Slurs

Adam M. Croom, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University (adam.croom@case.edu) +1,645 citations |
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In this paper I tried to propose an approach to the question whether the
derogation carried by slurs is part of their semantic core or if it is just a
pragmatic addition to it which is focused on the variability of slurring
words. Slurs often come into existence by the evolution of previously
existing word forms of different meaning, and often the slur will continue
its development towards a neutral meaning, as is exemplified by the
phenomenon of re-appropriation.
During the evolution of slurs, the linguistic change that leads to the
birth of a slur, as a word that yields derogation and to its death, that is,
its use a non-derogatory word, speakers and hearers use and interpret
them in different ways. With a novel use, both negative and neutral, the
pragmatic meaning can, at least in theory, be cancelled. In that way the
speaker can distance himself from the established semantic meaning of
the word. Once the words starts shifting more and more into semantics
the cancellation will no longer be an option.All these elements have an impact on the ethical side of the analysis
of pejoratives. If a word is derogatory at its semantic level there will be
no possibility for the speaker to cancel the negative message he conveyed.
But, nevertheless, there is always the possibility to use the word
pragmatically in a neutral or even positive way. In this case additional
contextual information should be available to the hearer in order for
him to infer the real message of the speaker. The possibility of misunderstanding is always present and the hearer could get offended, but we should not prohibit neutral pragmatic uses of slurs since this would
impede their development towards a neutral semantic meaning. For the
same reason neutral uses should not be restricted to in-group members.

Slurs are special. They can be so powerful and harmful that even mentioning them can be offensive. What explains this "toxicity" that many slurs display? Most discussions in the literature on slurs attempt to analyze the derogatory meaning of slurs, differing in where they locate this meaning-in the semantics, pragmatics, etc. In this article, the author argues that these content theories, despite their merits, are unable to account for toxicity. For a content-based approach to toxicity implies that two meaning-equivalent phrases should have the same toxicity. The author argues that this is not the case for the analyses proffered by current content theorists. Instead, he argues that we can only explain toxicity by understanding the special neurolinguistic properties of slurs. The author then draws out the consequences of this view for the issue of non-derogatory uses of slurs.

Recently, a growing number of philosophers and linguists turned their attention to slurs, derogatory epithets that insult a person inasmuch as (s)he belongs to a target group. A slur such as 'faggot' makes reference to the group of homosexuals, and conveys (hatred and) derogation. We review the main theoretical approaches that have been proposed to account for this 'double meaning' of slurs, highlighting their relationship with philosophy of language and linguistics' main themes.

In her chapter, 'Varieties of Pejoratives', Robin Jeshion distinguishes pejorative lexical items, pejorative uses of words, and pejorative speech acts. She surveys and taxonomizes pejorative nicknames, thick terms, and slurs, including canonical, descriptive, and gendered slurs, as well as those terms explicitly encoding group stereotypes.

This article examines the blunt conceptual instrument of dehumanizing American military terms for the enemy in the context of the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror. I examine language that dehumanizes American service members themselves, who are semiotically framed as expendable. Next, I explore the essentialist, semi-propositional qualities of derogatory epithets for the enemy and the affectively charged, deadly stances they encourage. I examine how generic references to the enemy during training make totalizing claims that risk encompassing civilians in their typifications. And I show that, in the context of war, the instability of derogatory epithets can manifest itself when the servicemember is confronted with the behavioral idiosyncrasies and personal vulnerabilities of actual 'enemies' on the ground. The putative folk wisdom found in generic references to the enemy can thus fall apart when confronted with countervailing experience; in such cases, service members may shift stance by renouncing military epithets.

abstract: The goal of this paper is to give an account of the pragmatic and social function of slurs, taken as speech acts. I develop a theory of the distinctive illocutionary force and pragmatic structure of slurs. I argue that slurs help to produce subjects who occupy social identities carved out by pernicious ideologies, and that they do this whether or not anyone involved intends for the slur to work that way or has any particular feelings or conscious thoughts associated with using or being targeted by the slur. I offer an Althusser-inspired account of what an ideology is, as well as of the mechanisms by which slurs can serve to cue and strengthen ideologies. A slur, I argue, is a kind of interpellation, which reduces its target to a generic identity and derogates and subordinates its target. I explore how slurs and ideologies work in tandem to constitute and fortify one another. I end by applying my account to see how well it fits and helps illuminate three quite different, especially complex slurs.

