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As discussed by Jones and Medina (2021), the rhetoric regarding race as biological has resounding impacts on the way groups of people are presented throughout the scientific disciplines. Earlier texts published from 1970-1972 utilize a variety of dated language (see Table 1) to describe POC and ethnic minorities: Tobias (1970), Charlton and Bothwell (1971), Kretchmer et al. (1971), Dunn (1972), with the exception of one (Hart et al., 1971). To note, the piece by Tobias (1970) is an abstract of a speech. During initial corpus creation, many studies from this era were dedicated to the inclusion of POC and ethnic minorities for drug-related subjects.
Presupposition-use occurs most frequently when describing scientific names and study groups related to the subject matter, while assertions are typically used when discussing common names. For example, Kretchmer et al. (1971) note how the Fulani people participating in the study were separated into two separate groups based on “the distinctive physical characteristics of ‘typical’ Fulani and those who looked more like Hausa” (n.p.), without clarifying what these features were.
|
Author |
Dated Term(s) Usage |
|
Tobias (1970) |
“Negroes” |
|
Charlton & Bothwell (1971) |
“Coloured,” “Whites” |
|
Kretchmer et al. (1971) |
“American Blacks,” “American Whites,” “North and South American Indians,” “Orientals,” “Thais,” “Australian aborigines,” “Eskimos,” “Semites” |
|
Dunn (1972) |
“Aborigines” |
From 1980-1982, there is a trend towards alternate vocabulary to describe POC and minorities, but the research still appears to include these groups of people as a means to gather information to better understand biological-anthropological issues, rather than how these issues may affect these groups being studied. The phrases “ethnics” and “ethnic groups” are much more apparent in these texts: Kolonel et al. (1981), Payton (1981), Dubowitz et al. (1982), Bernstein et al. (1982), and Feldman et al. (1982). Though, it should be noted that the phrase “coloured” appears in Dubowitz et al. (1982) to describe populations in Cape Town, South Africa. “Whites,” “blacks,” and “Jews” also appear (Feldman et al., 1982), along with “negroid” (Bernsetin et al., 1982), but there is a trend towards using alternate descriptors in other texts, such as “ethnic groups” (Kolonel et al., 1981; Payton, 1981).
Overall, there is a continued trend of using presuppositions for describing most scientific jargon, as well as referencing prior studies and establishing deficits in knowledge. Most assertions are strictly kept to establish knowledge present in the study, with a declining trend of attitude markers. Rather, attitude markers are more subtle in this era, their use urging the need for more research in the discipline. Notably, Dubowitz et al.’s (1982) study contained the most attitude markers present in comparison to the other texts from this era, given the “Cape Town population seemed to satisfy these criteria”; the criteria were presuppositions about “coloured” infants being “small and not necessarily growth retarded” or the “Indian” infant with low birth weight is contributed to “an ethnic characteristic,” none of which were elaborated on or defined.
From the 1990s on, more contemporary language is used to describe POC and ethnic minorities, and there is a shift towards environmental sciences and environmental justice surrounding minority groups. However, the early 1990’s still lean towards terminology that has been better clarified in a modern context. Phrases such as “race/ethnicity” appear, while describing groups as “Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, American Indians, and Asians,” insinuating there is a mix of races and ethnicities present in the study, but neither are made distinct from one another (Lynberg et al., 1990). In contrast, Easterbrook et al. (1991) distinguishes between “Hispanic whites and nonwhites,” and “blacks and Hispanics,” which would insinuate “Hispanic” as an ethnicity, while “white” and “black” are races.
Even in as short a time frame as this, papers in 1992 begin to show broader, more widely-accepted terminology that steps away from racial differences and towards categorizations by region and ethnicity. Cook (1992) exemplifies this by defining “ethnic” and “ethnology,” noting that “ethnology” is more relevant to the current (1992) study since it is “the science which treats … races and peoples, their relations, their distinctive characteristics, etc.,” noting there are more complex features that can define the “ethnic groups'' being examined in the study. Edwards (1992) also shows this by using much broader, regional terminology such as “Americans of color” and “people of color.” This era highlights trends and traditions that are mostly followed in our contemporary context. Attitude markers are typically very subtle, unless paired with assertions to “warrant further investigations'' (Lynberg et al., 1990) on a subject matter.
In the 2000’s, there was a clear shift towards sciences incorporating language use akin to that present in Cook (1992) and Edwards (1992). More specifically, there is typically a better definition of the study group, typically in the form of an assertion, rather than a presupposition typical of earlier years. For example, “‘Pacific Islanders’ refers to the people of Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Oceania; because Native Hawaiins are people of Polynesia, we will hereafter refer to the entire group as Pacific Islanders” (Spencer et al., 2020, p. 45). Here, there is a clear definition of the study group and the context surrounding the labeling that this group is receiving, with authors choosing to assert rather than presuppose. Furthermore, attitude markers rarely appear unless in context to assertions about the importance of the research at hand. Phrases such as “The literature needs to,” “it is critical to,” “this work is also a reminder to,” “This is especially important for,” or some form thereof are common (Edgar et al., 2011; Kimberly & Caplins, 2020; Spencer et al., 2020; William et al., 2000).