Language and Society

In the last century, philosophers turned their attention to language. One place they have looked for clues about its nature is Plato’s Cratylus, which considers whether names are naturally or conventionally correct. The dialogue is a source of annoyance to many commentators because it does not take a clear position on the central question. At times, it argues that language is conventional, and, at other times, defends the view that language is natural. This lack of commitment has led to a (...) longstanding dispute over the outcome of the dialogue. I argue that the Cratylus provides no clear resolution to this problem because it presupposes certain unexamined metaphysical commitments about the nature of reality, which are in need of thorough investigation. (shrink)

How feasible are conceptual engineering projects of social concepts that aim for the engineered concept to be widely adopted in ordinary everyday life? Predominant frameworks on the psychology of concepts that shape work on stereotyping, bias, and machine learning have grim implications for the prospects of conceptual engineers: conceptual engineering efforts are ineffective in promoting certain social-conceptual changes. Specifically, since conceptual components that give rise to problematic social stereotypes are sensitive to statistical structures of the environment, purely conceptual change won’t (...) be possible without corresponding world change. This tradition, however, tends to ignore that concepts don’t only encode statistical, but also causal information. Paying attention to this feature of concepts, I argue, shows that conceptual engineering is not only possible. There is an imperative to conceptually-engineer. (shrink)

Pronouns often convey information about a person’s social identity (e.g., gender). Consequently, pronouns have become a focal point in academic and public debates about whether pronouns should be changed to be more inclusive, such as for people whose identities do not fit current pronoun conventions (e.g., gender non-binary individuals). Here, we make an empirical contribution to these debates by investigating which social identities lay speakers think that pronouns should encode and why. Across four studies, participants were asked to evaluate different (...) types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns. We sampled participants from two languages with different pronoun systems: English (N = 1,120) and Turkish (N = 260). English pronouns commonly denote binary gender (e.g., he for men), whereas Turkish pronouns are identity-neutral (e.g., o for anyone). Participants’ reasoning about pronouns reflected both a familiarity preference (i.e., participants preferred the pronoun type used in their language) and—critically—participants’ social ideologies. In both language contexts, participants’ ideological beliefs that social groups are inherently distinct (essentialism) and should be hierarchal (social dominance orientation) predicted relatively greater endorsement of binary gender pronouns and race pronouns. A preregistered experimental study with an English-speaking sample showed that the relationship between ideology and pronoun endorsement is causal: Ideologies shape attitudes toward pronouns. Together, the present research contributes to linguistic and psychological theories concerning how people reason about language and informs policy-relevant questions about whether and how to implement language changes for social purposes. (shrink)

فرضت التكنولوجيا الحديثة نفسها على كل فئات المجتمع، ودخلت من النوافذ قبل الأبواب، وأصبحت رمز التقدم الحضاري، وأصبح مقياس الأمية يقاس بمدى توفر البيئة الحاضنة لهذه التكنولوجيا، وبمدى استيعابها واستثمارها في مجالات الحياة التربوية واليومية، فكل تطور في المجتمع، لا بد وأن يصاحبه تطور في المجال التربوي، وهذا ما حصل بالفعل، فقد دخلت التكنولوجيا المدرسة والجامعة والمؤسسات العمومية، وأصبح العلم بالتكنولوجيا ومسايرة الركب المعلوماتي ضرورة ملحة في عصر المعرفة والمعلومات. ومما لا شك فيه أن دخول مجتمع المعرفة مجتمع التكنولوجيا، أصبح (...) ضرورة ملحة تمليها طبيعة العصر الذي نعيش فيه، فلم يعد السؤال المطروح اليوم هو: هل ندخل عصر المعرفة والتكنولوجيا أم لا؟ بل أصبح السؤال الحاسم الآن هو متى؟ وكيف؟ فلا مفر للدول النامية من خوض غمار التحدي المعرفي والتكنولوجي كشرط لقدرتها على مسايرة قطار تكنولوجيا المعلومات، فإدماج واستثمار التكنولوجيا في التعليم، يعد خطوة كبرى وفرصة ذهبية للتقدم بسرعة وبأقل كلفة، وذلك للتمكن من حجز مكان لنا جنبا إلى جنب مع الدول المتصدرة للركب الحضاري التكنولوجي. (shrink)

يعرف نظامنا التعليمي حراكا متناميا، رغم عدة إكراهات منهجية وتدبيرية، وذلك باعتماد إصلاح التعليم على بيداغوجيات حديثة(الأهداف، الكفايات، الإدماج،...)، بهدف تطوير الحقل التربوي والارتقاء به إلى مصاف الدول المتقدمة من حيث الجودة والمردودية استجابة لما لحق المجتمع المغربي من تطور على الصعيد الثقافي والاجتماعي و السياسي. و إذا كان الإصلاح المنشود يسعى لتجديد النخب التعليمية وإرساء دعائم المدرسة المغربية الجديدة، فإن مراجعة طرائق التدريس أصبح أمرا لا محيد عنه للحاق بمتطلبات العصر ومقتضيات الحداثة التعليمية في السياسة التربوية. ترى ما هي (...) الطريقة الأنجح في ظل هذه الحداثة، لتدريس مادة اللغة العربية في السلك الثانوي التأهيلي؟ و هل مازالت الكتب المدرسية الحالية لمادة اللغة العربية في ظل هذا الطور صالحة للتدريس بالبيداغوجيا المستحدثة؟ إن مفهوم الطريقة في الحقل التربوي، يختلف باختلاف وجهات نظر المتخصصين، حول النظرة إلى مفهوم المنهج و دور المعلم والمتعلم في العملية التعليمية التعلمية، إذ تهدف العملية حسب بعضهم « إلى إحداث تغيرات مرغوبة في سلوك المتعلم، من خلال إكسابه المعلومات والمعارف والمهارات والاتجاهات والقيم المرغوبة، من أجل تحقيق هذه الأهداف التي تسعى إلى إحداث تلك التغيرات السلوكية، إذ تعد طريقة التدريس، هي الأداة أو الوسيلة الناقلة للعلم والمعرفة والمهارة، و كلما كانت ملائمة للموقف التعليمي ومنسجمة مع عمر المتعلم وذكائه وقابلياته وميوله، كانت الأهداف التعليمية المتحققة عبره أوسع عمقا وأكثر فائدة»(1). و من تم، فإن طريقة التدريس هي تلك الخطة التي يوجه بها المعلم متعلميه داخل جماعة القسم، و يبني عليها توجهه العام لبناء الدرس. بل و هي الأسلوب الأمثل الذي يستعين به المعلم لشرح محتويات الدرس و توجيه نشاط المتعلمين من أجل تحقيق التعليم المنشود لديهم. إنها أيضا: الإجراء العملي والعلمي الذي يؤدي تطبيقه الكامل إلى التعليم والفهم. (shrink)

