"Anchor baby" among roughly 10,000 words -- including "hoodie" and "babydaddy" -- added to the dictionary last month -
A decision by the American Heritage Dictionary to revise its definition of "anchor baby" -- labeling it an offensive and disparaging term -- is an attempt to manipulate the "linguistic landscape" and push a leftist agenda, some opponents of illegal immigration say.
"Anchor baby" was among roughly 10,000 words -- including "hoodie" and "babydaddy" -- added to the dictionary's fifth edition last month. The hot-button term, a noun, was initially defined as: "A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family."
That definition caught the attention of Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center, who heard American Heritage Dictionary executive editor Steve Kleinedler read it during a radio interview last month. Giovagnoli blasted the definition on the organization's blog last Friday, saying it masked the "poisonous and derogatory" nature of the term.
By Monday, the term had been changed. It is now defined as such: "Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child's birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother's or other relatives' chances of securing eventual citizenship."
The revision is now a "well-crafted" definition of how the term is used, Giovagnoli said.
But not everyone agrees.
"That's a political statement and it's not even accurate," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "[An anchor baby] is a child born to an illegal immigrant."
Krikorian said the revised definition makes a political statement and is much more than neutral, "just the facts" reference material.
"It's a sign of real provincialism," he said. "I understand why people don't like the term, but I know lots of people who use it in a non-disparaging fashion. There really isn't a shorthand way of describing people like this, and there does need to be because it an important source of political debate: Should the children born to illegal immigrants get automatic citizenship?"
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/09/revised-definition-anchor-baby-part-leftist-agenda-critics-say/
A decision by the American Heritage Dictionary to revise its definition of "anchor baby" -- labeling it an offensive and disparaging term -- is an attempt to manipulate the "linguistic landscape" and push a leftist agenda, some opponents of illegal immigration say.
"Anchor baby" was among roughly 10,000 words -- including "hoodie" and "babydaddy" -- added to the dictionary's fifth edition last month. The hot-button term, a noun, was initially defined as: "A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family."
That definition caught the attention of Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center, who heard American Heritage Dictionary executive editor Steve Kleinedler read it during a radio interview last month. Giovagnoli blasted the definition on the organization's blog last Friday, saying it masked the "poisonous and derogatory" nature of the term.
By Monday, the term had been changed. It is now defined as such: "Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child's birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother's or other relatives' chances of securing eventual citizenship."
The revision is now a "well-crafted" definition of how the term is used, Giovagnoli said.
But not everyone agrees.
"That's a political statement and it's not even accurate," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "[An anchor baby] is a child born to an illegal immigrant."
Krikorian said the revised definition makes a political statement and is much more than neutral, "just the facts" reference material.
"It's a sign of real provincialism," he said. "I understand why people don't like the term, but I know lots of people who use it in a non-disparaging fashion. There really isn't a shorthand way of describing people like this, and there does need to be because it an important source of political debate: Should the children born to illegal immigrants get automatic citizenship?"
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/09/revised-definition-anchor-baby-part-leftist-agenda-critics-say/
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