If they banned the "f-word" (and could enforce it), New Yorkers would talk as slowly as the rest of Americans.
When I first started with the company I work for, we had two gentlemen of Negroid race in our department and two OTHER gentlement who were "African-American" (African by birth, naturalized Americans). One born in Ethiopia (he was Arabic) and one South Africa (he was English-Dutch) in our department, which caused us all, from the blacks to the whites with the spectrum in-between a moderate amount of amusement at attempts at politically correct racial labeling.
And Cosine has a point when his is turned to the reverse as well
Taboo words have exactly that problem. For example, Polynesians worshiped volcanoes, so to say the word "volcano" was forbidden. But the word they used in its place gradually earned the taboo, and was in turn forbidden. And so on...
Words not emoted upon by the victim lose their cutting power as well.
For example the words "White trash", "PWT" "Hillbilly", "Redneck", "Hilljack", etc.
When my mother was too small to recollect (I heard this from her older brother), some of their neighbors used it to describe them because they were southernors who were poor, and talked with a southern accent. By the time I was old enough to remember, the term was something angry old men shouted when we cut the corner on the sidewalk and walked across the edge of their precious lawn, having exactly the relevance of the word "whippersnapper" to a youngster in the late 70's. Today it's a term of pride used to denote a type of youth "rebellion" , and is quite possibly only used perjoratively by one person in the U.S.