In a recent study on indirect reports published in Journal of Pragmatics, Capone (2010) points out how several leading pragmatic theorists have recently argued that utterance interpretation incorporates societal information such that the final result of semantic and pragmatic interpretation takes sociocultural defaults into account (e.g., Jaszczolt, 2005a). Croom (2013) for one has pointed out how different in-group and out-group speakers have in fact used slurs in different ways, and further suggests that several salient cultural markers can aid in the interpretation of whether a slur is being used derogatorily or nonderogatorily in a given context (p. 200). Thus, for pragmatic theorists concerned with the semantics and pragmatics of slurs more specifically, several highly important yet currently unexplored questions include the following: Are racial slurs always used to express offense, and are racial stereotypes always concerned with negative characteristics? How might the stereotypical features of members that a slur typically targets influence the meaning that slur communicates in context, and how might racial slurs and stereotypes differentially affect members of different races? Concerned with such questions, Embrick and Henricks (2013) recently argued that racial slurs and stereotypes function as symbolic resources that exclude nonwhite or non-European American minorities, but not whites or European Americans, from opportunities or resources, and so are necessarily negative or derogatory irrespective of the particular context of their use (pp. 197–202). They accordingly advocate an account of racial slurs and stereotypes that is consonant with the context-insensitive accounts of Fitten (1993) and Hedger (2013), yet dissonant with the context-sensitive accounts of Kennedy (2002) and Croom (2011). The purpose of this chapter is to first briefly explicate the context-insensitive and context-sensitive accounts of racial slurs and stereotypes, consider reasons for why issues concerning the semantics and pragmatics of slurs have often appealed to stereotypes and stereotypical features, and then critically evaluate the main claims that Embrick and Henricks (2013) recently proposed in support of their context-insensitive account by drawing upon empirical evidence on (in-group and out-group uses of) racial slurs and stereotypes (for European Americans and ­African Americans) from recent research in linguistics, sociology, and psychology. The chapter concludes by discussing implications of the present findings for future work in pragmatics on racial slurs and stereotypes.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_31
https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2015h

In discussing figurative speech, Lepore and Stone argue that metaphorical interpretation involves a process of perspective taking: metaphor invites us to organize our thinking about something through an analogical correspondence with something it is not. According to them, the same applies to slurs: some words come with an invitation to take a certain perspective, and uses of slurs are associated with ways of thinking about their targets that can harm people. My aim is to critically evaluate such a proposal, within a speech-acts framework. In the recent literature on hate speech, utterances containing slurs are conceived as speech acts in two distinct senses: 1. as perlocutionary acts that cause harm to their targets; 2. as illocutionary acts that constitute harm towards their targets. I will claim that Lepore and Stone’s proposal can be understood both in perlocutionary and illocutionary terms, and argue in favor of an illocutionary approach.

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.

This paper surveys some philosophical issues with the language surrounding mental illness, but is especially focused on pejoratives relating to mental illness. I argue that though 'crazy' and similar mental illness-based epithets (MI-epithets) are not best understood as slurs, they do function to isolate, exclude, and marginalize members of the targeted group in ways similar to the harmfulness of slurs more generally. While they do not generally express the hate/contempt characteristic of weaponized uses of slurs, MI-epithets perpetuate epistemic injustice by portraying sufferers of mental illness as deserving minimal credibility. After outlining the ways in which these epithets can cause harm, I examine available legal and social remedies, and suggest that the best path going forward is to pursue a reclamation project rather than aiming to censure the use of MI-epithets.

