The aim of this paper is to provide arguments based on linguistic evidence that discard a truth-conditional analysis of slurs and pave the way for more promising approaches. We consider Hom and May’s version of TCA, according to which the derogatory content of slurs is part of their truth-conditional meaning such that, when slurs are embedded under semantic operators such as negation, there is no derogatory content that projects out of the embedding. In order to support this view, Hom and (...) May make two moves: they point to cases where it looks like projection does not occur and they try to explain away cases where projection seems to occur by appealing to a pragmatic phenomenon that they call ‘offense’. Pace Hom and May, we argue that the derogatory content of slurs does in fact project and, in advocating for our claim, we show that those cases where it looks like projection does not occur are in fact metalinguistic uses in which slurs are not really used, by relying on three linguistic tests ; and we refute Hom and May’s attempt to explain why speakers would entertain the supposedly wrong intuition that the derogatory content of slurs projects out of semantic embedding, by focusing on the case of slurs for fictional entities. We conclude that Hom and May’s strategies to support TCA ultimately fail. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an essentialist model of the semantics of slurs. I defend the view that slurs are a species of kind terms: Slur concepts encode mini-theories which represent an essence-like element that is causally connected to a set of negatively-valenced stereotypical features of a social group. The truth-conditional contribution of slur nouns can then be captured by the following schema: For a given slur S of a social group G and a person P, S is true of (...) P iff P bears the “essence” of G—whatever this essence is—which is causally responsible for stereotypical negative features associated with G and predicted of P. Since there is no essence that is causally responsible for stereotypical negative features of a social group, slurs have null-extension, and consequently, many sentences containing them are either meaningless or false. After giving a detailed outline of my theory, I show that it receives strong linguistic support. In particular, it can account for a wide range of linguistic cases that are regarded as challenging, central data for any theory of slurs. Finally, I show that my theory also receives convergent support from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. (shrink)

Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren’t adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. A (...) slurring act is a speech-act that alters the discourse roles of the target and speaker. By assigning discourse roles the speaker unjustly changes the power balance in the dialogue. This has a variety of effects on the target and audience. We show how these notions explain all three types of offence variation. We also briefly sketch how a role and power theory can help explain silencing and appropriation. Explanatory power lies in the fact that offence is correlated with the perceived unjustness of the power imbalance created. (shrink)

Özet: Bu yazıda nefret sözcüklerinin dilsel işlevi açıklanmaya çalışılacaktır. Bunun için öncelikle nefret sözcüklerinin kimi özelliklerini tartışıp sonrasında bu özelliklerin tümünün önereceğim sözcük sezdirimine dayalı nefret sözcükleri kuramı ile başarıyla açıklanabileceğini savunacağım. Buna göre nefret sözcükleri sözcük anlamı olarak bir insan grubuna işaret ederken, tipik kullanımlarında kimi olumsuz nitelikleri sözcük düzeyinde sezdirirler. Sözcük sezdirimi kavramı Grice'ın sezdirim kavramının bir tümcecikten daha küçük dilsel yapılara uyarlanmasıyla ortaya çıkar. Bu uyarlamanın olanaklı olduğunun gösterilmesi için Grice’ın tümce düzeyi için tasarladığı ilke ve maksimlerin (...) tümce altı düzeyde nasıl işlediğini açıklayacağım. Abstract: This paper aims at explaining the linguistic function of slurs. To this aim, I will first discuss certain features of slurs and then argue that these features can be successfully explained in my suggested phrasal implicature theory of slurs. In this view, slurs denote a group of people, and in their typical use they imply certain negative features at the phrasal level. Phrasal implicature is a notion which is developed by adapting Gricean notion of implicature to the linguistic units that are smaller than a clause. In order to show that this adaptation is possible, I will demonstrate how the Gricean principles and maxims work at the subsentential level. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