ينبني فعل التربية أساسا على تلك القدرة الهادفة إلى توجيه سلوكات و مواقف الأفراد، بما يتوافق و نموذج القيم الذي يتبناه مجتمع ما أو جماعة ما داخل هذا المجتمع. إنها العملية التي يتم من خلالها تشكيل ما هو جوهري في الفرد، و ذَلِك من خلال انخراطه في شبكة من العلاقات الاجتماعية. و لا يمكن أن تتم هذه العملية بطريقة فردية أو معزولة، بل تستوجب تدخل أفراد آخرين، ينعتون عادة ب"المربين" أو ب"الفاعلين التربويين". ضمن هذا البعد العلائقي يتشكل فعل التربية. غير (...) أن هذه العلاقة التربوية -خاصة عندما تأخذ بعدا مؤسساتيا- تتطلب وجود عنصر مركزي، و هو ما نسميه ب "السلطة التربوية"، و التي عن طريقها يتم إحداث ذلك التأثير المطلوب. داخل مؤسسة الأسرة، يجسد الأبوان هذه السلطة، وإن تعددت أشكال ممارسة هذه السلطة باختلاف تصوراتهم و تمثلاتهم لها. و في المؤسسة المدرسية، نجد أن هذه السلطة متقاسمة بين أطراف و فاعلين متعددين ( مدرسين، أُطر إدارية، موجهين...). إن حديثنا هنا سيركز بالأساس على سلطة المدرس، و التي نطلق عليها عادة اسم "السلطة البيداغوجية"، و ذلك من خلال تحديد أولي لمفهوم السلطة، و محاولة تمييزه عن مفاهيم ترتبط به، و إن كانت تختلف عنه من حيث الدلالات و الأبعاد و السياقات، ثم البحث في علاقة السلطة بالفعل التربوي/ البيداغوجي، و أخيرا الوقوف على العلاقة المفترضة بين تمثل المدرس لمسألة السلطة وأشكال تدبير المشاكل السلوكية للتلاميذ. (shrink)

..............تقديم......... ..... الصديق الصادقي العماري.... احتلت الظاهرة الثقافة في الآونة الأخيرة مكانة متميزة في الأبحاث والدراسات على اختلاف أنواعها وتوجهاتها وتخصصاتها، خاصة مع الدراسات الاجتماعية، لأن الإنسان بطبعه كائن اجتماعي وثقافي في الآن نفسه، وبهذا يتميز بالتفاعل عبر علاقات اجتماعية متعددة مع الآخر المشابه أو المختلف، مما يؤدي إلى ثراء الخبرة والتجربة التي تساعد على التجديد والتحول في طريقة التفكير ونمط العيش وأسلوب الحياة، وخلال هذا التفاعل يتم إكساب العديد من النماذج والأشكال الثقافية بين الطرفين، الأمر الذي يدفعنا للقول بعدم (...) وجود ثقافة خالصة، وإنما هناك تداخل وتقاطع وتفاعل بين الثقافات. والحديث عن جمالية البنيات الثقافية والفنية في التراث المغربي خاصة، على اختلاف أشكالها وتلويناتها، يضعنا بداية أمام حقيقة وفعالية هذا التراث، وكيفية التعامل معه من حيث المنهج والأسلوب لإخضاعه للقراءة والتحليل والتمحيص. ومن دون شك أن المغرب يتمتع بتعدد ثقافي وفني عريق، يختلف من منطقة إلى أخرى بتعبيراته وأشكاله وأنواعه حسب اللغة واللهجة ونمط العيش، ومدى بعده أو قربه من المدينة، وحتى داخل المدن نفسها وغيرها من المحددات الجغرافية والاقتصادية والثقافية. فالتراث الثقافي كنص من النصوص بما يتضمنه من تعبيرات مختلفة سواء تعلق الأمر بالعادات والتقاليد والمسرح والأنظمة السياسية...، يمتلك قوة التأثير وسلطة الإلزام، لأنه ينساب ويتوزع وفق أنساق ثقافية لها أبعادها وخلفياتها وامتداداتها التاريخية، فهو يختزل كل معالم التعبير الفني والجمالي إما عن طريق الكلمة أو الرمز، من خلال خطاب واضح المعالم مؤسس على قواعد وأصول متعارف عليها بين أفراد الجماعة الاجتماعية، وهي أسس جامعة لا يجب الخروج عليها. فاللحمة وكل أشكال التضامن والحافظية والمحافظة نابعة من عمق هذا التراث، ومن مدى قدرته على بناء حصن مانع ضد الانقسام والتفرقة. وفي هذا الإطار، سواء تعلق الأمر بالأشكال التعبيرية الفنية أو البنيات الاجتماعية الحاضنة لهذه الأشكال، فإن التراث الشعبي من جنوب المغرب إلى شماله يتقاطع في ما هو مشترك بين المغاربة جميعا من حيث القيم والأخلاق الجمعية الناظمة لهذا الشكل أو ذاك، غير أن الإشكال المحوري يتمثل في طريقة استنطاق الموروث الثقافي، وبالتالي تفتح مجموعة من السبل والاختيارات خاصة أمام الباحثين. منهم من سعى لتأصيل التراث وإظهاره بشكل وفي للأصالة بمعزل عن الثقافات الأخرى المختلفة، ومنهم من حاول أن يجعل منها جسر تواصل مع الآخر في إطار الكونية التي تختزل فضاء بينيا تتقاطع فيه جميع الأشكال الثقافية أجل ضمان تفاعل وتدافع إيجابي بين الشعوب والحضارات. لذلك جاء العدد 29 من مجلة وادي درعة المحكمة لإلقاء الضوء على مجموعة من الموضوعات الثقافية من أجل التعريف بها وإظهار ما تتوفر عليه من أشكال تعبيرية، كذلك لإثارة العديد من الإشكالات الأدبية والفنية ولاجتماعية والسياسة والاقتصادية وغيرها، التي من شأنها أن تساعد القارئ على فهم وإدراك الرموز والدلالات التي يختزنها الموروث الثقافي، والقدرة على تحليل الخطاب الذي يسعى إلى تبليغه. (shrink)

