Nouns and adjectives

How come the nominal form to describe a group of marginalized people often ends up becoming derogatory? (I'm gonna use fictional groups for this to avoid offending people) Let's say that in my fictional universe where every Linux distro is a person, the Debian-based distros are marginalized, so how come saying "Debians" would become offensive whereas "Debian-based distros" would become the preferred term?
\ Secondly, how come putting "the" in front can make it offensive as well "the Debians"
\ Thirdly, how come less formal terms (think "Debbies") also end up becoming offensive
\ Note: I'm not advocating for using the nominal form, I'm just asking why it is the way it is, I will continue to use forms that are preferable to marginalized groups.

3 comments

Language is funny like that, as countless times throughout history, a simple way to describe something has become derogatory; many times unintentionally. For example with intellectual disabilities in particular; using the r-slur used to be completely normal and understandable, as it was just a simile medical diagnosis and a formal term. However over time it began to become attributed to negative aspects of the disability, and be used as an insult by the general population. Thus leading the word to become a slur. So the medical community transferred to a different term which then itself became a slur as the new term also became associated with the "deficits" of the disability, and so on the cycle continues.
Linguistics and cultural perceptions are extremely finnicky, and I will be honest when I say that no one has the answer you are looking for. There are whole branches of sociology and linguistics dedicated to this phenomenon.
The best answer I can give is simply saying that if the group that is being described by a term says that term is offensive, then it is generally a good idea to stray away from using it.

Of all the sciences, only mathematics is benign enough to merit a dictionary where the same definition will always describe the same situation. In the physically existing universe, and especially in the continuum of social interactions, there is no such thing as stasis, and as the objects and relations to which an old dictionary pertained undergo splits, mergers, deformations, are newly created or vanish entirely, your vocabulary must change with them.
Your post is asking for a definition. This is undialectical and no natural or social scientists worth their salt will claim they can give such a thing to you; we even fail at nailing down the most basic notions of space, time, and matter. The scientific approach is always to observe the world as it is today, and to use the language it uses to talk about itself with itself.

Cuz the people that refer to persecuted groups via their marginalized identity are bigots 99 times out of 100.
By being a little more polite and humanizing you can avoid sounding like them, which is why the more formal term "Debian-based distro" probably wouldn't have the same connotations as "a Debian".