Verbale Aggression gehört zu den Forschungsgegen-ständen, die die Pragmalinguistik in den letzten Jahr-zehnten-auch angesichts der wachsenden Brisanz des Problems in der sozialen Arena und in den Medi-en-mit spürbarem Erkenntnisgewinn entwickelt hat. Aggression ist an sich kein linguistisches Phänomen, sondern ein Ensemble von biologischen Faktoren so-wie psychologischen und sozialen Mechanismen, die der Selbsterhaltung des Individuums oder der Gat-tung in lebenskritischen Momenten und in Konfliktsi-tuationen dienen. Demnach ist Aggression grundsätz-lich ein Device zur Selbsterhaltung und Fortentwick-lung der Gattung in der Tierwelt, das Menschen als Teil ihrer genetischen Ausstattung geerbt und in ›menschlichen‹ kulturgebundenen Formen (vgl. Bo-nacchi 2012) weiterentwickelt haben. Zu diesen Wei-terentwicklungen gehören auch die symbolischen Formen der Aggression, wie sprachliche Aggression oder Aggression in der Kunst. Aggression ist ein am-bivalentes Phänomen: Sie fasziniert und bannt, nicht zuletzt aufgrund der freigesetzten Affekte und der sie nährenden starken Emotionen. Sie steht mit Hass, Lie-be, Angst, Frustration im engen Zusammenhang, jagt Schrecken, Furcht, Schauer ein, sie provoziert Rebellion , Wut, Ohnmacht oder Abscheu, sie erweckt Lust, Überlegenheit und Schadenfreude (vgl. Wahl 2009: 2). Diese grundsätzliche Ambivalenz wird durch die Wortetymologie belegt: Das Wort ›Aggression‹ geht auf das Substantiv aggressio, aggressiōnis zurück, das wiederum eine Ableitung (aggressus sum) der Verb-form (Deponens) aggredī ist. Das Verb hatte primär die neutrale Bedeutung ›herangehen‹, ›sich an jemanden wenden‹, erst sekundär − wohl auf der Basis einer eu-phemistischen Verwendung − nahm es die zunächst wörtliche, dann figurative Bedeutung ›an-greifen‹ an. ›Herangehen‹, ›sich an jemanden wenden‹ bzw. ›an-greifen‹ sind skalare Handlungen, die ineinander über-gehen und nicht notwendig bedrohlich für den Ande-ren sein müssen. Die Wortetymologie zeigt also, dass mit ›Aggression‹ eine Annäherung intendiert ist, die erst ab einem bestimmten Moment und unter be-stimmten Voraussetzungen zu einer Bedrohung wird. Die ersten modernen Studien über Aggression ent-standen im Rahmen der Biologie, der Ethologie und der Psychologie; bis heute liefern diese Disziplinen grundlegende Ansätze zur Begriffsbildung und zur ausführlichen Überblick; vgl. Bonacchi 2017). Für die Aggressionsgenese bei Menschen wird hauptsächlich auf drei theoretische Modelle hingewiesen, die in wei-ten Teilen einander nicht ausschließen: auf den trieb-theoretischen (vgl. Freud 1905; Freud 1912−1913; Freud 1930) und instinkttheoretischen Ansatz (vgl. Lorenz 1963), auf die Frustrations-Aggressions-Theo-rie der Forschungsgruppe der Universität Yale (vgl. Dollard/Doob et al. 1939; weiter entwickelt u. a. von Berkowitz 1965, 1969 und 1993) und auf die Theorie der Aggression als Resultat von Lernprozessen (u. a. Bandura 1973, deutsche Übersetzung 1979). Der trieb-und der instinkttheoretische Ansatz ver-steht Aggression als angeborenes Verhalten, das der Erhaltung des Individuums und der Gattung dient. Aggressive Energie wird ständig ›erzeugt‹ und muss, ähnlich wie in einem DampThessel, immer wieder ›ab-gelassen‹ werden, weil sie naturgemäß den Druck im Kessel erhöht und nach Entladung drängt. Die Ent-ladung (Befreiung) kann unterschiedliche Formen annehmen und ist prinzipiell grundsätzlich lustbetont (kathartischer Effekt). Der für die Selbsterhaltung des Individuums grundlegende Aggressionstrieb erfüllt in der Tierwelt wichtige biologische Funktionen: die Be-stimmung und Verteidigung des Lebensraumes, das Jagdverhalten, die Festlegung von Hierarchien, die Verteilung der Ressourcen und der Schutz eigener Nachkommen. Erst beim Menschen wird dieser an-geborene Instinkt zu einem Problem, da in einer zivi-lisierten Menschenwelt meist keine einfache Ent-ladung aufgestauter Aggression zugelassen wird. Die Frustrations-Aggressions-Hypothese ergänzt den triebtheoretischen Ansatz durch die Annahme, dass aggressive Impulse vor allem durch Frustration und Versagung eines Triebwunsches entstehen. Die psychische Energie, die ursprünglich auf ein Ziel ge-richtet ist, verwandelt sich in aggressive bzw. zerstöre-rische Energie. Falls die Entladung der negativen Energie auf das ursprüngliche Aggressionsziel sank-tioniert ist oder aus unterschiedlichen Gründen un-möglich ist, kann eine Verschiebung des Aggressions-ziels oder eine Änderung der Aggressionsform (Er-satzfunktion) erfolgen (vgl. Dollard/Doob et al. 1939: 7). Aggression sei daher das Ergebnis einer Verschie-bung, die zum Teil sanktionspräventiv motiviert ist. Nach Leonard Berkowitz führt Frustration zur Aggression nur unter der Bedingung, dass ein aversives Erleben mit hoher emotionaler Erregung einhergeht (vgl. Berkowitz 1965: 360−362). Aus der Perspektive des lerntheoretischen Ansatzes Methodologie der Aggressionsforschung (für einen entwickelt sich aggressives Verhalten in Abhängigkeit J. B. Metzler