ساعدت تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصال الرقمية على ربط التواصل بين الشعوب بمختلف توجهاتها الحضارية متجاوزة بذلك الحدود السياسية والجغرافية، وفك العزلة الحضارية التي كانت تعيشها معظم المجتمعات البشرية، إذ يشهد عالمنا المعاصر تحولات كبيرة في تكنولوجيا الاتصال، تؤثر في العلاقات السياسية والاقتصادية، وفي أنماط التفكير وأنماط العيش في المجتمعات المختلفة، وقد قامت وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي الرقمية ولازالت تقوم بدور فعال في إمداد الإنسان بكثير من المعلومات والمواقف والاتجاهات، مساهمة بذلك في تشكيل وعيه وبإعداده ليكون أكثر قدرة على التأثير في الآخرين واستمالتهم، (...) فهي تقدم تعلم اللغات وتسهم في ترجمة المعلومات من أجل تسهيل عملية التواصل بين الشباب و إزالة الفوارق الحضارية، فضلا عن تميز هذه الوسائل بعدة مميزات منها التشاركية والتفاعلية والحضور الدائم غير المادي. فقد وفر ظهور وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي فتحا ثوريا، نقل الإعلام إلى آفاق غير مسبوقة، وأعطى مستخدميه فرصا كبرى للتأثير والانتقال عبر الحدود بلا قيود ولا رقابة بشكل نسبي محدود. إذ أوجد ظهور وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي قنوات للبث المباشر من جمهورها في تطور يغير من جوهر النظريات الاتصالية المعروفة، ويوقف احتكار صناعة الرسالة الإعلامية لينقلها إلى مدى أوسع وأكثر شمولية، وبقدرة تأثيرية وتفاعلية لم يتصورها خبراء الاتصال. وأبرز حراك الشباب العربي الذي تمثل في الثورات التي شهدتها بعض الدول العربية قدرة هذا النوع من الإعلام على التأثير في تغيير ملامح المجتمعات، وإعطاء قيمة مضافة في الحياة السياسية، والتأكيد على منافسة الإعلام التقليدي. أما المواطنة فقد أصبحت، بما يترتب عليها من واجبات وحقوق للمواطنين، مقولة مركزية للديمقراطية ومقوما أساسيا من مقومات الحداثة السياسية والاجتماعية، بل إن خلو دستور أية دولة دون الإشارة إلى هذه الحقوق وضرورة صيانتها والمحافظة عليها يعد من منظور الأخلاق الديمقراطية مخالفة قانونية وسياسية وانتقاصا من مشروعية السلطة ذاتها . كما أخذت المواطنة في العصر الحديث معنى جديدا تعكسه المنزلة التي أصبح يحتلها المواطن في المجتمعات الديمقراطية الحديثة، وتحددت تحت تأثير مجموعة من التحولات طبعت المجتمعات المعاصرة خلال منتصف القرن العشرين، هذه التحولات بعضها اقتصادي أو سياسي و البعض الأخر منها أيديولوجي إلا أن أهمها هو انتصار التوجهات التي أكدت على أولوية الفرد وشرعية استقلاله تجاه المجتمع، وحقه في رعاية مطالبه ومتابعة أهدافه بكل حرية في حدود احترام القوانين وقد شهدت العقود الأخيرة تعمقا قويا لهذا المبدأ. لقد غيرت المواطنة الحديثة بعمق الصورة الكلاسيكية للمواطن؛ حيث تعد حرية التعبير والمعتقد من الأصول الأساسية التي يقوم عليها نظام الدولة القانونية الديمقراطية، كما تعتبر وسائل الإعلام بمختلف صورها من أهم وسائل التعبير عن حرية الرأي في العالم المعاصر، لكن التطورات الحاصلة في مختلف مجالات الحياة الإنسانية جعلت الأحداث والظواهر والتطورات تفقد بساطتها الأولى، باعتبار التكنولوجيا الحديثة متغير أساسي في هذا المقياس، الأمر الذي دفع باتجاه ظهور إعلام متخصص يستطيع أن يقدم معالجة نوعية تتميز بمستوى من الجدية والعمق والشمولية، وتنوع وظائف وسائل الإعلام وانتقالها من اهتماماتها الكلاسيكية من نقل الأخبار إلى معالجة الأوضاع فأصبحت من ضروريات الحياة، فهي بمثابة حلقة وصل بين كل مؤسسات ومقومات ومكونات البناء الاجتماعي، وعلى عاتقها تقوم بشرح وتقديم ما لدى كل مؤسسة اجتماعية لأخرى؛ إذ تؤدي وسائل الإعلام دور بالغ الأهمية والخطورة في تكوين الرأي العام وفي تشكيله، وفي تعبئة الجماعات وحشدها حول أفكار وأراء واتجاهات معينة. (shrink)