In virtue of what does a linguistic act count as an insult? I discuss five main approaches to this question, according to which an insult is determined by (i) the semantic properties of the expression used; (ii) the insulter, her intention, or attitudes; (iii) the addressee and her personal standard; (iv) the features of the speech act performed; and (v) the standard of the relevant social group. I endorse the last, objectivist account, according to which an act x counts as (...) an insult if and only if x is assessed as demeaning when addressed at A by the standard of the relevant social group at t. (shrink)

The relation between slurs and their neutral counterparts has been put into question recently by the fact that some slurs can be used to refer to subsets of the referential classes determined by their associated counterparts. This paper aims to reinforce this relation by offering a way of explaining referential restriction that distinguishes between two kinds of slurs: those performing a normalizing role upon (some) individuals inside a class (mostly, a gender) and those used to derogate a marginalized out- group.

The issue of hate speech has received significant attention from legal scholars and philosophers alike. But the vast majority of this attention has been focused on presenting and critically evaluating arguments for and against hate speech bans as opposed to the prior task of conceptually analysing the term ‘hate speech’ itself. This two-part article aims to put right that imbalance. It goes beyond legal texts and judgements and beyond the legal concept hate speech in an attempt to understand the general (...) concept hate speech. And it does so using a range of well-known methods of conceptual analysis that are distinctive of analytic philosophy. One of its main aims is to explode the myth that emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred are part of the essential nature of hate speech. It also argues that hate speech is best conceived as a family resemblances concept. One important implication is that when looking at the full range of ways of combating hate speech, including but not limited to the use of criminal law, there is every reason to embrace an understanding of hate speech as a heterogeneous collection of expressive phenomena. Another is that it would be unsound to reject hate speech laws on the premise that they are effectively in the business of criminalising emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred. (shrink)

Which concepts should we use to think and talk about the world and to do all of the other things that mental and linguistic representation facilitates? This is the guiding question of the field that we call ‘conceptual ethics’. Conceptual ethics is not often discussed as its own systematic branch of normative theory. A case can nevertheless be made that the field is already quite active, with contributions coming in from areas as diverse as fundamental metaphysics and social/political philosophy. In (...) this pair of papers, we try to unify the field, reflecting on its basic nature, structure, and methodology. (shrink)

Slurs are typically defined as conveying contempt based on group-membership. However, here I argue that they are not a unitary group. First, I describe two dimensions of variation among derogatives: how targets are identified, and how offensive the term is. This supports the typical definition of slurs as opposed to other derogatives. I then highlight problems with this definition, mainly caused by variable offence across slur words. In the process I discuss how major theories of slurs can account for variable (...) offence, and conclude that contempt based on group-membership doesn’t cover all the data. I finish by noting that the most offensive slurs are those that target oppressed groups. I claim it is oppression that underpins most offence, and that beyond this offensive property, some slurs are actively used to oppress. (shrink)

[First published 09/2016; substantive revision 02/2021.] Evaluative terms and concepts are often divided into “thin” and “thick”. We don’t evaluate actions and persons merely as good or bad, or right or wrong, but also as kind, courageous, tactful, selfish, boorish, and cruel. The latter evaluative concepts are "descriptively thick": their application somehow involves both evaluation and a substantial amount of non-evaluative description. This article surveys various attempts to answer four fundamental questions about thick terms and concepts. (1) A “combination question”: (...) how exactly do thick terms and concepts relate evaluation and non-evaluative description? (2) A “location question”: is evaluation somehow inherent to thick terms and concepts, such as perhaps an aspect of their meaning, or merely a feature of their use? (3) A “delineation question”: how do thick terms differ from the thin and from other kinds of evaluative terms? (4) Given answers to these questions, what broader philosophical significance and applications might thick concepts have? (shrink)

This chapter explores the extent to which philosophy of language can be considered an applied discipline. I consider, first, ways in which sub-sections of philosophy of language may be considered as applied in terms of their subject matter and/or the kinds of questions being addressed (e.g. philosophy of language which deals with derogatory or inflammatory uses of language, or the role of philosophy of language within feminist philosophy). Then, in the second part of the chapter, I turn to consider a (...) more general (and perhaps more controversial) conception of philosophy of language as applied, which arises from the methodology adopted and the relationship of the discipline to empirical data. (shrink)

