Chinky

This article is about the British slang. For the ethnic slur, see Chink.
A Chinese takeaway in Birkenhead, Merseyside, seen here in March 2012.

In the United Kingdom, chinky (or chinky chonky,[1] in parts of northern England known as a chinkies, always in the plural) is a slang name for a Chinese takeaway restaurant or the meal that one buys from such a restaurant. However, along with 'chink', they are named among TV's Most offensive words.[2]

After several campaigns by the Scottish Executive, more people in Scotland now acknowledge that this name is indirectly racist.[3] However, the Broadcasting Standards Commission held in 2002, after a complaint about the BBC One programme The Vicar of Dibley, that when used as the name of a type of restaurant or meal, rather than as an adjective applied to a person or group of people, the word carries no racist connotation.[4]

In a document commissioned by OFCOM titled "Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation"[5] their definition of Chink was "... a term of racial offence/abuse. However, this is polarising. Older and mainly white groups tend to think this is not usually used in an abusive way—e.g., let's go to the Chinky—which is not seen as offensive; younger groups and those from ethnic minorities feel this could be as insulting as 'paki' or 'nigger'."

However, a year earlier, the Commission's counterpart, the Radio Authority, apologised for the offence caused by an incident where a DJ on Heart 106.2 used the term.[6] Ofcom, the successor organisation of the two, classifies it as a derivative of the racist term "chink" but notes that the degree to which the term is deemed offensive varies according to age or ethnic origin of the listener.[7]

The term gained renewed attention in 2014 after it a recording emerged of UKIP candidate Kerry Smith referring to a woman of Chinese background as a "chinky bird".[8]

See also

Look up chinky in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/31/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.