Tout le film est toujours une microphysique du pouvoir, en potence, d’être étudier. Aujourd’hui l'augmentation des productions d'horreur et son public ont fait le film d'horreur une «contreculture» dominante, mais toujours sous l'effet négatif du pouvoir et du savoir qui disqualifient les discours, matérialisée dans ces films, ce qui les rend illégitime et exiler en soi espace filmique, transformée en un lieu adapté pour interdite et marquée par certaines pratiques discursives avec certains dispositifs d'exclusion. Paradoxalement, les types marginaux qui apparaissent (...) dans l'ordre de ces productions occupent les positions de sujets à exercer le pouvoir dans l'horreur et dans le même temps le renforcement de leur marginalité et de son objectivation. Ces aspects et les spécificités qui caractérisent les productions d'une part, nous ont amenés à identifier les pratiques de l'objectivation qui transforment corps dans les sujets dans l'horreur; d'autre part, de démontrer que ces films constituent une nouvelle technologie de contrôle social des corps, mais l'objectif principal de cette étude est d'analyser les relations de pouvoir à travers l'antagonisme des stratégies dans ce discours, qui est, pour savoir ce que cela signifie d'avoir un corps libre, nous examinons ce qui se passe sur le corps subjugué dans les films d'horreur, prenant l'archeogenealogie de Foucault comme base théorique. Cette questionhypothèse aurait un autre groupe: d'où pourrait faire une telle histoire? Nous supposons que dans les moments de crise, les films d'horreur ont beaucoup à prouver, donc nous avons opté pour un très similaire à celui qui Foucault a été invité par les experts de la revue Cahiers du cinéma pour discuter des conditions pour les productions cinématographiques comme Le Chagrin et la Pitié (1969), Portier de nuit (1974) et Lacombe Lucien (1974), quand on a regardé le déclin du gaullisme et l’ascention de Valéry Giscard d'Estaing , le vainqueur de la présidentielle de 1974, avec le soutien de l'ancien droit Tardieu et petainistes, anciens alliés de l'occupation du Führer Hitler de la France, entre 1940 à 1943. Maintenant, les conditions de production sont ceux qui marquent la fin des gouvernements socialistes de Mitterrand et Chirac, et le retour au pouvoir de la droite, à l'ascension politique de Nicolas Sarkozy. Au milieu de la crise économique de l'Union Européenne, flotte dans l'air la peur terrifiante de risque que l'arrivée de l'extrême droite au pouvoir. La présence croissante d'immigrants est aussi dans l'ordre d'une nouvelle crise de l'identité française. Ce sont les conditions de production de À l'intérieur, Frontière (s),Martyrs, Ils, La Meute, Captifs et Derrière les murs et, des films qui font partie de notre corpus. À la methodologie, nous développons les trois concepts opérationnels: le dispositif filmique de la mémoire, de la vérité et de l'objectivité pour traiter la mémoire populaire, recodé dans ces films et soi-disant perçu par nous comme l'un des principaux modes de contrôle des corps d’horreur; la notion d’intericonicité est encore utilisée pour indiquer des images qui renvoient à d'autres, mais tout en réalisant que chaque image a dans sa juxtaposition afin de utopies des hétérotopies. Donc, nous avons décidé de donner une nouvelle forme à cette notion, y compris l'utopique juxtaposés à des espaces hétérotopiques, sous l'influence de la discussion faite par Foucault dans le Corps utopique et Les hétérotopies. Keyword:Mémoire. Corps. Pouvoir. Discours politique. Film français d’horreur. (shrink)

Este trabalho trata do conceito Exu Diaspórico, o qual foi forjado para lidar com as pesquisas empíricas situadas dentro do quadro teórico da vaga decolonial. Sua concepção está ligada às tradições iorubanas diaspóricas nessa parte do Atlântico Sul onde emergiram outros sistemas resultantes, quer seja de fragmentos e vestígios de narrativas em gestos de memória e resistência, quer seja da tradução realizada pelo outro, muitas vezes, por meio de um processo de carnavalização cultural, que, por sua vez, se deu pela (...) convivência com os bantu, com os povos autóctones e com o colonizador europeu. Este conceito se articula com o conceito de língua-linguagem como encruzilhada apresentado por Araújo (2021a), mas pode ser tomado, ainda, de forma independente. Portanto, trata-se de uma discussão conceitual que visa contribuir com as reflexões e pesquisas decoloniais. O conceito também está a cargo de noções como negritude e Baianidade. Contudo, ele aparece para reunir todas as representações de Exu que resultaram da diáspora negra em meio a um processo de carnavalização das tradições iorubanas em contato com outras culturas e cosmologias. (shrink)

Este trabalho trata do conceito Exu Diaspórico, o qual foi forjado para lidar com as pesquisas empíricas situadas dentro do quadro teórico da vaga decolonial. Sua concepção está ligada às tradições iorubanas diaspóricas nessa parte do Atlântico Sul onde emergiram outros sistemas resultantes, quer seja de fragmentos e vestígios de narrativas em gestos de memória e resistência, quer seja da tradução realizada pelo outro, muitas vezes, por meio de um processo de carnavalização cultural, que, por sua vez, se deu pela (...) convivência com os bantu, com os povos autóctones e com o colonizador europeu. Este conceito se articula com o conceito de língua-linguagem como encruzilhada apresentado por Araújo (2021a), mas pode ser tomado, ainda, de forma independente. Portanto, trata-se de uma discussão conceitual que visa contribuir com as reflexões e pesquisas decoloniais. O conceito também está a cargo de noções como negritude e Baianidade. Contudo, ele aparece para reunir todas as representações de Exu que resultaram da diáspora negra em meio a um processo de carnavalização das tradições iorubanas em contato com outras culturas e cosmologias. (shrink)

The principal objective of this study is to present and discuss the elements that emerge from Michel Foucault's archeological undertakings, which, in our view, configure the existence of a new rhetoric that deals with what the French philosopher called the rarefaction of the subject and rarefaction of discourse in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France (Foucault, 1996). This new rhetoric would be in charge of reflecting and analyzing the phenomena that result from both the rarefaction of the subject (...) and the rarefaction of discourse, that is, such rhetoric invests in what is responsible for imposing on the speaking subject what to say and how to say it. Therefore, it turns to certain mechanisms of control of discourses that Foucault presented in The Discourse on Language, a work that completes five decades of its publication. This Foucauldian rhetoric also has as its main function to deal with the history of the present, that is, to reflect on what we do and think at this exact moment, which, in turn, would be in charge of contributing to the history of how we became subjects in a culture like ours, at this stage of high modernity and the Information Age. From this perspective, she would be interested in the processes of identification and subjectivation that result from the ways in which we become subjects. In short, it is a study that seeks to present elements that demonstrate the emergence of a new rhetoric that emerges from the work of Michel Foucault, who, according to Deleuze (1992), increasingly invested in a generalized pragmatics. (shrink)

