. For instance, a Democrat deriding a Republican might use the term wingnut, combining the notion of right-wing extremism and irrational nuttiness, or Rethuglican (Rethug for short), a blend of Republican and thug. The lexicon of Republican insults for Democrats includes moonbat, which the late William Safire traced back to libertarian blogger Perry de Havilland in the fuller form “barking moonbat”, suggesting ideology-crazed partisans howling at the moon. Even more common than moonbat in Oxford’s tracking corpus is the schoolyard-esque slur libtard (from liberal and –tard in retard, an offensive term for a person with intellectual disabilities). Liberal neologists have gotten in on the -tard act too, but Teatard (with reference to the conservative Tea Party movement), conservatard, and Republitard have thus far failed to achieve widespread currency.
美式英語中基於黨派關係有一個名爲“詆譭“的專業術語。例如，一個民主黨可能用“Wingnut瘋子”一詞嘲弄共和黨人，這個詞彙兼具右翼極端主義與缺乏理性的概念。或使用“Rethuglican”（簡稱爲Rethug），融合了暴徒和民主黨之意。共和黨詆譭民主黨人的詞彙包括“moonbat”，可以從已故的威廉•薩菲爾追溯到完整寫出 “barking moonbat”的自由博主佩裏德哈維蘭，詞意爲一羣心存幻想的瘋子。在不斷更新的牛津英語語料庫中，校園式毀謗詞彙“libtard” （由詞彙“自由”liberal和“傻子”retard中的’tard’組成，是一種對於智障人士的蔑稱）的使用甚至比 “moonbat” 更爲常見。自由的新語創造者也創造了帶有“tard”的詞彙，但 “teatard” （參照保守主義的茶黨運動）， “conservatard”,和 “republitard”卻至今仍未能實現廣泛使用。

Of course, Americans don’t always/ insult their political opponents using party-specific terminology. More often, they choose from English’s vast wealth of nonpartisan putdowns. Wondering whether there were patterns in how often common negative words were applied to people of various political stripes, I analyzed the American sources collected since 2012 by Oxford’s New Monitor Corpus (which aggregates more than 100 million words of English usage each month from online publications) to find the negative nouns most frequently modified by liberal, left-wing, and Democrat(ic), on the one hand, and conservative, right-wing, and Republican on the other. This is a crude approximation, since the pattern “[partisan adjective] [noun]” represents a small proportion of all partisan insults. Nonetheless, the results were intriguing. Out of a sample of about 1200 negative phrases gathered, these were the top 10 negative terms applied to liberals and conservatives by overall frequency:
當然,美國人並不總是用特定的政黨術語詆譭其政治對手。更多時候，他們會從龐大豐富的非黨派英語詞彙中選擇貶損的語言。那些用於攻擊各派系的常用負面詞多久出現一次？它們出現是否有固定的模式？爲了瞭解這些，我對於2012年以來牛津新監測到的語料庫（它彙集每月網上出版物多達100多萬字的英語用法）中所收集的美式英語詞彙進行分析，發現負面名詞一方面常被用於修飾“liberal自由主義”，“left-wing左翼”及“Democratic民主黨”，另一方面，它也被用作“保守主義conservative”，“右翼right-wing”及“共和Democratic”的修飾詞。這只是個大概的猜測，因爲這個模式“【partisan黨派 形容詞】【名詞】“僅代表小部分的黨派詆譭詞彙。然而結果相當有趣。在收集的1200個負面詞彙樣本中，從總體使用頻率上看，以下是用於自由主義和保守主義的10大負面詞彙。（如下圖）

The overall number of insults in the sample was split fairly evenly between liberals and conservatives, but the insults lobbed at liberals were more varied; the top insult for conservatives, extremist, was used three times as often than the top insult for a liberal, hack. In a time of much-lamented partisanship, it is perhaps unsurprising that words associated with ideological extremism (extremist, ideologue, radical, zealot) were among the most common terms of criticism. Similarly, the lack of civility in our political discourse shines through in the frequency of taunts suggesting stupidity and irrationality. Such terms were brandished on both sides, but liberals were more likely to be called morons, fools, and loons, whereas conservatives were most often derided as nutjobs, nuts, and lunatics. Idiot was a favorite on both sides of the aisle.
我們可以看出樣本中，自由主義與保守主義的詆譭詞彙數量幾乎相當，但用於攻擊自由主義的詆譭詞彙更爲多樣；在對保守主義的詆譭詞彙中，出現頻率最高的是“extremist極端分子”，比用於自由主義的詆譭詞彙“hack駭客”的使用頻率高出三倍。在這個哀嘆黨派紛爭的時期，即使那些關於極端主義意識形態的詞彙（如“extremist極端分子”,“ideologue空想家”，“radical激進分子”，“zealot狂熱分子”）成爲最常用的批判術語也不足爲奇。同樣，因缺乏文明而大肆嘲諷的政治話語顯得有些愚蠢與非理性。雙方使用這些詞語相互攻擊，自由主義容易被保守主義叫做“morons白癡”，“fools傻子”，以及”loons廢物”，保守主義則常被自由主義嘲諷爲“nutjobs蠢貨”，“nuts瘋子”和“lunatics精神病”。而“Idiot笨蛋”是雙方都喜歡用的詆譭詞彙。