Contemporary semantics assumes two influential notions of context: one coming from Kaplan (1989), on which contexts are sets of predetermined parameters, and another originating in Stalnaker (1978), on which contexts are sets of propositions that are “common ground”. The latter is deservedly more popular, given its flexibility in accounting for context-dependent aspects of language beyond manifest indexicals, such as epistemic modals, predicates of taste, and so on and so forth; in fact, properly dealing with demonstratives (perhaps ultimately all indexicals) requires (...) that further flexibility. Even if we acknowledge Lewis (1980)’s point that, in a sense, Kaplanian contexts already include common ground contexts, it is better to be clear and explicit about what contexts constitutively are. Now, Stalnaker (1978, 2002, 2014) defines context-as-common-ground as a set of propositions, but recent work shows that this is not an accurate conception. The paper explains why, and provides an alternative. The main reason is that several phenomena (presuppositional treatments of pejoratives and predicates of taste, forces other than assertion) require that the common ground includes non-doxastic attitudes such as appraisals, emotions, etc. Hence the common ground should not be taken to include merely contents (propositions), but those together with attitudes concerning them: shared commitments, as I will defend. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re emphasizing (...) that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

This is a draft of a chapter for the Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, edited by David Plunkett and Tristram McPherson. I offer an overview of hybrid views in metaethics, with main focus on hybrid cognitivist views such as those defended by Daniel Boisvert and David Copp, and on hybrid expressivist views such as those defended by Michael Ridge and myself.

In this brief essay, I will lay out the philosophical landscape concerning theories of racist humor. First, I mention some preliminary issues that bear on the question of what makes a joke racist. Next, I briefly survey some of the views philosophers have offered on racist humor, and on a view of sexist humor that is relevant for this discussion. I then suggest the debates could benefit from moving beyond the racist/non-racist binary most views presuppose. Finally, I conclude with suggestions (...) for further research. (shrink)

Coreferentialism refers to the common assumption in the literature that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. For instance, Vallee recently writes that “If S is an ethnic slur in language L, then there is a non-derogatory expression G in L such that G and S have the same extension”. The non-derogatory expression G is commonly considered the nonpejorative correlate of the slur expression S and it is widely thought that every S has a coreferring G (...) that possesses precisely the same extension. Yet here I argue against this widespread assumption by first briefly introducing what slurs are and then considering four sources of supporting evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are in fact not coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. I argue that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. This article additionally introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors actually evidenced in the empirical data, and further considers the inadequacy of common dictionary definitions of slurs. This article therefore contributes to the literature on slurs by demonstrating that previous accounts operating on the assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension, and that they thereby have the same meaning or content, are inconsistent with empirical data and that an alternative account in accord with Croom better fits the facts concerning their actual meaning and use. (shrink)

What accounts for the offensive character of pejoratives and slurs, words like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’? Is it due to a semantic feature of the words or to a pragmatic feature of their use? Is it due to a violation of a group’s desires to not be called by certain terms? Is it due to a violation of etiquette? According to one kind of view, pejoratives and the non-pejorative terms with which they are related—the ‘neutral counterpart’ terms—have different meanings or senses, (...) and this explains the offensiveness of the pejoratives. We call theories of this kind, semantic theories of the pejoratives. Our goal is broadly speaking two-fold. First, we will undermine the arguments that are supposed to establish the distinction in meaning between words like ‘African American’ and ‘nigger’. We will show that the arguments are suspect and generalize in untoward ways. Second, we will provide a series of arguments against semantic theories. For simplicity, we focus on a semantic theory that has been proposed by Hom and Hom and May. By showing the systematic ways in which their view fails we hope to provide general lessons about why we should avoid semantic theories of the pejoratives. (shrink)