Recently developed large language models (LLMs) perform surprisingly well in many language-related tasks, ranging from text correction or authentic chat experiences to the production of entirely new texts or even essays. It is natural to get the impression that LLMs know the meaning of natural language expressions and can use them productively. Recent scholarship, however, has questioned the validity of this impression, arguing that LLMs are ultimately incapable of understanding and producing meaningful texts. This paper develops a more optimistic view. (...) Drawing on classic externalist accounts of reference, it argues that LLMs are very likely capable of reference. Not only that: The combination of a popular externalist account of reference and recent experimental data in machine psychology even suggests that LLMs might play a role in shifting what our words refer to. (shrink)

Whenever we communicate, we inevitably have to say one thing before another. This means introducing particularly subtle patterns of salience into our language. In this paper, I introduce ‘order-based salience patterns’, referring to the ordering of syntactic contents where that ordering, pretheoretically, does not appear to be of consequence. For instance, if one is to describe a colourful scarf, it wouldn’t seem to matter if one were to say it is ‘orange and blue’ or ‘blue and orange’. Despite their apparent (...) triviality, I argue that order-based salience patterns tend to make the content positioned first more salient – in the sense of attention-grabbing – in a way that can have surprising normative implications. Giving relative salience to gender differences over similarities, for instance, can result in the activation of cognitively accessible beliefs about gender differences. Where those beliefs are epistemically and/or ethically flawed, we can critique the salience pattern that led to them, providing an instrumental way of evaluating those patterns. I suggest that order-based salience patterns can also be evaluated on constitutive grounds; talking about gender differences before similarities might constitute a subtle form of bias. Finally, I reflect on how the apparent triviality of order-based salience patterns in language gives them an insidious strength. (shrink)

In this thesis, the philosophical debate on conceptual relativism between Quine and Davidson is examined, along with their respective theories of interpretation. A new perspective on the issues raised by these philosophers in their theoretical accounts of linguistic comprehension is introduced through an examination of two research projects conducted in the paradigm of linguistic anthropology. The philosophical standpoints are analyzed against the background of the data these empirical projects deliver, and the question of their validity in the face of these (...) findings is explored. In the light of the presented research, Davidson’s account grounded in the principle of charity is deemed as more empirically plausible than Quine’s theory, which stands on the existence of alternative conceptual schemes. In addition, the current analysis itself is investigated as a case-study in the considerations regarding the relationship between empirical science and philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the ‘social meanings’ associated with sociolinguistic variation put pressure on the standard philosophical conception of language, according to which the foremost thing we do with words is exchange information. Drawing on parallels with the explanatory challenge posed by slurs and pejoratives, I argue that the best way to understand social meanings is to think of them in speech act theoretic terms. I develop a distinctive form of pluralism about the performances realized by means of (...) sociolinguistic variants, and I claim that engagement with such performances is an utterly pervasive feature of our linguistic activity. (shrink)

A new dimension beyond criticism, pessimism and dispute.

One of the core insights from Eleanor Rosch’s work on categorization is that human categorization isn’t arbitrary. Instead, two psychological principles constrain possible systems of classification for all human cultures. According to these principles, the task of a category system is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort, and the perceived world provides us with structured rather than arbitrary features. In this paper, I show that Rosch's insights give us important resources for making progress on the 'feasibility question' (...) in conceptual engineering: the question of how we can implement conceptual engineering projects in ways that are practically feasible. Specifically, I show that one overlooked upshot of Rosch's work is that naming practices play an extremely important role in the construction of perceived similarities within and dissimilarities between categories, and, correspondingly, the dissemination of social stereotypes that serve as markers between different categories that are otherwise similar. Thus, naming practices will be a crucial constraint for the feasibility of certain ameliorative projects. (shrink)

The present paper has as its theme the sociological aspect of the use of slang in a socio educational environment. Its main purpose is to describe and analyze the social distance in a learning environment, according to Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus. In order to develop the classwork, some workshops about a slang dictionary have been held. The qualitative data provided by the pedagogical practice are presented, based on the reports of the meetings so that we have been (...) able to analyze the concepts presented by the young people. From this, it has been verified the symbolic character of words and expressions as a vector of social distancing by the incorporated cultural capital. (shrink)

(Penultimate Draft). I consider common ground in its evolutionary context and argue for several claims. First, common ground is widely (though not universally) distributed among social animals. Second, the use of common ground is favored (i.e. is predicted to emerge and subsequently persist) among populations of animals whose members face recurrent interdependent decision-making problems in which the benefit of their courses of action are contingent on the variable choices of their stable social partner(s). Third, humans deploy cognitive and social mechanisms (...) for establishing and updating common ground that are not deployed by other living animals—the use of common ground has not only persisted within the human lineage but been amplified as well. Finally, I suggest that some of these points count against the iterative construal of common ground. In its place, I propose an alternative psychological construal of common ground in terms of what I will call reciprocal responsiveness. (shrink)

تعمل الكلمات كروابط لإدراكات متباينة، ما يسمح لنا بتجميع التجارب الحسية المختلفة تحت مُسمى واحدًا. ينطبق هذا بشكل خاص على المفاهيم التي تُشير إلى أشياء يمكننا رؤيتها أو لمسها، لكننا ما زلنا لا نفهم حقًا كيف تعمل اللغة في تشكيل معنى المفاهيم الأكثر تجريدًا، أو كيف تسمح لنا بتجميع الخبرات معًا تحت مظلة مصطلح واحد يشير إلى شيء لا يمكننا الإشارة إليه أو رؤيته أو لمسه. هذا ما تناقشه «ماريانا مارسيلا بولونيسي» (الأستاذ المشارك بقسم اللغات والآداب والثقافات الحديثة بجامعة بولونيا) (...) في مقال لها تحت عنوان: «كيف تُشكل اللغة أفكارك – ما يعرفه الباحثون». (shrink)

