Conference Presentations by Simone Carrus
A lively debate on the linguistic nature of slurs is being daily enriched by philosophers, lingui... more A lively debate on the linguistic nature of slurs is being daily enriched by philosophers, linguists and psychologists. The fundamental and undisputed property of these words is their ability to derogate and offend individuals and groups. This power is attributed to the slurs’ content by the so-called content-based theories (Macià, 2002; Schlenker, 2007; Potts, 2007; Hom, 2008; Williamson, 2009; McCready, 2010; Croom, 2011; Camp, 2013; Hom & May, 2013; etc.), in opposition to the non-content based ones (Anderson & Lepore, 2013; Numberg, 2013). Among the scholars who support a content-based approach, some claim that the derogatory content of slurs possesses an “at-issue” component, others claim that its nature is univocally pragmatic. Here, we will face a specific phenomenon: the behavior of the derogatory content when it is object of a denial (It's not true that P / P is false).
Starting from the intuitions proposed in McCready (2010) and Camp (2013), we will compare a (pure) pragmatic account with a dual account (Hom & May, 2013). According to the latter, the Derogatory Force (Hom, 2008) of slurs would be expression of two components of meaning: an at-issue component (only in assertions) and an additional pragmatic component (in any kind of structure).
My aim is to show that the analysis of non-literal vs literal uses of slurs leads to different conclusions. Indeed, in so-called literal uses (e.g. faggot used to target a male homosexual), both the dual account and the pure pragmatic account potentially result in the same reliable analysis. That is, the denial appears to be unable to block the derogation, inasmuch it is conveyed pragmatically. By contrast, in the case of so-called non-literal uses of slurs (e.g. faggot used to target a male heterosexual), the two accounts turn out to be similarly inadequate. This fact signals a semantic normativity problem (“faggot refers to homosexuals” as “cat refers to cats”): I will present a real case.
In light of this fact, especially if we were not very confident in the classical dichotomy literal vs non-literal uses, we could take seriously the analysis proposed in Croom (2015) according to which, at least to analyze the content of slurs, a family resemblance account of categories has to be preferred to the classical theory of concepts. However, my claim is that Croom’s proposal does not touch the normativity problem: the non-literal use of faggot seems more a case of semantic ambiguity. Consequently, any deontic prescription should take into account this fact.
En passant, we can also note that the information about the target of a slur, available to the speaker, influences the use of the denial: the fact could be interesting both in regard to the complicity problem (Camp, 2010) and because it seems to signal a shift in the information relevance.
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Slurs are derogatory epithets that target specific groups, identified mainly on the basis of rac... more Slurs are derogatory epithets that target specific groups, identified mainly on the basis of race (nigger for a black person), nationality (wop for Italian), religion (kike for Jew), sexual orientation (faggot for gay). A lively debate has developed in recent years regarding the “meaning” of these expressions. So-called contentbased theories (Anderson & Lepore, 2013) assume that a sentence such as (1) conveys both the descriptive content (2) and the derogatory component (3).
1) Leo is a faggot.
2) Leo is a (male) homosexual.
3) Homosexuals are despicable.
Semantic theories (Hom, 2010) assume that (1) “literally says” both (2) and (3), whereas pragmatic approaches claim that (1) is truth-conditionally equivalent to (2), whereas the derogatory content in (3) is pragmatically conveyed, as a presupposition (Schlenker, 2007; Cepollaro, 2015), or conventional implicature (Potts, 2007, Williamson, 2009; McCready, 2010). These theories differ in the predictions they make about the survival of the offensive component (3) in various contexts. Semantic theories predict that the derogatory content of a slur, being part of its literal meaning, falls under the scope of operators such as negation, conditionals, questions; whereas pragmatic theories expect only the truth-conditional content (2) to be within the domain of linguistic operators. And, in fact, it has been claimed that slurs exhibit non-displaceability (Potts, 2007), that is, their derogatory content “scopes out” (Hedger, 2012) of linguistic contexts such as negation, (4), antecedent of conditionals, (5), or questions, (6), as witnessed by the anomaly of the continuations. There is a controversy as to what happens when a slur is embedded in a report, as in (7):
4) Leo is not a faggot [# homosexuals are not despicable]
5) If Leo is a faggot, he knows the answer [#but if homosexuals are not despicable, he might not…]
6) Is Leo a faggot? [not equivalent to: Are homosexuals despicable?]