Since at least 2008 linguists and philosophers of language have started paying more serious attention to issues concerning the meaning or use of racial epithets and slurs. In an influential article published in The Journal of Philosophy, for instance, Christopher Hom (2008) offered a semantic account of racial epithets called Combinatorial Externalism (CE) that advanced a novel argument for the exclusion of certain epithets from freedom of speech protection under the First Amendment (p. 435). Also in more recent work, “The (...) Expressive Meaning of Racial Epithets: Towards A Non-Unitary Account of Expressive Meaning,” Diane Blakemore (2013) offered an alternative pragmatic account of racial epithets rooted in Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory. Adam Croom (2008) has also discussed epithets before in prior work, through a consideration of a paradigmatic racial epithet directed towards Native Americans, but then moved on in subsequent work to focus on developing a more nuanced account of paradigmatic slurring terms instead (Croom 2010; Croom 2011; Croom 2012; Croom 2013; Croom 2014a; Croom 2014b; Croom under review). So the purpose of this article is to return to and extend the previous account of racial epithets provided by Croom (2008) through a consideration of another paradigmatic racial epithet, but this time one directed towards Asian Americans instead of Native Americans. Here I also offer a novel suggestion for how to differentiate between epithets and slurs, offering new insight into how epithets and slurs are both similar and different. A sample list of over 100 other racial epithets that can be accounted for by the kind of analysis presented here is provided in Croom (2008, p. 44-45). (shrink)

In several recent contributions to the growing literature on slurs, Hedger draws upon Kaplan's distinction between descriptive and expressive content to argue that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content. The distinction between descriptive and expressive content and the view that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content has been widely acknowledged in prior work, and Hedger aims to contribute to this tradition of scholarship by offering novel arguments in support of his "pure expressivist" account of slurs. But the account (...) that PE offers is explanatorily inadequate, resting on suspect a priori intuitions which also commit one to denying many basic facts about slurs, such as that slurs largely display systematic differential application and that slurs can be used non-offensively between in-group speakers. In this article I provide clear reasons for rejecting PE, arguing particularly against Hedger as one of PE’s most explicit and recent proponents. In showing that PE is inadequate in at least 11 ways, I argue in favor of a mixed or hybrid approach. (shrink)

In this paper I adopt Kaplan’s framework for distinguishing between descriptive and expressive content. Racial slurs are an especially difficult challenge for truth-conditional semantics because of their projection behaviors. That is to say, the offensive content of slurs “scopes out” of logical operators. I argue that racial slurs express contempt and lack descriptive content, so that many sentences containing slurs are not truth apt. My theory accounts for the intuition of the ordinary speaker who refuses to assent to the truth (...) of a sentence containing a slur, but accepts the same statement made using a neutral counterpart of that slur. Weaknesses of rival theories are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Slurs possess interesting linguistic properties and so have recently attracted the attention of linguists and philosophers of language. For instance the racial slur "nigger" is explosively derogatory, enough so that just hearing it mentioned can leave one feeling as if they have been made complicit in a morally atrocious act.. Indeed, the very taboo nature of these words makes discussion of them typically prohibited or frowned upon. Although it is true that the utterance of slurs is illegitimate and derogatory in (...) most contexts, sufficient evidence suggests that slurs are not always or exclusively used to derogate. In fact, slurs are frequently picked up and appropriated by the very in-group members that the slur was originally intended to target. This might be done, for instance, as a means for like speakers to strengthen in-group solidarity. So an investigation into the meaning and use of slurs can give us crucial insight into how words can be used with such derogatory impact, and how they can be turned around and appropriated as vehicles of rapport in certain contexts among in-group speakers. In this essay I will argue that slurs are best characterized as being of a mixed descriptive/expressive type. Next, I will review the most influential accounts of slurs offered thus far, explain their shortcomings, then provide a new analysis of slurs and explain in what ways it is superior to others. Finally, I suggest that a family-resemblance conception of category membership can help us achieve a clearer understanding of the various ways in which slurs, for better or worse, are actually put to use in natural language discourse. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