Politics abounds with bad language: lying and bullshitting, grandstanding and virtue signaling, code words and dogwhistles, and more. But why is there so much bad language in politics? And what, if anything, can we do about it? In this paper I show how these two questions are connected. Politics is full of bad language because existing social and political institutions are structured in such a way that the production of bad language becomes rational. In principle, by modifying these institutions we (...) can reduce the prevalence of bad language. However, as I show, such practical efforts are fraught with difficulties. After first outlining an account of bad language (Section 1), I examine the rationality of three different types of bad language: inaccurate language, insincere language, and unclear language (Section 2). Next, I discuss the possibility of implementing institutional reforms to improve the quality of political discourse (Section 3). However, I then outline and discuss two serious complications for institutional reforms—namely, they create risk of abuse, and they could preclude instances of seemingly bad language that, in fact, are socially beneficial (Section 4). I conclude with some thoughts about how to pursue institutional reform in an appropriately circumspect manner (Section 5). (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work found that generics display a unique asymmetry between their acceptance conditions and the implications that are typically drawn from them. This paper presents evidence against the hypothesis that only generics display an asymmetry. Correcting for limitations of previous designs, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics, various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’), and variations in types (...) of predicated properties (striking vs. neutral). We discuss implications of these results for our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and whether and in which ways these effects might introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

There is a correlation between positions taken on some scientific questions and political leaning. One way to explain this correlation is the cultural cognition hypothesis (CCH): people's political leanings are causing them to process evidence to maintain fixed answers to the questions, rather than to seek the truth. Another way is the different background belief hypothesis (DBBH): people of different political leanings have different background beliefs which rationalize different positions on these scientific questions. In this article, I argue for two (...) things. I argue that two attempts by proponents of the CCH to discredit the DBBH fail. And I argue that this matters, because while the CCH makes epistemic paternalistic interventions seem called for (as some philosophers have argued compellingly), the DBBH does not. The DBBH makes it much easier to stay closer to an ideal of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess Mark Richard’s interesting and important development of the claim that linguistic meanings can be fruitfully analogized with biological species. I argue that linguistic meanings qua cluster of interpretative presuppositions need not and often do not display the population-level independence and reproductive isolation that is characteristic of the biological species concept. After developing these problems in some detail, I close with a discussion of their implications for the picture that Richard paints concerning the dangers of (...) conceptual engineering and the prospects for dynamic notions of semantic stability. (shrink)

The use of lexical signs like ‘knowledge’ has consequences. Not only do they have direct psychological resonances, but people ascribe beliefs and act based on their semantics. This paper proposes that such consequences are up for negotiation, and introduces a formal framework from financial theory to suggest constraints on those negotiations and implications of those constraints. The upshot is that changing language will be easier sometimes than others, and philosophers’ projects of linguistic change should be aware of those conditions.

In paradigmatic cases of subtweeting, one Twitter user critically or mockingly tweets about another person without mentioning their username or their name. In this chapter, we give an account of the strategic aims of subtweeting and the mechanics through which it achieves them. We thereby hope to shed light on the distinctive communicative and moral texture of subtweeting while filling in a gap in the philosophical literature on strategic speech in social media. We first specify what subtweets are and identify (...) the central features that give rise to their strategic mechanics. Next, we draw attention to problematic aspects of subtweeting and consider conditions under which subtweeting can be justified on moral and prudential grounds. The chapter concludes by discussing practical upshots and noting avenues for future work. (shrink)

This paper argues that in addition to the familiar approach using formal contexts, there is now a need in artificial intelligence to study contexts as social constructs. As a successful example of the latter approach, I draw attention to 'interpretation' (in the sense of literary theory), viz. the reconstruction of the intended meaning of a literary text that takes into account the context in which the author assumed the reader would place the text. An important contribution here comes from Wendell (...) Harris, enumerating the seven crucial dimensions of context: knowledge of reality, knowledge of language, and the authorial, generic, collective, specific, and textual dimensions. Finally, two recent approaches to interpretation, due to Jon Barwise and Jerry Hobbs, are analyzed as useful attempts which also come to grips with the notion of context. It must be noted that there has been a considerable body of contributions connecting linguistic structure with social context. For example, anthropological linguistics, from Bronislaw Malinowski onwards, has underlined the cultural context of discourse as essential to meaning. This viewpoint became prominent with the emergence of the ethnography of speaking in anthropology. Thus, conversation analysis represents a consistent formal effort to contribute to an analysis of the nature of context. While this paper emphasizes and reviews the literary theory approach, it makes various contacts with works of the latter kind (e.g., the landmark contributions of Erving Goffman, John Gumperz, William Hanks, John Heritage, Dell Hymes, et al.) in order to deliver a more balanced and complete study of the dimensions of context. (shrink)

A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to “reengineer” a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there’s only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual (...) role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things. (shrink)

Assertions are often accepted without being understood, a phenomenon I call stupefying. I argue that stupefying can be a means for conversational manipulation that works through at-issue content, in contrast with the not-at-issue and back-door speech act routes identified by others. This shows that we should reject a widely assumed connection between attention and at-issue content. In exploring why stupefying happens, it also emerges that stupefying has important cooperative uses, in addition to its manipulative ones, and so should not be (...) avoided altogether. (shrink)

This paper articulates a general distinction between two important communicative ideals—expressive sincerity and discursive integrity—and then uses it to analyze problems with political debate in contemporary democracies. In the context of philosophical discussions of different forms of trustworthiness and debates about deliberative democracy, self-knowledge, and moral testimony, the paper develops three arguments for the conclusion that, although expressive sincerity is valuable, we should not ignore discursive integrity in thinking about how to address problems with contemporary political debate. The paper concludes (...) with a brief discussion of a strategy for improving discursive integrity within public political debate by reflecting on which principles of responsible public debate would promote better democratic decision making. (shrink)