This dissertation is divided in two parts: the first one is an introduction to slurs semantics and the major attempts to define the status of the offensive content are presented (truth-conditional, semantic, pragmatic and deflationist approaches). The second part is dedicated to the performative nature of language and its consequences in our society, specifically in the legal field.

S’il ne fait aucun doute que les activistes féministes queer ont pu reprendre à leur compte le slogan « mon corps est un champ de bataille », elles et ils n’en ont pas pour autant négligé d’investir le langage, ce champ de bataille symbolique. Intervenir sur la langue, se réapproprier les discours de haine en les détournant, sont alors autant de stratégies contre-discursives participant activement au processus de subjectivation. Les enjeux de langage deviennent ainsi un terrain propice pour appréhender le monde, élaborer un espace commun, intelligible et safe, et se constituer en tant que sujet. Ils participent pleinement à l’élaboration politique, identitaire et culturelle de la mouvance ou praxis féministe queer en France. Cette analyse cherche à examiner les dynamiques de traduction au cœur des créations langagières des activistes féministes queer, notamment celles qui relèvent des questions d’autodéfinition. Bien plus qu’une simple formalité de transcription langagière, la traduction soulève des enjeux politiques et culturels déterminants. À partir d’une lecture contextualisée et au plus près des usages, il s’agit ici de souligner l’ambivalence et la complexité de tout processus de traduction, oscillant entre circulation et déformation, réappropriation et reconfiguration.

