Only the maligned parties could describe what it feels like to hear them. But some linguists think there's a major difference. It summarizes black history in America, and it is hard to come up with another word that carries that much force. Not everyone agrees. It's an attempt to control and silence someone.
Linguists look to history to understand the negative power of the words.
Widely used in colonial times, nigger was officially acknowledged in dictionaries as a disparaging word in the 1920s, according to Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford University linguist and usage editor of the American Heritage Dictionary. Sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, middle-class suburban whites understood that the word was crude and shouldn't be used publicly, Nunberg said. Nunberg said he does not know of the word faggot 's being described the same way. William Spears, a linguist and anthropologist, added still more meanings of the word to include white people, women and just about anybody else. Among people under 35, there are no restrictions.