The type of adjective favored in insulting phrases varied by partisan affiliation as well. People insulting conservatives favored the adjective right-wing, which was more than twice as common as Republican and nearly four times more common than conservative. In contrast, the dominant adjective in negative epithets for liberals was— liberal. Liberal was used more than four times as often as left-wing, and Democrat and Democratic accounted for only a fraction of the insults for liberals, with the former used twice as often as the latter. Grammatically speaking, the preference for Democrat over Democraticas a modifier is perplexing, since Democratic is an adjective whereas Democrat is a noun (used attributively). However, it is in keeping with a longstanding tradition among Republicans of dropping the –ic in order to maintain a distinction from the broader, positive associations of the adjective democratic with democracy and egalitarianism.詆譭類詞彙中的形容詞也會根據政黨關係的變化而變化。詆譭保守主義的人會傾向使用形容詞“right-wing右翼的”，其使用頻率是 “共和的Republican”的兩倍多，幾近“保守的conservative”的四倍。而在對於自由主義的詆譭中，占主導地位的負面形容詞爲“liberal自由主義的”，其使用率比“left-wing左翼的”高出四倍。“Democrat民主人士”和“Democratic民主的”僅佔詆譭自由主義詞彙的一小部分，前者的使用頻率是後者的兩倍。從語法上看，較詞彙“Democratic民主的”而選擇“Democrat民主人士”有些令人費解，因爲 “Democratic”是形容詞而 “Democrat”是名詞（被修飾）。然而，它合乎共和黨長期以來摒棄“ic”的傳統，以便與形容詞“democratic民主的”更寬泛積極的寓意，既“民主與平等”，區分開來。

The figure below shows the percentage of usage of the top insults in the sample applied to liberals and conservatives, respectively:
以下數據顯示了分別在自由主義和保守主義中最常用的詆譭詞彙的使用比例。

The range of negative terms applied mainly to liberals was broader, with insults aimed at conservatives being relatively concentrated. Hack, shill, and hypocrite suggest an impugning of liberals’ motivations, while hippie and elitist echo well-known stereotypes about those with liberal political leanings. The prominence of lemming, loser, and loon among insults for left-wing liberals points to a conservative affinity for alliteration, but the other L-word on the list, lunatic, is more often applied to conservatives. The list of negative words most often applied to conservatives was dominated by terms emphasizing ideological extremism: fanatic, extremist, ideologue, and zealot. The presence of obstructionist on the list reflects Democratic criticism of tactics used by Republican politicians in Congress, whereas the prominence of misogynist is likely related to Democratic efforts to portray Republicans as being engaged in a so-called “War on Women”. A case can be made that our language of partisan insults is as polarized as every other aspect of American political life. But there may be a ray of hope: partisans on both sides of the aisle accuse each other of being racists and bigots, demonstrating a consensus that intolerance and discrimination are universally reprehensible. And while there may not be much common ground between Democrats and Republicans, at least we can all agree on calling each other “idiots”.
由上圖可看出，用於自由主義的負面詞彙範圍更廣一些，而針對保守主義的詆譭詞彙相對集中。“Hack駭客”，“shill騙子”，和“hypocrite僞君子”往往作爲對自由主義的抨擊動機，而“hippie嬉皮士”和“精英”等俗套稱呼則因是形容那些具有自由主義政治傾向的人而被熟知。對於偏向保守的左翼自由主義，主要的詆譭詞彙有“lemming旅鼠”，“loser輸家”，和“loon蠢人”，而同樣以 “L”字打頭的另一個單詞“lunatic瘋子”則多用於保守主義。主要用於保守主義的負面詞彙常常強調意識形態的極端主義，如“fanatic狂徒”, extremist“極端分子”, ideologue“空想家”, and zealot“狂熱分子”。“obstructionist蓄意阻撓者”一詞的出現反映了共和黨政客在國會中施盡招數批判民主黨，而“misogynist女性歧視者”則顯示出民主黨對於塑造共和黨從事所謂的“婦女戰爭”方面做出的努力。黨派詆譭的語言就如同美國政治生活的其他方面一樣兩極化，但是可能還有一線希望：兩黨雙方互相指責對方爲種族歧視者和偏執狂，這表明雙方達成一種共識，即不容忍和歧視應該受到譴責。也許民主黨和共和黨之間沒有太多共同立場，但至少可以一致同意稱對方爲“idiots傻瓜”。