If queer feminist activists have undoubtedly been able to take up in their own name the slogan “my body is a battleground”, they have also taken decisive steps to invest language itself as a symbolic battleground. Direct action on language and reclamation of hate speeches through distortion are as many counter-discursive strategies that actively contribute to the process of subjectivisation. Language issues thus provide a favorable context to perceive the world and establish comprehensible and safe common grounds to establish oneself as an individual. They fully contribute to the political, cultural and identity production of the queer feminist movement or praxis in France. The aim of this analysis is to investigate the translation dynamics at the heart of language creations achieved by queer feminist activists, especially those which can be related to self-definition issues. Translation is far from being a mere language transcription and raises decisive political and cultural issues. Starting from a contextualised reading and trying to remain as close as possible to its practical uses, the issue here is to point out the ambivalent and complex aspects of any translation process, in perpetual movement between circulation and distortion, reclamation and reconfiguration.

Drawing on Austin’s speech act theory, many influential scholars view hate speech in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination (MacKinnon 1987; Langton 1993, 2012, 2014; Hornsby and Langton 1998; McGowan 2003, 2004; Kukla and Lance 2009; Langton, Haslanger and Anderson 2012; Maitra 2012; Kukla 2014). Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts offers a way to set apart speech that constitutes subordination, and speech that merely causes subordination. In this paper I will address one of the main challenges to accounts of hate speech in terms of illocutionary speech acts, namely the Authority Problem. I will focus on Ishani Maitra’s solution to the problem, that is the idea that an ordinary speaker can come to have authority via licensing, where the audience grants the speaker the authority she lacks by refraining to challenge her speech. I will claim that what is missing from Maitra’s proposal is attention to the broader social context in which ordinary instances of hate speech are embedded, and in particular, attention to the social status of speaker, audience and bystanders.

This paper examines the concept of the blason populaire in a corpus of Irish-language proverbial material covering the period 1858-1952. It will demonstrate that the focus of these blasons populaires is primarily regional, as opposed to national or ethnic, and, furthermore, that such proverbs are usually jocular, descriptive, and benign, rarely exhibiting ethnic or racial slurs. The study identifies and analyses the most salient stereotypical characterizations, and the proverbial forms in which they appear.

Ethnic conflict has characterised the Nigerian state. The nature of the conflict has been considered from economic, political and religious perspectives. Recently in the media, the concept of hate speech that has come to the fore. However subtler implicitly divisive (lexical items and phrases) epithets have been progressively entrenching divisiveness across ethnic group boundaries. These lexical items and phrases epithets have avoided scholarly investigation, attesting to their truly implicit nature. The Social Identity Theory is adopted as the theoretical orientation for this work. Primary data was collected using questionnaires modelled after the Princeton Trilogy, and interviews. Secondary data was collected from media sources. The findings showed the salient semicles of the epithets, which are essentially the prejudices that served to stereotype the various groups which are otherwise concealed even to the individuals who used those epithets.

Slurs are derogatory terms that express or convey hate or contempt towards individuals and groups of people on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. In my paper I propose a strategy of treatment of appropriated uses of slurs. Targeted groups may appropriate their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, in order to demarcate the group, and show a sense of intimacy and solidarity – as in the appropriation of “nigger” by the African-American community, or the appropriation of “gay” and “queer” by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic uses, in Relevance Theory terms: in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make it manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories.

This paper focusses on the interactional phenomenon of banter and the possibilities and limitations of its analysis. It traces the steps and relevant aspects typically involved in a banter situation and discusses the different roles and evaluation processes of speakers, listeners and analysts respectively. Due to their combination of an impolite or even aggressive surface structure and bonding components, banter utterances typically result in interpretative variation that seems to be part of their very nature. The theoretical approach is backed by conversation analyses of some real banter examples collected within a speech community of college students and young graduates in Mainz, Germany.

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 (including those of Williamson, Hom, and Richard) are briefly discussed.

