I often use the word people to mean multiple persons. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes people will laugh/smirk when I use it. For example, one time I was talking about how my sister and her family/household travel often, saying, “Those people travel a lot,” and the person repeated those people and gave a slight laugh. I’m wondering if I may be giving some sort of unintentional implied message when I use that word.
Does the word people mean anything other than multiple persons, such as a group of persons united by a common identity (family, experience, nationality, ethnicity, etc.)?
I joke around friends who accidentally phrase things in ways that could sound like bigotry/racism if taken out of context, and it sounds like that it what the person was laughing about.
‘Those people’, when used while judging or looking down on somebody is a common way for bigots and racists to avoid using slurs around non-bigots/racists. Something like “The park was a lot more fun before those people showed up.” while nodding in the direction of some people with darker skin. Or saying that ‘those people’ are doing something unacceptable.
It isn’t a people vs persons thing, it is specifically the phrase ‘those people’.
Seconded. They are not laughing at your misuse of the words grammatically. They are laughing at the unintentional parallel to the way bigots talk about the people they target with their hate/insults. For a joke, they are twisting the meaning of your words to imply that when you say “those people” you are referring to some minority or marginalized group in a derogatory way. “Those people are loud” is an innocent statement on it’s own when referring to a group of people being disdisruptive. But “Those people are loud” when “those people” refers to an entire demographic of people is a derogatory stereotype. “What do you mean thoooose people?”