I’ve hears stories of some Americans telling other people who are speaking a non-English language “This is America, speak English!” even if the conversation has nothing to do with them. Why do they do this?
I’ve hears stories of some Americans telling other people who are speaking a non-English language “This is America, speak English!” even if the conversation has nothing to do with them. Why do they do this?
It’s called xenophobia, the fear and dislike of anything foreign. Some people believe that if your group isn’t dominant it will be dominated, and peaceful coexistence isn’t possible between different groups.
These people are afraid that, if the English language isn’t forced onto other people, one day other people will force a foreign language onto them.
Not everyone disliking something is necessarily phobic towards it. That’s just one possoble explanation.
It would greatly benefit your argument to provide another possible explanation.
They could simply
A) dislike X
B) hate/despise X
C) came to the logical conclusion, that X is bad/wrong/shouldn’t be/whatever
D) genereally mistrusting against X due to a careful nature
E) have had traumatic experience with X (e.g. Being raped/attacked by a member of a specific ethnicity) and hence totally overreacting to an otherwise harmless stimulus, even forgetting the rules of civil behaviour
Those all don’t mean there’s the medical condition of a phobia for X.
A real xenophobic has an irrational fear of anything unknown/alien. Doesn’t mean the person just hates e.g. Mexicans for no real reason. It might even like them once they get to know the better, which often just won’t happen as phobics tend to avoid the cause their phobia instead of treating it.
I just dislike the lax use of medical terms until they’re bereft of any real meaning.
So, a person who yanks “speak English!” to someone, could have many reasons to do. None are neither polite nor politically correct. While the asshole is probably just the uneducated asswipe, the phobic could be helped and probably even feels bad afterwards for being so compulsive and insulting.
Xenophobia isn’t a medical term. All the examples you listed are xenophobia.
It’s literally in the term. But yeah sure, it’s easier to just smack the same label on everything. Whatever makes you happy.
Some words just have more than one definition is all. It’s not about me, it’s about the dictionary.