Western Eurocentric language maintaining specific biases
English language is not geopolitically neutral
I am including a photo of the wall behind my office desk that features a Pacific-centered map rather than the Atlantic-centered map that Westerners are more familiar with.
Western Hemisphere?
I have written how there was trade across the pacific long before Western Europeans noticed there were other continents, and before their age of violent/uncivilized settler-colonial expansion (incorrectly called an “Age of Discovery”, given other civilizations were already there and thus the land wasn’t being discovered).
If we look at that longer history, it is clear that the continents which Western Europeans wanted to rename after Italian Amerigo Vespucci are actually more accurately thought of as further east of Eastern Asia.
Europe?
Hear a Canadian or US citizen talking about “europe”, and they are only talking about Western Europe. There is far greater cultural, linguistic, worldview and other differences between Western, Central and Eastern Europeans than there is between UK, French, Canadian and American culture/languages.
It is an erasure of central and eastern Europeans to talk about “Europe” when only thinking of the culture/worldviews of Western Europe.
Middle East?
This is outdated colonial language. Middle of what? East of What?
Oh, this is all about Western Europe being the center of the universe?
This is Western Asia, and has had a far greater historical influence on creating what is now called Western worldviews than much of Western Europe. This language is used to decenter this region from Western culture, and allow Western European manipulation of the region as if this were some “other”.
North Asia?
While we are at discussing language biases and branding, lets talk about North Asia. This is a region of another continent colonized by Russia. It is simply also called Russia, rather than calling it something ridiculous like New Russia or Russian Columbia. They did not do as the British and French did with naming British Columbia, New France, New England or Newfoundland.
While Russia has used different branding than the Anglo and French empires have, it doesn’t change the fact that the pre-colonial lands of of Russia, England and France (the Triple Entente) are in Europe.
Europe ranges from parts of Portugal to parts of Russia.