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification that occurs in deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ that digitally fuses the parts of different (...) women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of ‘illocutionary wronging’, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of ‘panoptic gaslighting’, where many systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

This paper investigates the political dimension of Fritz Mauthner’s writings in respect to his language critique and his ambivalent relationship to Judaism. Its aim is to oppose the common understanding of Mauthner as a German-nationalist. For doing so, Mauthner’s relation to Judaism is contextualised within his philosophical views on patriotism, mother-tongue, and the formation of social communities. By suggesting an anti-nationalist interpretation of his philosophy, it is argued that participation in a certain linguistic practice can explain what it means to (...) belong to a certain community according to Mauthner. The paper discusses to what extent Mauthner’s writings can be interpreted as anti-nationalist and concludes that he is too contradictory to be understood distinctively as a nationalist or an anti-nationalist. (shrink)

Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” interchangeably. This paper defends and explains the distinction between slurs’ derogatory force and offensiveness by fulfilling three goals. First, it distinguishes between slurs’ being derogatory and their being offensive with four arguments. For instance, ‘Monday’, a slur in the Bostonian (...) argot, is used to secretly derogate African Americans without causing offense. Second, this paper points out that many theories of slurs run into problems because they conflate derogatory force with offensiveness. For example, the prohibition theory’s account of offensiveness in terms of prohibitions struggles to explain why ‘Monday’ is derogatory when it is not a prohibited word in English. Third, this paper offers a new explanation of this distinction from the perspective of a speech act theory of slurs; derogatory force is different from offensiveness because they arise from two different kinds of speech acts that slurs are used to perform, i.e., the illocutionary act of derogation and the perlocutionary act of offending. This new explanation avoids the problems faced by other theories. (shrink)

Esta entrevista realizada al primer vicepresidente de la Academia Nacional de Letras de Uruguay, Gerardo Caetano, tiene como propósito debatir sobre la situación política que atraviesa Latinoamérica, a partir de los cuestionamientos que se han hecho acerca de algunos conceptos fundamentales, como el que se entiende por democracia. Las respuestas que brinda el doctor son esenciales, puesto que efectúa un recuento de la historia de los dos últimos siglos para confrontar el panorama que se aprecia en las coyunturas nacionales actuales (...) y el rol que ejercen otras instituciones u organismos, como la prensa. (shrink)

I introduce game-theoretic models for threats to the discussion of threats in speech act theory. I first distinguish three categories of verbal threats: conditional threats, categorical threats, and covert threats. I establish that all categories of threats can be characterized in terms of an underlying conditional structure. I argue that the aim—or illocutionary point—of a threat is to change the conditions under which an agent makes decisions in a game. Threats are moves in a game that instantiate a subgame in (...) which the addressee is ‘under threat’. (shrink)

According to René Girard, all religious traditions - and so every tradition- originate from a communitarian violence towards a randomly chosen individual. I provide an introductory construal of Girard’s proposal in the first section of my paper. In the second section, I will address a conceptual view of the theory by making explicit its principles and their inferential relations. In the third section, I will explain how philosophers of language address slurs and hate-speech. Particularly, I will apply such materials to (...) Girard’s assumption that the three friends’ discourses to Job are instances of hate-speech. My purpose is to defend the use of a presuppositional account of derogatory epithets in the philosophy of religion, and to argue for the legitimacy of reading a number of religious statements which cement a social group into a “we” in opposition to an individual who is individuated as an instance of a “not-we” as slurs. In the fourth section, I will argue that, if Girard is right in thinking that speech-hate and the use of slurs are means for the identification of a scapegoat within a group, then Girard’s theory needs to be adjusted in order to accommodate some obvious difficulties. Finally, in the fifth section, I will sum up my conclusions and then provide a few suggestions for defending the theory. (shrink)

Conceptual engineers endeavor to improve our concepts. But their endeavors face serious practical difficulties. One such difficulty – rational conceptual conflict - concerns the degree to which agents are incentivized to impede the efforts of conceptual engineers, especially in many of the contexts within which conceptual engineering is viewed as a worthwhile pursuit. Under such conditions, the already difficult task of conceptual engineering becomes even more difficult. Consequently, if they want to increase their chances of success, conceptual engineers should pay (...) closer attention to – and devise strategies to mitigate – rational conceptual conflict. After outlining the phenomenon at greater length and mapping its connections to other similar practical problems (Section 1), I explore the dynamics of such conflict by way of several detailed case studies (Section 2). In particular, I focus on cases driven by material, social, and moral incentives. I then consider some important methodological implications of rational conceptual conflict (Section 3). Among other things, I argue that conceptual engineers should focus more heavily on cultivating settings that modify the payoffs and penalties associated with conceptual conflict. By such indirect means, they can incentivize conceptual cooperation rather than conflict, thus making it easier to achieve success in conceptual engineering. Section 4 concludes. (shrink)

Menas is a term that has attracted a great deal of attention on the political scene in Spain at present. Although the term had a neutral usage originally, being an acronym for unaccompanied foreign minors, it has recently evolved into a term with clear negative connotations. This article explores what kind of term menas is today. Specifically, we will examine whether menas is a slur or an ESTI, an ethnic/social term used as an insult. First, we point out the most (...) defining characteristics of both types of terms. Then, using analyses on linguistic corpora, we show that menas exhibits the most defining characteristics of ESTIs. We end by discussing the possible evolution of the term, pointing out that, although the term presents the features related to ESTIs, there are two possible scenarios. On the one hand, the term may retain its neutral uses and thus remain an ESTI. On the other hand, the neutral uses may disappear, and thus the term may become a slur. (shrink)

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of so-called covert dogwhistles. I discuss whether a covert dogwhistle is a specific sort of mechanism of manipulation or whether, on the contrary, it draws on other already familiar linguistic mechanisms such as implicatures or presuppositions. I put forward a series of arguments aimed at illustrating that implicatures and presuppositions, on the one hand, and covert dogwhistles, on the other, differ in their linguistic behaviour concerning plausible deniability, cancellability, calculability and mutual acceptance. I (...) concluded this paper by outlining a simple theory for covert dogwhistles according to which they are attitude-foregrounders. (shrink)

