The NOUNs

Back in June, I started a post with this sample of quoted phrases:

"Ask the gays what they think and what they do" "The Muslims have to work with us" "I will be phenomenal to the women" "I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump" "I'm the only one in the world who can raise almost $6 million for the veterans" "People don't know how well we're doing with the Hispanics, the Latinos," "Well, what do we do with BET? Over there, the whites don't get any nominations." "I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks."

These are all attributed to Donald Trump, and this aspect of his approach to the English language has been widely noted (e.g. here).

I've got audio verification only for a few of these examples, but despite the notorious inaccuracy of journalistic quotations, I'm inclined to believe that Trump really does refer to groups of people as "the Xs" more often than other public figures do.

But where I got stuck, three months ago, was in figuring out what's wrong with that.

In one sense, the answer is easy — talking about "the Xs" lumps a diverse group of people together as a homogeneous set, suggests an outlook friendly to essentialist stereotypes, etc.

But the trouble is, everybody does it. Some examples from a few minutes of searching back in June:

"Between the Borders", The Economist 2016: This was vetoed by the Americans and the British, partly because they worried that a poor, suppressed West Germany would either rebel or fall under Soviet influence.

Paul Krugman, "The Harm Germany Does", NYT 11/1/2013: The Germans are outraged, outraged at the U.S. Treasury department, whose Semiannual Report On International Economic And Exchange Rate Policies says some negative things about how German macroeconomic policy is affecting the world economy. German officials say that the report’s conclusions are “incomprehensible” — which is just bizarre, because they’re absolutely straightforward.

Bill Shea, "USS Detroit commissioning ceremony delayed until October", Crain's 6/16/2016:: The Detroit is the seventh U.S. Navy vessel to bear the city's name. The first was a 12-gun wooden ship built by the British at Malden, Canada, in 1813 and captured by the Americans during the Battle of Lake Erie on Sept. 10, 1813.

Stefan Bondy, "U.S. tops Paraguay, 1-0, to advance to quarterfinals of Copa America", NY Daily News 6/12/2016: Brazil indeed represents a possible next opponent in the quarterfinals of Copa America, a potential marquee matchup made possible by the Americans’ hard-fought victory Saturday, 1-0 over Paraguay, in the final game of group play.

Benjamin Lee, "Jackie Chan: Warcraft's success in China scares Americans", The Guardian 6/13/2016:  “Warcraft made 600m yuan [£64m] in two days. This has scared the Americans. If we can make a film that earns 10bn [£1bn], then people from all over the world who study film will learn Chinese, instead of us learning English.”

But maybe "everybody does it" differently. Those are all examples where X=Country Name. In some cases, the context is one where the named group really is acting as a unit: a government, a set of government officials,  a national military, a sports team. In the last example, there's an implicit team-like opposition:  the American film industry vs. the Chinese film industry.

In a quick scan of MEDLINE abstracts, I found that "the Xs" always seems to refer to a well-defined subset of a group of specified and individually-analyzed people:

Samuel Weisman, "Chest contour: A comparison of American and Russian Track Stars", California Medicine 1965: Measurement of the chests and other physical features of United States and Soviet Russian track and field stars showed the Americans broader chested, taller, lighter in weight and about two and a half years younger.

A.O. Williams et al., "Intestinal polyps in American negroes and Nigerian africans", British Journal of Cancer" 1975: The Nigerians were much the younger group (mostly under 20 years of age, whereas most of the American negroes were over 50) and far fewer of their polyps were truly neoplastic (7.5% compared with 87% of the Americans).

I. Winkler & W.J. Doherty, "Communication styles and marital satisfaction in Israeli and American couples", Family Process 1983: In spite of the close social ties of the two groups, we predicted that the conflict-related communication styles of the Israelis would be less calm and rational than those of the Americans and that such rational modes of communication would be positively associated with marital satisfaction for the Americans but not for the Israelis.

In that genre of writing, an author who was extrapolating about the general characteristics of a national group would refer to "Americans" or "Nigerians", not "the Americans" or "the Nigerians". Thus

C.W. O'Nell & N.D. O'Nell, "A cross-cultural comparison of aggression in dreams: Zapotecs and Americans", International Journal of Social Psychiatry 1977: A comparison was made between dreamed aggressions for Americans (Hall and Domhoff 1963) and for Zapotecs, collected and analysed by the writers.

I found a few examples in MEDLINE where "the Xs" is used to refer to unknown members of a generic national group — but these references were clearly somewhat hostile, e.g.

A 1973 letter to The Medical Journal of Australia: I viewed with some concern your leader of March 17, 1973, titled "Psychological Aspects of Vasectomy I", with particular reference to sperm banks. You stated sperm banks are operating in the U.S.A. and " … the introduction of sperm banks in Australia seems only a matter of time … a commercial venture which offers depositors a new type of life insurance … ". Surely there is no need to follow the Americans in everything. Are there to be no honest-to-goodness meaty performances left au naturel? Why commercialize one of the few remaining free permissive sports, subsidized though it may be ex parte? One feels that all conservationists will unite in opposing this monstrous editorial suggestion. The status quo is for us, thanks, We don't want your darn sperm banks.

And I have the impression that the same generalizations hold up when we look beyond X=Country Name to names of ethnicities, genders, etc. But I didn't have time to look into that, and I don't have time today. So I'll just throw the hypothesis open to discussion.