"Those immigrants..." "That beggar..." "Oh, it's them..." You don't need me to fill in any more details to understand the tone conveyed in these statements. "Those," "that," and "them" are pieces of language, which when implemented, are usually very descriptive words in and of themselves. We don't need any more descriptors to know how the user feels about a group. While we can use these words to specify just about anything - positive or negative - we generally use different terms when discussing the positives. We tend to use "those," "that," and "them" as a distancing tool when speaking of people, as it removes us from an individual or a group. Sometimes our desire to distance ourselves stems from our feelings of superiority (e.g. "I would never date that guy."), and sometimes it is a distancing which stems from fear (e.g. "Those immigrants want to take our jobs"). |
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