Many theorists, including Nietzsche, Adorno, and Foucault, have regarded genealogy as an important technique for social criticism. But it has been unclear how genealogy can go beyond the accomplishments of other, more mundane, critical methods. I propose a new approach to understanding the critical potential of history. I argue that theorists have been misled by the assumption that if a claim is deserving of criticism, it is because the claim is false. Turning to the criticism of concepts rather than criticism (...) of claims, I expand on the distinction between "descriptive semantics" and "foundational semantics" to show that genealogy can be uniquely qualified to explore the foundations of concepts, and hence to criticize concepts that are problematic in nonobvious ways. (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)

Verbal derogation is not only a linguistic but also, and perhaps more importantly, a political phenomenon. In this paper, I argue that to do justice to the political relevance of derogatory terms, we must not neglect the social practices and structures in which the use of these terms is embedded. I aim to show that inferentialist semantics is especially helpful to account for this social embeddedness and, consequently, the political relevance of derogatory terms. I am concerned with specifying the linguistic (...) and political aspects of terms that are at the core of derogatory language use. I explain them with the help of Brandomian inferentialism which tends to be quickly dismissed or ignored in discussions about the meaning of derogatory terms. My inferentialist account is in line with Lynne Tirrell’s broader inferentialist framework for understanding derogatory communicative practices. I provide the semantic details of her broader inferentialist view and thereby aim to show that inferentialist semantics is a promising theory which cannot be neglected in further discussion of meaning and politics in derogatory language use. (shrink)

Group‐based slurs are words that express derogatory attitudes toward some group demarcated by a property that has historically caused social antagonism, for example, gender or ethnicity, among others. Reclamation, in turn, is the process whereby a slur starts being used non‐derogatorily by members of the target group to express a positive attitude. Some content‐based theories of slurs (which pin the derogatory force of such terms on their conventional meaning) account for reclamation by arguing that it involves a change in meaning (...) so that reclaimed slurs are ambiguous. But these theories face a challenge, namely to account for the difference between reclaimed slurs and run‐of‐the‐mill ambiguous terms, whose felicitous uses do not seem to be restricted to in‐group speakers. In this article, we argue that the Reclamation Worry is not a problem for content‐based theories of slurs by advancing an account of reclamation that is compatible with such views. As we shall argue, such a theory must rely on the sociolinguistic dimension of such terms. (shrink)

Longstanding philosophical debate over the semantics of proper names has yet to examine the distinctive behavior of deadnames, names that have been rejected by their former bearers. The use of these names to deadname individuals is derogatory, but deadnaming derogates differently than other kinds of derogatory speech. This paper examines different accounts of this behavior, illustrates what going views of names will have to say to account for it, and articulates a novel version of predicativism that can give a semantic (...) explanation for this derogation. (shrink)

Este breve ensayo se inscribe en la tradición de buscar similitudes entre los epítetos y otros fenómenos lingüísticos, tanto inofensivos como discriminatorios. En particular, trataré de motivar la introducción de una distinción entre el blanco de un epíteto y su extensión y mostraré cómo esta distinción nos sirve para ver similitudes entre el comportamiento de este tipo de expresiones y el del complemento “de verdad” en expresiones como “tacos de verdad”. De paso, trataré también de explorar si estas teorías, desarrolladas (...) en su mayor parte en los Estados Unidos de América, sirven de herramienta teórica para dar cuenta de como ciertas expresiones contribuyen a la exclusión y discriminación de grupos minoritarios en nuestro contexto, es decir, en el castellano de México. (shrink)