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. (Jennifer Hornsby has suggested that slurs might count as “hate speech” and so raise questions “about the compatibility of the regulation of [hate] speech with principles of free speech” (2001, p. 129). 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.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.11.005
https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2011

An epithet is “a term used to characterize a person or thing,” and a racial epithet is a term used to characterize people on the basis of their race. Uses of racial epithets are language acts that are usually harmful to the people that they target. But what do racial epithets mean, and why are they harmful? In general, how do they do what they do? The purpose of this essay is to sketch an answer to these questions by providing an analysis of racial epithets. In doing so, I will draw on the tools provided by Elisabeth Camp in her analysis of metaphor, since Camp’s analysis of metaphor is, in my view, the proper lens through which to understand racial epithets. Lastly, since I provide a pragmatic view of racial epithets, I’ll contrast my position with Christopher Hom’s semantic view.

https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2008

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.

Slurs such as spic, slut, wetback, and whore are linguistic expressions that are primarily understood to derogate certain group members on the basis of their descriptive attributes (such as their race or sex) and expressions of this kind have been considered to pack some of the nastiest punches natural language affords. Although prior scholarship on slurs has uncovered several important facts concerning their meaning and use – including that slurs are potentially offensive, are felicitously applied towards some targets yet not others, and are often flexibly used not only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation with in- group members – the literature remains largely focused on slurs that typically target African Americans (nigger), male homosexuals (faggot), and sexually active females (slut). Since no account of slurs that typically target Hispanics or Mexican-Americans has so far been proposed, here I offer the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of these that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Importantly, this article reviews over a dozen Spanish stereotypes and slurs and explains how the descriptive attributes involved in a stereotype associated with a slur can contribute to the predication of certain content in the application of that slur toward its target in context. This article further explains how the psychological effects of stereotype threat and stereotype lift can be initiated through the application of a relevant slur towards its target in context as well. [RESUMEN] Las expresiones peyorativas tales como spic (‘spic’), slut (‘zorra’), wetback (‘espalda mojada’) y whore (‘puta’) son expresiones lingüísticas que se entienden principalmente para minusvalorar ciertos miembros de un grupo sobre la base de sus atributos descriptivos (como la raza o el sexo). Se ha considerado que las expresiones de este tipo conllevan algunos de los puñetazos más desagradables que el lenguaje natural puede proporcionar. Aunque la literatura especializada sobre expresiones peyorativas ha descubierto varios hechos importantes en cuanto a significado y uso –entre los que se incluyen que tales expresiones son potencialmente ofensivas, apuntan efectivamente hacia unos objetivos pero no hacia otros, y con frecuencia se utilizan con flexibilidad no sólo despectivamente para ofender a miembros por fuera de un grupo, sino que también de forma no despectiva para afiliar con miembros dentro de un mismo grupo–, tal literatura sigue centrada en gran medida en las expresiones peyorativas que típicamente apuntan contra los afroamericanos (nigger ‘negro’), los homosexuales varones (fagot ‘maricón’), y las mujeres sexualmente activas (slut ‘zorra’). En tanto que no se ha propuesto al momento dar cuenta de expresiones peyorativas dirigidas contra hispanos o mexicano-americanos, en este trabajo se ofrece el primer análisis sistemático y empíricamente informado de tales expresiones, tanto en sus usos despectivos y de apropiación. Es importante destacar que en este artículo se revisan más de una docena de estereotipos y expresiones peyorativas en español, además de explicar cómo los atributos descriptivos que participan de un estereotipo asociado con una difamación pueden contribuir a la predicación de determinados contenidos en la aplicación de esa expresión hacia su objetivo en contexto. Asimismo, en este artículo se explica cómo comienzan los efectos psicológicos de la amenaza estereotipada y el realce estereotipado cuando se emplea una expresión peyorativa relevante contra un objetivo en contexto.

https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2014-0007
https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2014f

Slurring language has had a lot of recent interest, but the focus has been almost
exclusively on racial slurs. Gendered pejoratives, on the other hand—terms like “slut,” “bitch,” or “sissy”—do not fit into existing accounts of slurring terms, as these accounts require the existence of neutral correlates, which, I argue, these gendered pejoratives lack. Rather than showing that these terms are not slurs, I argue that this challenges the assumption that slurs must have neutral correlates, and so that a new approach to thinking about the meaning of slurring terms is required.

