Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pejorative

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 00:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pejorative

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This article appears to be a pretty clear cut contravention of WP:NOTADICTIONARY. The references used as citations are themselves dictionaries, and it looks like this article constitutes an extended dictionary entry. Should either be deleted or converted into some kind of a redirect to the Wiktionary project term. I also asked myself, "So, would a paper encyclopedia be likely have an entry on the word 'Pejorative'?" and found myself responding with, "No, probably not." You can't do a search under "news" or "newspapers" or "books" or "scholar" or "JSTOR" for it either— all of which points to it fundamentally being a dictionary entry, not an encyclopedia one. KDS4444^Talk 06:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - needs to be improved but notable term —Мандичка^YO 😜 08:47, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:ASSERTN: a mere assertion of notability is not evidence of notability. The word "melioration", which occurs in the second paragraph, looks like a word with a social history and a cultural context around its usage. That is the kind of word that Wikipedia should treat as an exception to its "not a dictionary" policy. I do not disagree that "pejorative" is a notable term. So are the terms "nice", "interesting", "some", "before", and "through". Where would English be without them?^[1] My point is that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia— and this can mean there are sometimes articles on terms like truthiness and Macedonia (terminology), but not all words are de facto encyclopedic.^[2] "Pejorative" is not a grammatical mood like the word "jussive" or "imperative", it is only a routine adjective with no other "meat" to it. "List of pejorative terms" might be interesting as an article! And it would have references beyond just dictionaries. But "pejorative"? Are there any English words that are not notable? KDS4444^Talk 14:51, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The scholar link above contains several promising citations such as Semantic change and componential analysis: an inquiry into pejorative developments in English; Pejorative sense development in English; Pejorative terms for midwest farmers (!); On the syntactic expression of pejorative mood. Andrew D. (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Andrew. Ideas for expansion include linguistic reclamation ("A queer revolution: Reconceptualizing the debate over linguistic reclamation" among others), attempts to avoid pejoratives in various linguistic endeavours (i.e. like "Can a less pejorative Chinese translation for schizophrenia reduce stigma? A study of adolescents’ attitudes toward people with schizophrenia"), and how a word becomes pejorative, like in "It befalls words to fall down: pejoration as a type of semantic change"). There's also this, but I can't make heads or tails of that abstract. On a side note, should pejoration redirect to pejorative? — Chris Woodrich (talk) 07:02, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I believe this is an example of WP:WORDISSUBJECT. Not that these are shining examples but the World Heritage Encyclopedia has an article on the word pejorative and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article about "pejorative language'. I would be favour of moving it to 'derogatory language' as well. According to WP:NOUN as Neelix pointed out, it was previously at "derogatory term" which did not meet the policy criteria. I have started a requested move discussion. Mkdw ^talk 05:23, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

^ "Nice" goes to kindness, a social behavior which has lots of history to it; "interesting" goes to interest (emotion), and many emotions can be argued to have cultural meaning and context; some goes to a dab page that will take you to a linguistics page on English articles; before is a dab page with a Wiktionary link to the word but no article per se; "through" redirects to Prepositions and postpositions, an article on English linguistics.
^ Also, good lede sections shouldn't have to start with "such-n-such is a term for this-and-that" because the subject IS the thing being described, not merely "a term" for it... But "Pejorative" is a term... and it is only a term. You can't write the lede to say, "Pejorative is not a nice thing" or "Pejorative is to be avoided". You have to say, "Pejorative is a term for" or "...a word for..." or "...is a concept that means...", etc. because it is not the kind of word that can be phrased in terms other than dictionary ones.

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:19, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

[1] "Nice" goes to kindness, a social behavior which has lots of history to it; "interesting" goes to interest (emotion), and many emotions can be argued to have cultural meaning and context; some goes to a dab page that will take you to a linguistics page on English articles; before is a dab page with a Wiktionary link to the word but no article per se; "through" redirects to Prepositions and postpositions, an article on English linguistics.

[2] Also, good lede sections shouldn't have to start with "such-n-such is a term for this-and-that" because the subject IS the thing being described, not merely "a term" for it... But "Pejorative" is a term... and it is only a term. You can't write the lede to say, "Pejorative is not a nice thing" or "Pejorative is to be avoided". You have to say, "Pejorative is a term for" or "...a word for..." or "...is a concept that means...", etc. because it is not the kind of word that can be phrased in terms other than dictionary ones.

[1]

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