Strange choice of words

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

While reading Sirius' latest entry, I noticed this sentence:
"Nothing's worse for a flu than getting up one's Irish (and, er, Molly's got more than most, old man)."

I have absolutely no idea what this is meant to mean. I can only guess it is some vaguely racist use of the word Irish to mean angry or frustrated, which is very odd. Can anyone shed light on this usage, I have never heard it before? It really makes very little grammatical sense.

Comments

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

I took it that it was colloquial for getting into a temper.

Perhaps it's a colloquialism that's exclusive to English wizards?

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

Wow, thats an incredibly offensive colloqualism.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I'm Irish myself. Doesn't offend me at all.

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

Good for you. It offends me massively. Irish is not a synonym for angry or violent or agressive and should not be used as such.

Just because some people don't find certain terms personally offensive doesn't actually make them any less offensive.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

If only certain people take offense, then does that make it unilaterally offensive?

You say it's offensive. Yet I don't find it so. So is it in the person's reaction?

(not trying to start a fight. this is actually a pretty interesting subject)

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

I think that being aware of the history of Britain and Ireland, the annexation and occupation of the latter and, more recently the independence of Ireland and immigration of Irish to the UK, makes me think more about seemingly casual slang terms - which some people think are innocuous but are actually a reminder of prejudice and persecution of people of Irish ethnicity, in the past. Any term which has been used derogatorily can be reclaimed and used in a more happy context - I am thinking a little of the way 'nigger' has been reclaimed by some of the RnB community, though here again not everyone feels comfortable with it, obviously its a contentious issue. - but that is not the case in this case and hasn't really been the case in the UK in regards to the Irish. Instead in some ways, since the easing of Troubles in Northern Ireland there is less political focus on unrest, and additionally immigration from Eastern Europe has meant that the Daily Mail and the white working class have somewhere else to vent their racist and right wing anger and agenda towards.

As someone with joint British-Irish nationality I may be more aware of these nuances than others. But I would never knowingly use a racist term or slang word which has been used offensively in the past, or currently. For example I might say 'The Patil twins are Pakistanis' but I would never ever ever say 'The Patils are Pakis' it is just so offensive.

[zorb]

Thanks for sharing your perspective on the phrase. I was actually surprised to see your initial post about it, because while I wouldn't say it's an everyday term here in the US, it's one that I think most Americans would recognize, and I hadn't realized it doesn't translate. It's typically used by people of Irish descent and does play on the stereotype of Irish temper, though in context it has nothing to do with comparison against the British more than against any other nationality.

I'm going to make a wild guess that Sirius's player is also American and might not have put the terminology in Sirius's native context.

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

I can definitely state that Padma and Parvati would be HIGHLY offended at being called Pakistani. They're Kshatriyan Indian, thank-you-very-much. :Grin

-Padma's player

OED

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

You got me curious enough to consult the OED. It's an American colloquialism:

B. noun (elliptical uses of the adj.)
...

5. Temper; passion. orig. U.S. and dial.
1834 D. CROCKETT Narr. Life iv. 30 Her Irish was up too high to do any thing with her. 1860 BARTLETT Dict. Amer. (ed. 3) 217 My friends say that my Irish is getting up, meaning, I am getting angry. 1877 F. ROSS et al. Gloss. Words Holderness 80/1 Iry; Irish, E. and N., passion; anger; rage; fury. 1933 PARTRIDGE Words, Words, Words! I. 9 Both Irish and the colloquial Paddy are used for anger. 1949 R. HARVEY Curtain Time vii. 73 But George's Irish was up. 1972 Evening Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland) 23 June 1/4 ‘I got my Irish up,’ he said, ‘and here's a man that's going to fight back.’

Re: OED

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

Thats for the infomation, I am just surprised to see such casual racism in an online RPG, is that just me?

Re: OED

[alt_moderator]

I believe the intention's to provide an honest characterization. Unfortunately, some people are racist, and some characters are, too. There are Clueless White People - Clueless White Englishmen - in HP universe, I believe, and I can well imagine Sirius to be one of them.

(That said, yeah: casual racism sucks.)

Re: OED

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

As Sirius comes from a family with many prejudices all of which he has come out in direct opposition to, engaging in offensive characterisations of a nationality - all Irish people are angry and love to fight! - I found it particularly jarring.

Re: OED

[alt_moderator]

Hmm. Well, I'm not Sirius' player, so I can't speak for Sirius. But one thing I've frequently wondered about was the status of racism within the Wizarding world. Maybe this is something that we ought to explore carefully within a plot. I have always assumed that wizards have about the same levels of racism as Muggles - that they don't think of prejudice against Muggles as the same thing as racism, and that even wizards who are extremely thoughtful about prejudice against Muggles might be racist. That said, I can't base those thoughts in canon, and we haven't talked about them in the OOC list.

I think this is definitely something we need to discuss, both in and out of character, so I'm glad that you're calling us out on it.

Re: OED

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

Corrected reply:

I (Sirius' player) became familiar with the phrase through an a capella arrangement of this 1947 song:

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/c/clancyloweredtheboom.shtml

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clancy_Lowered_the_Boom).

And no, at midnight or whatever time it was, I didn't look up that the source is mostly an Americanism.

Re: OED

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

The OED's identification of the phrase as a US usage surprised me, too, though I couldn't have told you where or whether I'd actually heard it before. And I don't know what to make of the OED's specification that it was originally US or that it is/was "dial" (dialectal, I assume, but which dialects?).

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

Sirius's player, here. I've been traveling this weekend, so hadn't seen your post until now.

Yes, it's a colloquialism that means raising one's blood pressure (through getting PO'd). Sirius was also making a rather oblique joke about Molly's hair-colour.

Sirius has a contradictory character, canonically. In "Goblet of Fire" he tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that one can judge a man by how he treats his subordinates, yet he is positively *beastly* to Kreacher.

Racism is a generational thing, and for Sirius's generation, the implications of ethnic phrases like that probably don't even occur. In fact, one could even argue that as a wizard he has *no clue* that it's an inappropriate comment. Unfortunately, Sirius, while he is more mature in some ways than the canonical version, also has his blind spots. If you were jarred by it, well, good. It was a deliberate choice that I hoped some people would understand to be an inherently flawed turn of phrase.

We still talk about people "Welching" (Welshing) on debts or being "Gypped" out of a deal, too - and those phrases are equally inconsiderate to the peoples they use as references.

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

By "we" I mean of course, people. Collectively. Not specific people. /PC

[alt_moderator]

Wow - while I knew about being "gypped" (and don't use the phrase) because of a friend whose family were Roma, I didn't know that "welching" was a reference to Welsh people, although I guess I ought to have figured it out.