Why saying Jock and Nazi isn’t offensive ... but Taff is

DESCRIBING a Scot as a Jock is not offensive – but calling a Welsh person Taff could be, research suggests.

A study of TV and radio audiences found that Jock was deemed mild and ‘generally of little concern’, whereas Taff was said to be ‘potentially unacceptable’.

The word Nazi was also said to be of ‘limited concern’ – as long as it was used in a historical or educational context.

The watchdog Ofcom asked 248 people to grade 144 words for the offence they caused, and used the results to create a reference guide for broadcasters.

The survey revealed that Jock was seen as ‘informal and humorous’ and Scottish participants were not offended. The slang term was initially a Scottish version of the names Jack or John, but was later adopted as a description for all Scotsmen. It was commonly used in the First World War to describe troops in Scottish regiments.

Meanwhile Taff features in Ofcom’s reference guide as ‘ medium language, potentially unacceptable. Some uncertainty outside Wales about how offensive it is’.

The term is thought to come from the Welsh pronunciation of their patron saint David – or Dafydd – or from the River Taff in South Wales. The Welsh Guards were nicknamed The Taffs, but this was not thought to have been used by the troops themselves.

Opinions vary about whether it is a racist term, although a Welsh jail worker who said he was hounded from his job by colleagues calling him ‘Taffy’ and ‘Boyo’ lost a racial discrimination claim in 2002. The tribunal panel said Taff was not racially offensive.

The word Nazi was said to be acceptable as a factual description when discussing Hitler’s Germany or later far-Right groups, but ‘potentially offensive if used in a modern context to insult German people’.

Ofcom said the study would help it understand current attitudes. It said: ‘Participants found it hard to make judgments about individual words or gestures without taking into account the specific context.’

Audiences said their main concerns were protecting children and giving parents control and choice over the language to which their children were exposed, and avoiding offence to minority groups.