Radio was playin', Desmond Dekker was singin'

[venta]

A quick question:



[Poll #1344729]

Edit: I don't mean "give me a list of names", I mean "which term would you naturally use in conversation if talking about such a thing".

If you're going to fill in an answer, please do so before reading on.

I would habitually refer to that sort of stereo (ie portable, speaker at either end, tape deck in the middle) as a ghetto-blaster. I seem to remember that that's what everyone was calling them in the 80s when I first started interacting with such things.

Problem is, I've no idea of the origin of the term. Which ghettos were being blasted exactly ? Is it possible that someone somewhere might find it an offensive term ?[*] Is it even in common enough usage now that I could expect someone to be sure what I meant - or am I just hopelessly outdated in my choice of name ?

What other words are there ? Apart from radio-cassette player, of course. I'm not very clear on what exactly a boombox might be - could it be one of those, or is it subtly different ? Can I still call it a ghetto blaster if it's got a CD player in it ? Does the choice of name depend on the kind of music player - could one still blast ghettos with Wagner, for example ?

[*] According to Wikipedia, yes. But it's a particularly shoddily written piece, plus I'm interested in what other people think.


_{That image is just quickly grabbed from google image search, so if you're in The Future, it's probably red-exed by now.}

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

My thinking was that if you need to refer to "the typical Frenchman" (say) then there are probably things that "the typical Frenchman" does. They probably aren't riding a bike while wearing the stripey jumper and the onions, but they possibly are "stereotypical" French things.

Of course, there aren't really very many situations where you can justify needing to refer to "the typical Frenchman", which may be the point - once you start doing it, you may rapidly descend into the sort of sloppy thinking you're talking about.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Resorting to the dictionary, there are differences between "typical" and "stereotypical". "Stereotype" is often used specifically to indicate that the abstraction is over-simplified, prejudiced, or offensive. In which case the answer would be that if it's not offensive, it's probably not stereotyping, but rather a careful, informed, and accurate survey of notable traits of a particular group or culture.

Of course that does leave the statement "this is offensive because it's stereotyping" perilously close to circular. But it's probably reasonable to assume that over-simplification and prejudice regarding a racial or social group is at least liable to cause offence.