7) Gianni said that Leo is a faggot.
According to some scholars (Potts, 2007), the person (the speaker of (7)) who is reporting what was said by someone else (Gianni) is offensive, since she did not choose to utter a neutral term. Other scholars (Kratzer, 1999: Schlenker, 2007) maintain that reporting a “bad word” uttered but someone else does not necessarily require the speaker to share the same negative attitude. Schlenker (2007)’s example in (8) illustrates this situation:
8) I am not prejudiced against Caucasians. But John, who is, thinks that you’re the worst honky he knows
Since the contexts in (4)-(6) constitute “holes” for presuppositions, whereas the indirect report in (7) is a “plug” (Karttunen, 1973), presuppositional approaches to slurs predict that the derogatory import would scope out in (4)-(6), but be blocked in (7), where the offensiveness carried out by the slur faggot should be attributed to Gianni, but not to the speaker who reports his words.
The study. We carried out a study that aims at establishing the offensiveness of slurs in the linguistic contexts of negation, antecedent of conditionals, questions and indirect reports, to check whether it scopes out of all contexts. We tested 132 Italian adults (90 F), divided in four lists, with a written questionnaire that comprised two parts. In the first one (Baseline), participants had to rate, on a 7-points scale, the offensiveness of 32 words presented in isolation: 8 slurs (SL); their 8 neutral counterparts (NC); 8 neutral/positive controls (PC); 8 bad words (BW). In the second part (Linguistic Context), participants were asked to rate (1-7) the offensiveness of a person who utters a sentence that contain a word (SL/NC/PC/BW) embedded under negation (NEG), in the antecedent of a conditional (ANT), in a question (QUE), or in an indirect report (IND).
Results indicate that, in the baseline, the offensiveness of slurs in isolation does not differ from that of bad words; neutral counterparts and positive controls are not perceived as offensive (Table 1). When the offensiveness of the slurs in the baseline is compared to the offensiveness of a speaker who utters a sentence with an embedded slur, we found that (i) as stated in the literature, a person uttering a slur is perceived as being offensive even if the slur is embedded in a question or in the antecedent of a conditional; (ii) a person who reports the statement of someone else who used a slur is herself perceived as being offensive, but to a lesser degree; (iii) quite surprisingly, when a person utters the negation of a statement that contains a slur, she is not perceived as being particularly offensive. (Table 2).
In order to explain the unexpected result on negation, we propose that our participants interpreted the speaker’s statement as a metalinguistic negation: asserting a negated proposition is an appropriated move when the purpose is to contradict what is (salient or) asserted by someone else; in that case, the negated statement could be interpreted as a correction of the expressive, derogatory component of the corresponding affirmative statement (“Marco is not a faggot, he is a homosexual”). We are currently testing this hypothesis with a new test in which we elicit possible continuations of negated statements containing slurs, neutral counterparts, bad words, and positive controls.
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Papers by Simone Carrus
Slurs are linguistic expressions that are primarily used and understood to derogate individuals a... more Slurs are linguistic expressions that are primarily used and understood to derogate individuals and groups. Within the lively debate concerning their meaning, several theorists have advocated semantic analyses that advance a common source of slurs’ Derogatory Force: the stereotype of the group to which the slur is standardly applied. Yet, the role of stereotypes in the semantics of slurs is controversial. In particular, although the “robust set of explanatory advantages”, Jeshion (2013) maintains that there is no reason to include stereotypes in the content of slurs. At first sight, her argumentation appear able to dismiss stereotypes from the debate. However, if, on the one hand, the main source of contention seems to concern the nature of stereotypes more than the semantics of slurs, on the other hand, it is not easy to understand what notion of “stereotype” has been using in the debate. In this paper, I will suggest that the so-called social stereotypes (e.g. “Blacks are good at sports”), can be conceived as stereotypes in the Putnam (1970, 1975) sense. Once we adopt this view, a stereotype account of slurs’ content will appear easier to defend.
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Phenomenology and Mind, 2017
In the first part of the article, we present the main approaches to analyze slurs’ content and we... more In the first part of the article, we present the main approaches to analyze slurs’ content and we investigate the interaction between an assertion containing a slur and a denial (‘It’s not true that P’ / P is false’) showing to what extent a “neutral counterpart account” works better than a “dual account”. Additionally, the analysis offers the opportunity to discuss the usefulness of the notion of “at-issueness” for a debate on the lexical semantics of slurs. In the second part, we use our apparatus to analyze a real case of non-standard use of ‘frocio’ (‘faggot’). Our conclusion is that even if a family resemblance conception of category membership could account for these uses, it cannot account for the related semantic normativity problem.
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Phenomenology and Mind, 2016
We present the results of an experimental study that aims at establishing whether the offensive c... more We present the results of an experimental study that aims at establishing whether the offensive component of slurs exhibits nondisplaceability (Potts 2007). We found that the derogatory content survives in conditionals and questions (supporting a pragmatic approach), and diminishes in indirect reports (in line with presuppositional accounts); surprisingly, the offensiveness of slurs results almost nullified in negated sentences. In a second study, we explore the hypothesis that negated slurs were rated as not offensive because the negation was interpreted as metalinguistic.
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Slurs are linguistic expressions that are primarily used and understood to derogate individuals a... more Slurs are linguistic expressions that are primarily used and understood to derogate individuals and groups. Within the lively debate concerning their meaning, several theorists have advocated semantic analyses that advance a common source of slurs’ Derogatory Force: the stereotype of the group to which the slur is standardly applied.
Yet, the role of stereotypes in the semantics of slurs is controversial. In particular, although the “robust set of explanatory advantages”, Jeshion (2013) maintains that there is no reason to include stereotypes in the content of slurs. At first sight, her argumentation appear able to dismiss stereotypes from the debate. However, if, on the one hand, the main source of contention seems to concern the nature of stereotypes more than the semantics of slurs, on the other hand, it is not easy to understand what notion of “stereotype” has been using in the debate.
In this paper, I will suggest that the so-called social stereotypes (e.g. “Blacks are good at sports”), can be conceived as stereotypes in the Putnam (1970, 1975) sense. Once we adopt this view, a stereotype account of slurs’ content will appear easier to defend.
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Slurs and Negation, 2016
We present the results of an experimental study that aims at establishing whether the offensive c... more We present the results of an experimental study that aims at establishing whether the offensive component of slurs exhibits nondisplaceability (Potts 2007). We found that the derogatory content survives in conditionals and questions (supporting a pragmatic approach), and diminishes in indirect reports (in line with presuppositional accounts); surprisingly, the offensiveness of slurs results almost nullified in negated sentences. In a second study, we explore the hypothesis that negated slurs were rated as not offensive because the negation was interpreted as metalinguistic.
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Slurs: At-issueness and Semantic Normativity, 2017
In the first part of the article, we present the main approaches to analyze slurs' content and we... more In the first part of the article, we present the main approaches to analyze slurs' content and we investigate the interaction between an assertion containing a slur and a denial ('It's not true that P' / P is false') showing to what extent a " neutral counterpart account " works better than a " dual account ". Additionally, the analysis offers the opportunity to discuss the usefulness of the notion of " at-issueness " for a debate on the lexical semantics of slurs. In the second part, we use our apparatus to analyze a real case of non-standard use of 'frocio' ('faggot'). Our conclusion is that even if a family resemblance conception of category membership could account for these uses, it cannot account for the related semantic normativity problem.
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Thesis Chapters by Simone Carrus
Obiettivo di questo lavoro è contribuire al dibattito filosofico sul ‘significato’ di alcune part... more Obiettivo di questo lavoro è contribuire al dibattito filosofico sul ‘significato’ di alcune particolari espressioni linguistiche chiamate slurs. In generale, verrà sostenuta la tesi secondo cui gli slurs sono dei peggiorativi, ovvero delle espressioni che codificano e, se utilizzate, veicolano, una valutazione negativa del proprio target.
Affermerò dunque che la peggiorazione ha natura lessicale e che la classe dei peggiorativi si distingue naturalmente da quella degli espressivi, espressioni linguistiche utilizzate regolaramente per veicolare contenuti emotivi e/o non-vero-condizionali, e da quella delle parolacce, espressioni linguistiche tabuizzate. Infatti, (1) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere regolarmente utilizzato in modo espressivo, (2) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere una parolaccia, (3) un espressivo può essere o non essere un peggiorativo, (4) una parolaccia può essere o non essere un peggiorativo.
Presenterò inoltre una teoria duale (vero-condizionale e pragmatica) secondo la quale (1) l’uso di slurs e peggiorativi dà luogo a denigrazione, intesa come l’attribuzione di proprietà negative ai referenti (individui e gruppi); (2) l’uso di slurs incassati in strutture complesse è interpretato come denigratorio in quanto la mera scelta lessicale impegna il parlante sulla propagazione del contenuto denigratorio; (3) sia alla denigrazione che all’impegno derivante dalla scelta lessicale segue l’offensività, intesa come la capacità (anche indiretta) di turbare lo stato d’animo di uno o più referenti e dell’uditorio per il tramite, in questo caso, dell’uso di un peggiorativo.
Illustrerò inoltre i risultati di alcuni esperimenti comportamentali che hanno avuto come oggetto due aspetti importanti della fenomenologia legata all’uso di slurs: la cosiddetta proiezione del contenuto denigratorio e la relazione che potrebbe intercorrere tra ‘incarnare’ lo stereotipo sociale associato ad una categoria ed essere bersaglio dello slur corrispondente.
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Conference Presentations by Simone Carrus
Starting from the intuitions proposed in McCready (2010) and Camp (2013), we will compare a (pure) pragmatic account with a dual account (Hom & May, 2013). According to the latter, the Derogatory Force (Hom, 2008) of slurs would be expression of two components of meaning: an at-issue component (only in assertions) and an additional pragmatic component (in any kind of structure).
My aim is to show that the analysis of non-literal vs literal uses of slurs leads to different conclusions. Indeed, in so-called literal uses (e.g. faggot used to target a male homosexual), both the dual account and the pure pragmatic account potentially result in the same reliable analysis. That is, the denial appears to be unable to block the derogation, inasmuch it is conveyed pragmatically. By contrast, in the case of so-called non-literal uses of slurs (e.g. faggot used to target a male heterosexual), the two accounts turn out to be similarly inadequate. This fact signals a semantic normativity problem (“faggot refers to homosexuals” as “cat refers to cats”): I will present a real case.
In light of this fact, especially if we were not very confident in the classical dichotomy literal vs non-literal uses, we could take seriously the analysis proposed in Croom (2015) according to which, at least to analyze the content of slurs, a family resemblance account of categories has to be preferred to the classical theory of concepts. However, my claim is that Croom’s proposal does not touch the normativity problem: the non-literal use of faggot seems more a case of semantic ambiguity. Consequently, any deontic prescription should take into account this fact.
En passant, we can also note that the information about the target of a slur, available to the speaker, influences the use of the denial: the fact could be interesting both in regard to the complicity problem (Camp, 2010) and because it seems to signal a shift in the information relevance.
1) Leo is a faggot.
2) Leo is a (male) homosexual.
3) Homosexuals are despicable.
Semantic theories (Hom, 2010) assume that (1) “literally says” both (2) and (3), whereas pragmatic approaches claim that (1) is truth-conditionally equivalent to (2), whereas the derogatory content in (3) is pragmatically conveyed, as a presupposition (Schlenker, 2007; Cepollaro, 2015), or conventional implicature (Potts, 2007, Williamson, 2009; McCready, 2010). These theories differ in the predictions they make about the survival of the offensive component (3) in various contexts. Semantic theories predict that the derogatory content of a slur, being part of its literal meaning, falls under the scope of operators such as negation, conditionals, questions; whereas pragmatic theories expect only the truth-conditional content (2) to be within the domain of linguistic operators. And, in fact, it has been claimed that slurs exhibit non-displaceability (Potts, 2007), that is, their derogatory content “scopes out” (Hedger, 2012) of linguistic contexts such as negation, (4), antecedent of conditionals, (5), or questions, (6), as witnessed by the anomaly of the continuations. There is a controversy as to what happens when a slur is embedded in a report, as in (7):
4) Leo is not a faggot [# homosexuals are not despicable]
5) If Leo is a faggot, he knows the answer [#but if homosexuals are not despicable, he might not…]
6) Is Leo a faggot? [not equivalent to: Are homosexuals despicable?]
7) Gianni said that Leo is a faggot.
According to some scholars (Potts, 2007), the person (the speaker of (7)) who is reporting what was said by someone else (Gianni) is offensive, since she did not choose to utter a neutral term. Other scholars (Kratzer, 1999: Schlenker, 2007) maintain that reporting a “bad word” uttered but someone else does not necessarily require the speaker to share the same negative attitude. Schlenker (2007)’s example in (8) illustrates this situation:
8) I am not prejudiced against Caucasians. But John, who is, thinks that you’re the worst honky he knows
Since the contexts in (4)-(6) constitute “holes” for presuppositions, whereas the indirect report in (7) is a “plug” (Karttunen, 1973), presuppositional approaches to slurs predict that the derogatory import would scope out in (4)-(6), but be blocked in (7), where the offensiveness carried out by the slur faggot should be attributed to Gianni, but not to the speaker who reports his words.
The study. We carried out a study that aims at establishing the offensiveness of slurs in the linguistic contexts of negation, antecedent of conditionals, questions and indirect reports, to check whether it scopes out of all contexts. We tested 132 Italian adults (90 F), divided in four lists, with a written questionnaire that comprised two parts. In the first one (Baseline), participants had to rate, on a 7-points scale, the offensiveness of 32 words presented in isolation: 8 slurs (SL); their 8 neutral counterparts (NC); 8 neutral/positive controls (PC); 8 bad words (BW). In the second part (Linguistic Context), participants were asked to rate (1-7) the offensiveness of a person who utters a sentence that contain a word (SL/NC/PC/BW) embedded under negation (NEG), in the antecedent of a conditional (ANT), in a question (QUE), or in an indirect report (IND).
Results indicate that, in the baseline, the offensiveness of slurs in isolation does not differ from that of bad words; neutral counterparts and positive controls are not perceived as offensive (Table 1). When the offensiveness of the slurs in the baseline is compared to the offensiveness of a speaker who utters a sentence with an embedded slur, we found that (i) as stated in the literature, a person uttering a slur is perceived as being offensive even if the slur is embedded in a question or in the antecedent of a conditional; (ii) a person who reports the statement of someone else who used a slur is herself perceived as being offensive, but to a lesser degree; (iii) quite surprisingly, when a person utters the negation of a statement that contains a slur, she is not perceived as being particularly offensive. (Table 2).
In order to explain the unexpected result on negation, we propose that our participants interpreted the speaker’s statement as a metalinguistic negation: asserting a negated proposition is an appropriated move when the purpose is to contradict what is (salient or) asserted by someone else; in that case, the negated statement could be interpreted as a correction of the expressive, derogatory component of the corresponding affirmative statement (“Marco is not a faggot, he is a homosexual”). We are currently testing this hypothesis with a new test in which we elicit possible continuations of negated statements containing slurs, neutral counterparts, bad words, and positive controls.
Papers by Simone Carrus
Yet, the role of stereotypes in the semantics of slurs is controversial. In particular, although the “robust set of explanatory advantages”, Jeshion (2013) maintains that there is no reason to include stereotypes in the content of slurs. At first sight, her argumentation appear able to dismiss stereotypes from the debate. However, if, on the one hand, the main source of contention seems to concern the nature of stereotypes more than the semantics of slurs, on the other hand, it is not easy to understand what notion of “stereotype” has been using in the debate.
In this paper, I will suggest that the so-called social stereotypes (e.g. “Blacks are good at sports”), can be conceived as stereotypes in the Putnam (1970, 1975) sense. Once we adopt this view, a stereotype account of slurs’ content will appear easier to defend.
Thesis Chapters by Simone Carrus
Affermerò dunque che la peggiorazione ha natura lessicale e che la classe dei peggiorativi si distingue naturalmente da quella degli espressivi, espressioni linguistiche utilizzate regolaramente per veicolare contenuti emotivi e/o non-vero-condizionali, e da quella delle parolacce, espressioni linguistiche tabuizzate. Infatti, (1) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere regolarmente utilizzato in modo espressivo, (2) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere una parolaccia, (3) un espressivo può essere o non essere un peggiorativo, (4) una parolaccia può essere o non essere un peggiorativo.
Presenterò inoltre una teoria duale (vero-condizionale e pragmatica) secondo la quale (1) l’uso di slurs e peggiorativi dà luogo a denigrazione, intesa come l’attribuzione di proprietà negative ai referenti (individui e gruppi); (2) l’uso di slurs incassati in strutture complesse è interpretato come denigratorio in quanto la mera scelta lessicale impegna il parlante sulla propagazione del contenuto denigratorio; (3) sia alla denigrazione che all’impegno derivante dalla scelta lessicale segue l’offensività, intesa come la capacità (anche indiretta) di turbare lo stato d’animo di uno o più referenti e dell’uditorio per il tramite, in questo caso, dell’uso di un peggiorativo.
Illustrerò inoltre i risultati di alcuni esperimenti comportamentali che hanno avuto come oggetto due aspetti importanti della fenomenologia legata all’uso di slurs: la cosiddetta proiezione del contenuto denigratorio e la relazione che potrebbe intercorrere tra ‘incarnare’ lo stereotipo sociale associato ad una categoria ed essere bersaglio dello slur corrispondente.
Starting from the intuitions proposed in McCready (2010) and Camp (2013), we will compare a (pure) pragmatic account with a dual account (Hom & May, 2013). According to the latter, the Derogatory Force (Hom, 2008) of slurs would be expression of two components of meaning: an at-issue component (only in assertions) and an additional pragmatic component (in any kind of structure).
My aim is to show that the analysis of non-literal vs literal uses of slurs leads to different conclusions. Indeed, in so-called literal uses (e.g. faggot used to target a male homosexual), both the dual account and the pure pragmatic account potentially result in the same reliable analysis. That is, the denial appears to be unable to block the derogation, inasmuch it is conveyed pragmatically. By contrast, in the case of so-called non-literal uses of slurs (e.g. faggot used to target a male heterosexual), the two accounts turn out to be similarly inadequate. This fact signals a semantic normativity problem (“faggot refers to homosexuals” as “cat refers to cats”): I will present a real case.
In light of this fact, especially if we were not very confident in the classical dichotomy literal vs non-literal uses, we could take seriously the analysis proposed in Croom (2015) according to which, at least to analyze the content of slurs, a family resemblance account of categories has to be preferred to the classical theory of concepts. However, my claim is that Croom’s proposal does not touch the normativity problem: the non-literal use of faggot seems more a case of semantic ambiguity. Consequently, any deontic prescription should take into account this fact.
En passant, we can also note that the information about the target of a slur, available to the speaker, influences the use of the denial: the fact could be interesting both in regard to the complicity problem (Camp, 2010) and because it seems to signal a shift in the information relevance.
1) Leo is a faggot.
2) Leo is a (male) homosexual.
3) Homosexuals are despicable.
Semantic theories (Hom, 2010) assume that (1) “literally says” both (2) and (3), whereas pragmatic approaches claim that (1) is truth-conditionally equivalent to (2), whereas the derogatory content in (3) is pragmatically conveyed, as a presupposition (Schlenker, 2007; Cepollaro, 2015), or conventional implicature (Potts, 2007, Williamson, 2009; McCready, 2010). These theories differ in the predictions they make about the survival of the offensive component (3) in various contexts. Semantic theories predict that the derogatory content of a slur, being part of its literal meaning, falls under the scope of operators such as negation, conditionals, questions; whereas pragmatic theories expect only the truth-conditional content (2) to be within the domain of linguistic operators. And, in fact, it has been claimed that slurs exhibit non-displaceability (Potts, 2007), that is, their derogatory content “scopes out” (Hedger, 2012) of linguistic contexts such as negation, (4), antecedent of conditionals, (5), or questions, (6), as witnessed by the anomaly of the continuations. There is a controversy as to what happens when a slur is embedded in a report, as in (7):
4) Leo is not a faggot [# homosexuals are not despicable]
5) If Leo is a faggot, he knows the answer [#but if homosexuals are not despicable, he might not…]
6) Is Leo a faggot? [not equivalent to: Are homosexuals despicable?]
7) Gianni said that Leo is a faggot.
According to some scholars (Potts, 2007), the person (the speaker of (7)) who is reporting what was said by someone else (Gianni) is offensive, since she did not choose to utter a neutral term. Other scholars (Kratzer, 1999: Schlenker, 2007) maintain that reporting a “bad word” uttered but someone else does not necessarily require the speaker to share the same negative attitude. Schlenker (2007)’s example in (8) illustrates this situation:
8) I am not prejudiced against Caucasians. But John, who is, thinks that you’re the worst honky he knows
Since the contexts in (4)-(6) constitute “holes” for presuppositions, whereas the indirect report in (7) is a “plug” (Karttunen, 1973), presuppositional approaches to slurs predict that the derogatory import would scope out in (4)-(6), but be blocked in (7), where the offensiveness carried out by the slur faggot should be attributed to Gianni, but not to the speaker who reports his words.