A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on (...) a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech—whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication—is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language—from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality. At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Casting a Vote for Subordination Using a SlurDuckkyun Lee1. IntroductionIn this paper, I develop an account of slurs focusing on their two underappreciated features. The first underappreciated feature is what I call their "communal nature." Slurs are communal. The meaning of a slur depends on the existence of a significant number of people who are bigoted against the target. When this condition is not satisfied, a slur loses its (...) power to offend. This can be seen when we consider how philosophers choose examples of slurs to avoid offending people. For example, Williamson, in his essay "Reference, Inference and the Semantics of Pejoratives," uses a slur for Germans as his main example. What makes the slur for Germans a safe example to use is the fact that there is no widespread bigotry against Germans in any Anglophone country. Had there been strong enmity between Germans and the people in the Anglophone countries, even if Williamson had chosen an outdated slur, his example would not have been such a safe choice. Slurs are words that bigots use to offend and harm the people they are bigoted against. When there are no bigots, neither are there slurs.The focus on the communal nature of slurs leads to the second underappreciated feature of slurs. A bigot does not use a slur just to express his beliefs or feelings, but to subordinate his target. To subordinate others, a bigot needs to cooperate and coordinate with other bigots. In this paper, I will propose a mechanism for how slurs work as a tool for coordinating subordination. To account for the communal and subordinating nature of slurs, I turn to speech act theory and explain what kind of illocutionary act is performed when one uses a slur.1My proposal is to understand utterances made using a slur, or slurring,2 as an act of casting a vote for ranking the target as socially inferior. On this [End Page 37] view, a slur is a conventional tool used to cast a vote demanding the subordination of its target. The considerations that motivate this view are as follows: First, the uses of a slur are the results of consciously choosing it over its neutral counterpart. By explicitly avoiding a neutral counterpart term, one can show their support for fellow bigots and the willingness to participate in whatever activity they do. Second, the point of using a slur does not seem to be exhausted by its role of expressing the bigot's negative beliefs about the target. We can see this when we consider that the way to fight a slur is to impose strict prohibitions against its use, not by objecting to the content of the slurring utterance. This can be better explained when we understand the slur as a conventional tool for the performance of a certain type of action, rather than a word that has distinctive descriptive content different from the descriptive content of its neutral counterpart. Finally, the point of some speech acts is not just expressing the state of the mind of the speaker. The point of some speech acts is to change what is the case in society. To make an utterance using a slur seems to fall into this latter category of speech acts. What would bigots be up to if they were not engaged in the project of creating a society where their target was inferior to them? This consideration suggests that making an utterance using a slur might fall into the kind of speech act Searle calls declaration (Taxonomy 361–68). As a declaration, slurring is an attempt to change society such that the target is subordinated.Insofar as an election is understood as a process within which people collectively decide on what should be the case in society by indicating their stance for or against a proposal, slurring can be understood as a casting of a vote in the election bigots' proposal to subordinate their target. I argue that this account can better explain why a slur cannot function as a slur without there being a significant number of bigots, and how it is used to coordinate the bigots' effort of subordinating their target.The paper... (shrink)

Slurs’ meaning is highly unstable. A slurring utterance like ‘Hey, F, where have you been?’ (where F is a slur) may receive a wide array of interpretations depending on various contextual factors such as the speaker’s social identity, their relationship to the target group, tone of voice, and more. Standard semantic, pragmatic, and non-content theories of slurs have proposed different mechanisms to account for some or all types of variability observed, but without providing a unified framework that allows us to (...) understand how different contextual factors simultaneously influence slurs’ interpretation. To address this issue, I argue that slurs convey dimensional qualities such as, e.g., ‘negative valence, neutral arousal, high dominance’ instead of discrete emotional categories such as ‘contempt’. Then, I translate this hypothesis into a game-theoretic model of slurs’ interpretation inspired by Heather Burnett’s pioneering work on identity construction. This new model, called ‘Affective Meaning Games’ (AMG), captures the variability of slurs and integrates pragmatic reasoning within an independently motivated psychological understanding of emotional states. (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)

The current study represents an integrated model of explicit and implicit offensive language taxonomy. First, it focuses on a definitional revision and enrichment of the explicit offensive language taxonomy by reviewing the collection of available corpora and comparing tagging schemas applied there. The study relies mainly on the categories originally proposed by Zampieri et al. (2019) in terms of offensive language categorization schemata. After the explanation of semantic differences between particular concepts used in the tagging systems and the analysis of (...) theoretical frameworks, a finite set of classes is presented, which cover aspects of offensive language representation along with linguistically sound explanations (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk et al. 2021). In the analytic procedure, offensive from non-offensive discourse is first distinguished, with the question of offence Target and the following categorization levels and sublevels. Based on the relevant data generated from Sketch Engine (https://www.sketchengine.eu/ententen-english-corpus/), we propose the concept of offensive language as a superordinate category in our system with a number of hierarchically arranged 17 subcategories. The categories are taxonomically structured into 4 levels and verified with the use of neural-based (lexical) embeddings. Together with a taxonomy of implicit offensive language and its subcategorization levels which has received little scholarly attention until now, the categorization is exemplified in samples of offensive discourses in selected English social media materials, i.e., publicly available 25 web-based hate speech datasets (consult Appendix 1 for a complete list). The offensive category levels (types of offence, targets, etc.) and aspects (offensive language property clusters) as well as the categories of explicitness and implicitness are discussed in the study and the computationally verified integrated explicit and implicit offensive language taxonomy proposed in the study. (shrink)

Public arguments can be good or bad not only as a matter of logic, but also in the sense that speakers can _do_ good or bad things with arguments. For example, hate speakers use public arguments to contribute to the subordination of their targets. But how can ordinary speakers acquire the authority to perform subordinating speech acts? This is the ‘Authority Problem’. This paper defends a solution inspired by McGowan’s (Australas J Philos 87:389–407, 2009) analysis of oppressive speech, including against (...) concerns raised by McGowan (Just words: On speech and hidden harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019) herself. A _deflated_ kind of authority can be gained from the hate speaker’s standing in a norm-governed ‘activity of oppression’. We should be wary about engaging with such speakers in public argument. Even if we counter their arguments, we may still elevate their standing within that activity and so enable them to perform more pernicious speech acts than was previously possible. (shrink)

What, exactly, is the difference between words such as ‘dead’ and ‘deceased’? In this paper, I argue that such differences in register, or style, ought to be construed as genuine differences in non-truth-conditional meaning. I also show that register cannot plausibly accounted for in terms of either presupposition or conventional implicature. Register is, rather, an instance of what I call pure use-conditional meaning. In the case of register, a difference in meaning does not correspond to a difference in the contents (...) speakers intend to convey. (shrink)

An analysis of a valenced corpus of English words revealed that words that rhyme with slurs are rated more poorly than their synonyms. What at first might seem like a bizarre coincidence turns out to be a robust feature of slurs, one arising from their phonetic structure. We report novel data on phonaesthetic preferences, showing that a particular class of phonemes are both particularly disliked, and overrepresented in slurs. We argue that phonaesthetic associations have been an overlooked source of some (...) of the more peculiar, arational aspects of slurs. We conclude by drawing broader morals about the evolution of the lexicon. (shrink)

This paper offers a general model of the semantics of lexicalized social meanings, i.e. semiotic properties of certain expressions in a socio-political context. Examples include slurs, problematically charged expressions such as inner city, as well as terms such as mother, which also carry implicit ideological associations. Insofar as their linguistic properties are concerned, social meanings can be construed as context-structuring devices: without introducing specific at-issue contents, they evoke background assumptions which shape the context of conversation. An inferentialist model of discourse (...) is developed to account for this effect, in which the discursive significance of an utterance is defined as the set of inferences it licenses relative to a discursive context. A discursive context is a set of propositions that can serve as auxiliary premises in material inferences, together with a salience ranking that makes some of these propositions more readily available and therefore more relevant to determining discursive significance. Social meanings are defined as functions on discursive contexts that modify the salience ranking, increasing the salience of certain assumptions and stereotypes. As a result, they impact the discursive significance of utterances indirectly and independently of at-issue contents. They are also largely independent of speaker intentions in virtue of the ideological nature of discursive contexts. (shrink)

Este es un libro que nace de nuestro compromiso por señalar las contribuciones de las filósofas a partir de la pregunta vital: ¿Quiénes nos formaron? Como resultado, se presenta este diálogo a doce voces; reunidas para dialogar, desde distintos lugares en América Latina, sobre nuestra formación teórica, profesional y humana desde una plataforma equitativa y franca. Concebido, en medio de la pandemia por SARS-CoV-2, queremos construir un espacio abierto a nuevas ideas, propuestas e identidades en la Filosofía. Más aún, queremos (...) invitar a nuestros alumnxs a vislumbrar las posibilidades de un cambio radical en la forma en que concebimos y hacemos filosofía. (shrink)

Slurring expressions display puzzling behaviour when embedded, such as under negation and in attitude and speech reports. They frequently appear to retain their characteristic qualities, like offensiveness and propensity to derogate. Yet it is sometimes possible to understand them as lacking these qualities. A theory of slurring expressions should explain this variability. We develop an explanation that deploys the linguistic notion of focus. Our proposal is that a speaker can conversationally implicate metalinguistic claims about the aptness of a focused slurring (...) expression. This explanation of variability relies on independently motivated mechanisms and is compatible with any theory of slurring expressions. (shrink)

-/- Hate speech is a concept that many people find intuitively easy to grasp, while at the same time many others deny it is even a coherent concept. A majority of developed, democratic nations have enacted hate speech legislation—with the contemporary United States being a notable outlier—and so implicitly maintain that it is coherent, and that its conceptual lines can be drawn distinctly enough. Nonetheless, the concept of hate speech does indeed raise many difficult questions: What does the ‘hate’ in (...) hate speech refer to? Can hate speech be directed at dominant groups, or is it by definition targeted at oppressed or marginalized communities? Is hate speech always ‘speech’? What is the harm or harms of hate speech? And, perhaps most challenging of all, what can or should be done to counteract hate speech? -/- In part because of these complexities, hate speech has spawned a vast and interdisciplinary literature. Legal scholars, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists, historians, and other academics have each approached the topic with exceeding interest. In this current article, however, we cannot hope to cover how these many disciplines have engaged with the concept of hate speech. Here, we will focus most explicitly on how hate speech has been taken up within philosophy, with particular emphasis on issues such as: how to define hate speech; what are the plausible harms of hate speech; how an account of hate speech might include both overt expressions of hate (e.g., the vitriolic use of slurs) as well as more covert, implicit utterances (e.g., dogwhistles); the relationship between hate speech and silencing; and what might we do to counteract hate speech. (shrink)

According to nearly all theorists writing on the subject, a certain derogatory content is regularly and systematically communicated by slurs. So united, the theorists disagree sharply on the elements of this content, on its provenance, and on its mechanism. I argue that the basic premiss of all these views, that there is any such derogatory content conveyed with the use of slurs, is highly dubious.

The detection of hate speech and fake news in political discourse is at the same time a crucial necessity for democratic societies and a challenge for several areas of study. However, most of the studies have focused on what is explicitly stated: false article information, language that expresses hatred, derogatory expressions. This paper argues that the explicit dimension of manipulation is only one – and the least problematic – of the risks of political discourse. The language of the unsaid is (...) much more dangerous and incomparably more difficult to detect, hidden in different types of fallacies and inappropriate uses of emotive language. Through a threefold coding scheme based on the instruments of argumentation theory and pragmatics, a corpus of argumentative tweets published by 4 politicians (Matteo Salvini, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Joseph Biden) within 6 months from their taking office (corresponding to the official end of their election campaign) is analyzed, detecting the types of argument, the fallacies, and the uses and misuses of “emotive words.” This coding results in the argumentation profiles of the speakers, which are compared statistically to show their different implicit strategies and deceptive tactics. (shrink)