When one says American they are referring to somone form the USA and you know that perfectly well.
Whats "American Culture"?..oh the culture of the USA...

This is a ridiculous argument and Karen Todorov is an idiot.

as all nations is ethnocentric. That is not a good reason to not use Americans or America when refering to the United States. There aren't a lot of options because our formal name, the United States does not lend itself easily to describing our public.

The united statians just doesnt sound very good.

__________________
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

United States-ian?

Puh-lease....

I must have left my Leftist Triple-Think Dictionary in my other pants here, because "generally described" as you allege it is as close to reality as the flat earth was to astronomy. "Substitutate" all the wrongful terminology you like. It's still wrong.

What are you talking about?

1. Excuse me for not proofreading my posts. I have better things to do.

2. You took this thread and some how brought communism into it. I would like you to explain this.

3. take a college rhetoric class and use the term America to describe the US. You will be docked points. It's just basic modern english.

4. Ethnocentric can be used to describe unconcious racism, or the belief that one's culture/society is superior to others. It's used both ways, go do some reading if you have issues with this.

Leftists and communists are the same stick, just different ends.

Modern leftist English, perhaps, but respectable people don't knowingly foul the language so egregiously.

Since the American culture is in fact vastly superior to anything else available, just what here is your point? That by being better, we must apologize? That's Left-Think for you!

(*)(*)(*)(*)! I'm too slow. You beat me to it!

In what other country in the Western Hemisphere do people refer to themselves or get referred to as American?
About the only difference this creates is that we can't create any nifty continental stuff like the E.U. or the A.U.
Oh wait. We have NAFTA. North American. That is the continent.
Are we supposed to give up the phrase "American" as a bi-continental term?

This really is a stupid thing to take a stand over. I'm pretty much opposed to nationalism myself, but I don't see how we should stop calling ourselves by the phrase we've called ourselves forever, especially since no other country on the two continents wishes to share the broad title with us.

And yes, this isn't ethnocentric. It's nationalistic. If it were ethnocentric, we would just claim that Christians or Italians living in the country are Americans.

If anything, why don't we just quit refering to the bicontinental area as the Americas? We could call it the Western Hemisphere.
The only trouble then with the term America is that it might sound ambiguous because we have North America and South America and some poor spa might get confused... But everyone knows that when you say "American" you mean someone from the US... So I guess there's no confusion.

Can we move on to something important now?

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Jacka$$es.

lol

I really don't have any problem with any of the terms. The only time America shouldn't be used when referring to the US is in formal writing. I tihnk thats what the guy from Michigan is saying and thats all I am saying.

The real issue at hand hear is ethnocentricism...which despite everyones insistance in this thread does not necesarilly pertain to race. Research William Sumner if (the founder of the term) if you don't believe me. People like quiller have the arogance to say that our culture is superior to others. I doubt quiller has experienced many other cultures, or he would realize that other cultures may be different than ours but that doesn't make them worse.

Even then, I'm not sure what is so inherently ethnocentric... or even nationalistic, now that I think about it... about calling the US America or its citizens Americans. We don't see people in other countries complaining.
It might be a bit ambiguous, but there's no value attached. Calling Americans "American" doesn't necessitate that they are better unless you already believe that an "American" is superior.
So even if the word was changed, whatever it was replaced with would be considered superior.
Political correctness never fixes problems (if you consider nationalism a problem; I consider it a nuisance more than a problem). It just tries to hide them.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside