|
The term the Orient literally refers simply to the rising of the sun, being derived from the Latin word oriens. It is used to mean "the East". Similar terms are the French-derived "Levant" and "Anatolia" from the Greek anatole, two further locutions for the direction in which the sun rises.
"Orient" and "Oriental" have been used in English to refer to both Near and Far Eastern countries, including the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. For example, Mizrahi Jews are often referred to as Oriental Jews, while the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies focuses on Africa as well as the Middle East and East Asia.
For discussion of history or current events, more specific words such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or individual country names may be preferred.
There is an opposite term "Occident", which literally refers to the setting of the sun, being derived from the Latin word occidens, refers to "the West", but nowadays the word "Occident" is hardly used.
Political correctness in the United States
In the United States, some feel the terms "Orient" and "Oriental" are archaic, offensive, and/or "politically incorrect" on the basis that it was defined from a European perspective to refer to a vague and undistinguished group of people, and is therefore no longer appropriate in a modern multicultural world. Additionally, it has been used in a derogatory fashion in the United States as an ethnic slur, and those associations have remained with the term for many Asian Americans (see parallels at "nigger"). Many English speakers worldwide find nothing offensive about the term. One difficulty that the term presents, however, is that it is not always clear what is included within the term and what is not--at one time it referred primarily to the nations and people of the Middle and Near East, and this sense of the term still exists in some forms in the language (e.g., "oriental carpets"). Consequently, the term does not see as much use as the equivalent terms Asian, East Asian, and (for the archaic sense of the term that included Persia and Arabia) Middle Eastern.
See also
|