Generic stereotypes are generically formulated generalizations that express a stereotype, like “Mexican immigrants are rapists” and “Muslims are terrorists.” Stereotypes like these are offensive and should not be asserted by anyone. Yet when someone does assert a sentence like this in a conversation, it is surprisingly difficult to successfully rebut it. The meaning of generic sentences is such that they can be true in several different ways. As a result, a speaker who is challenged after asserting a generic stereotype can (...) often simply dismiss the objection and maintain that the stereotype is true in a way that is compatible with the challenger’s objection. In this paper, a semantic theory for generics is presented that accounts for this type of defensive shifting in upholding generic stereotypes. This theory is then used to develop two strategies to object more efficiently. The first strategy is to immediately deny that either of the two possible ways in which a generic can be true obtains. The second strategy is to deny the satisfaction of an additional condition that is necessary for a generic sentence to be true. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in formal pragmatic theory, this paper shows that the manipulation of discourse structure—in particular, by way of shifting the Question Under Discussion mid-discourse—can constitute an act of epistemic injustice. I argue that the “All Lives Matter” response to the “Black Lives Matter” slogan is one such case; this response shifts the Question Under Discussion governing the overarching discourse from Do Black lives matter? to Which lives matter? This manipulation of the discourse structure systematically obscures the intended (...) meaning of “Black lives matter” and disincentivizes future utterances of it. (shrink)

The verb to legitimate is often used in political discourse in a way that is prima facie perplexing. To wit, it is often said that an actor legitimates a practice which is officially prohibited in the relevant context – for example, that a worker telling sexist jokes legitimates sex discrimination in the workplace. In order to clarify the meaning of statements like this, and show how they can sometimes be true and informative, we need an explanation of how something that (...) is officially illegitimate can have a kind of ersatz legitimacy conferred on it, and how this can occur even when the actor ‘doing the legitimating’ lacks formal authority. I examine one putative explanation centred around the phenomenon of normalization, and I highlight some advantages that this account has in comparison to an alternative explanation, one that makes reference to the phenomenon of licensed authority. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory words and they are used to derogate certain groups. Theories of slurs must explain why they are derogatory words, as well as other features like independence and descriptive ineffability. This paper proposes an illocutionary force indicator theory of slurs: they are derogatory terms because their use is to perform the illocutionary act of derogation, which is a declarative illocutionary act to enforce norms against the target. For instance, calling a Chinese person “chink” is an act of derogation (...) to enforce racist norms that license exclusion of the Chinese, deny their rights to dignity, etc. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it offers a more comprehensive explanation of the features of slurs than earlier speech act approaches. Second, it provides a theory that is immune to the problems faced by existing theories, such as wrong predictions of truth-conditions, explaining unacceptability to non-bigots, and explaining slurs against the dominant groups. (shrink)

There’s an interesting debate in moral and political philosophy about the nature of, and relationship between, ideal and non-ideal theory. In this paper we discuss whether an analogous distinction can be drawn in philosophy of language. Our conclusion is negative: Even if you think that distinction can be put to work within moral and political philosophy, there’s no useful way to extend it to work that has been done in the philosophy of language.

Prima di commentare in dettaglio su making il mondo sociale (MSW) offrirò prima alcuni commenti sulla filosofia (psicologia descrittiva) e il suo rapporto con la ricerca psicologica contemporanea come esemplificato nelle opere di Searle (S) e Wittgenstein (W), dal momento che sento che questo è il modo migliore per posizionare Searle o qualsiasi comportamento commentatore, nella giusta prospettiva. Aiuterà molto vedere le mie recensioni di PNC, TLP, PI, OC, TARW e altri libri di questi due geni della psicologia descrittiva. S (...) non fa alcun riferimento alla presciente dichiarazione d'animo di W come meccanismo in TLP, e la sua sua distruzione nel suo lavoro successivo. Dal momento che W, S è diventato il principale decostruttore di queste visioni meccaniche del comportamento, e il più importante psicologo descrittivo (filosofo), ma non si rende conto di come W lo abbia anticipato completamente né, in generale, fare altri (ma vedere i molti articoli e libri di Proudfoot e Copeland su W, Turing e AI). Il lavoro di S è molto più facile da seguire di quello di W, e anche se c'è qualche gergo, è per lo più spettacolare chiaro se ti avvicini dalla giusta direzione. Vedi le mie recensioni su W S e altri libri per maggiori dettagli. Nel complesso, MSW è una buona sintesi dei molti progressi sostanziali su Wittgenstein derivanti dal mezzo secolo di lavoro di S, ma a mio parere, W è ancora ineguagliabile per la psicologia di base una volta compreso quello che sta dicendo (vedi le mie recensioni). Idealmente, dovrebbero essere letti insieme: Searle per la chiara prosa coerente e generalizzazioni sul funzionamento di S2/S3, illustrate con esempi perspicaci di W del funzionamento di S1/S2, e i suoi brillanti aforismi. Se fossi molto più giovane scriverei un libro facendo esattamente questo. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

The “language-communication-society” triangle defies traditional scientific approaches. Rather, it is a phenomenon that calls for an integration of complex, transdisciplinary perspectives, if we are to make any progress in understanding how it works. The highly diverse agents in play are not merely cognitive and/or cultural, but also emotional and behavioural in their specificity. Indeed, the effort may require building a theoretical and methodological body of knowledge that can effectively convey the characteristic properties of phenomena in human terms. New complexity approaches (...) allow us to rethink our limited and mechanistic images of human societies and create more appropriate emo-cognitive dynamic and holistic models. We have to enter into dialogue with the complexity views coming out of other more ‘material’ sciences, but we also need to take steps in the linguistic and psycho-sociological fields towards creating perspectives and concepts better fitted to human characteristics. Our understanding of complexity is different – but not opposed – to the one that is more commonly found in texts written by people working in physics or computer science, for example. The goal of this book is to extend the knowledge of these other more ‘human’ or socially oriented perspectives on complexity, taking account of the language and communication singularities of human agents in society. (shrink)

Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — and (...) thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry. (shrink)