The study. We carried out a study that aims at establishing the offensiveness of slurs in the linguistic contexts of negation, antecedent of conditionals, questions and indirect reports, to check whether it scopes out of all contexts. We tested 132 Italian adults (90 F), divided in four lists, with a written questionnaire that comprised two parts. In the first one (Baseline), participants had to rate, on a 7-points scale, the offensiveness of 32 words presented in isolation: 8 slurs (SL); their 8 neutral counterparts (NC); 8 neutral/positive controls (PC); 8 bad words (BW). In the second part (Linguistic Context), participants were asked to rate (1-7) the offensiveness of a person who utters a sentence that contain a word (SL/NC/PC/BW) embedded under negation (NEG), in the antecedent of a conditional (ANT), in a question (QUE), or in an indirect report (IND).
Results indicate that, in the baseline, the offensiveness of slurs in isolation does not differ from that of bad words; neutral counterparts and positive controls are not perceived as offensive (Table 1). When the offensiveness of the slurs in the baseline is compared to the offensiveness of a speaker who utters a sentence with an embedded slur, we found that (i) as stated in the literature, a person uttering a slur is perceived as being offensive even if the slur is embedded in a question or in the antecedent of a conditional; (ii) a person who reports the statement of someone else who used a slur is herself perceived as being offensive, but to a lesser degree; (iii) quite surprisingly, when a person utters the negation of a statement that contains a slur, she is not perceived as being particularly offensive. (Table 2).
In order to explain the unexpected result on negation, we propose that our participants interpreted the speaker’s statement as a metalinguistic negation: asserting a negated proposition is an appropriated move when the purpose is to contradict what is (salient or) asserted by someone else; in that case, the negated statement could be interpreted as a correction of the expressive, derogatory component of the corresponding affirmative statement (“Marco is not a faggot, he is a homosexual”). We are currently testing this hypothesis with a new test in which we elicit possible continuations of negated statements containing slurs, neutral counterparts, bad words, and positive controls.
Yet, the role of stereotypes in the semantics of slurs is controversial. In particular, although the “robust set of explanatory advantages”, Jeshion (2013) maintains that there is no reason to include stereotypes in the content of slurs. At first sight, her argumentation appear able to dismiss stereotypes from the debate. However, if, on the one hand, the main source of contention seems to concern the nature of stereotypes more than the semantics of slurs, on the other hand, it is not easy to understand what notion of “stereotype” has been using in the debate.
In this paper, I will suggest that the so-called social stereotypes (e.g. “Blacks are good at sports”), can be conceived as stereotypes in the Putnam (1970, 1975) sense. Once we adopt this view, a stereotype account of slurs’ content will appear easier to defend.
Affermerò dunque che la peggiorazione ha natura lessicale e che la classe dei peggiorativi si distingue naturalmente da quella degli espressivi, espressioni linguistiche utilizzate regolaramente per veicolare contenuti emotivi e/o non-vero-condizionali, e da quella delle parolacce, espressioni linguistiche tabuizzate. Infatti, (1) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere regolarmente utilizzato in modo espressivo, (2) un peggiorativo può essere o non essere una parolaccia, (3) un espressivo può essere o non essere un peggiorativo, (4) una parolaccia può essere o non essere un peggiorativo.
Presenterò inoltre una teoria duale (vero-condizionale e pragmatica) secondo la quale (1) l’uso di slurs e peggiorativi dà luogo a denigrazione, intesa come l’attribuzione di proprietà negative ai referenti (individui e gruppi); (2) l’uso di slurs incassati in strutture complesse è interpretato come denigratorio in quanto la mera scelta lessicale impegna il parlante sulla propagazione del contenuto denigratorio; (3) sia alla denigrazione che all’impegno derivante dalla scelta lessicale segue l’offensività, intesa come la capacità (anche indiretta) di turbare lo stato d’animo di uno o più referenti e dell’uditorio per il tramite, in questo caso, dell’uso di un peggiorativo.
Illustrerò inoltre i risultati di alcuni esperimenti comportamentali che hanno avuto come oggetto due aspetti importanti della fenomenologia legata all’uso di slurs: la cosiddetta proiezione del contenuto denigratorio e la relazione che potrebbe intercorrere tra ‘incarnare’ lo stereotipo sociale associato ad una categoria ed essere bersaglio dello slur corrispondente.