Derogatory terms can be powerful mechanisms of subordination, while re-appropriating these terms can be a strategy to fight back against social injustice. I argue that projects seeking to reclaim slurs have a performative structure that raises particular hazards. Whereas more familiar forms of protest may fail to bring about their intended result, attempts to re-appropriate slurs can fail to be understood as transgressive acts at all. When attempts at reclamation fail, their force is distorted; context and convention lead the hearer to give uptake to the speech act as a traditional deployment of the slur. The force of this traditional use is to validate and re-entrench the very norms the act was intended to subvert. This is the precarious structure of reclamation projects: when successful, reclamation is the subversion of powerful mechanisms of oppression, but when unsuccessful, the act has the ironic force of constituting mechanisms of oppression.

Slurs are derogatory terms targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The aim of my paper is to propose an account of appropriated uses of slurs – i.e. uses by targeted groups of their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, as in the appropriation of ‘nigger’ by the African-American community, or the appropriation of ‘queer’ by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic, in Relevance Theory terms: in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories, and especially over Anderson and Lepore’s deflationary strategy.

A slur is a derogatory epithet targeting an entire class of people. Slurs may target groups of people on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any other feature deemed salient.
    Beyond the inherent interest sparked by their taboo and highly offensive nature, slurs are linguistically interesting in that they are highly resistant to standard logico semantic analysis; as such, the theoretical study of slurs comprises a key intellectual battleground in the semantics vs. pragmatics debate. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning as directly encoded in lexical structures. Pragmatics, in contrast, approaches meaning not primarily in terms of explicitly encoded information, but as being chiefly dependent upon the social and physical contexts of actual utterances. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously even argued that in most cases a word’s meaning just was its pragmatic use within a speech community. Deixis refers to the pragmatic phenomenon whereby the extralinguistic (e.g., spatiotemporal) context of an utterance is required to fix the reference or otherwise disambiguate the meaning of a lexical or grammatical structure. Examples of deictic terms are common indexicals, such as: “I,” “here,” and “now,” which require information about the context of their utterance in order to achieve their proper reference, e.g., “now” self-reflexively refers to the precise time at which any particular tokening of said term is employed. Social deixis, however, concerns the lexicalization and grammaticalization of the social context of speakers, hearers, third persons, or other entities, and the differential relationships that obtain between them; it includes the study of honorifics, personal pronouns and the tou/vous distinction found in many Indo-European languages. Social deixis thus comprises the pragmatic study of linguistic items, which reflect, establish, or are determined by, realities of the social situation in which a particular speech act occurs.
    Information encoded by social deixis typically includes class, kin relationships, age, sex, profession, and ethnic group. In this paper I show that social deictic markers can be seen to track the same properties as slurs and thus contend slurs function as social-deictic markers of disrespect and contempt that target entire classes of people for discrimination based on a single identifying feature. Lastly, I argue that the social deictic analysis here offered provides a more unified and parsimonious account of the socio-linguistic properties of slurs than competing semantic theories

The aim of the paper is to discuss Italian proverbs referring to the inhabitants of places in Italy, e.g. regions, cities, towns etc. with a view to analyzing them in terms of their linguistic characteristics and cultural peculiarities. Many of the units in question are not only carriers of meaning, but also stylistic markedenss, connotations and evaluation. The proverbs constituting the corpus for the analysis are excerpted from the dictionary of proverbs titled Dizionario dei proverbi italiani by Carlo Lapucci (2006) as well as other lexicographic sources. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the proverbs is conducted, which gives an insight into the linguo-cultural character of the units in question. As culture-bound units, mostly specific to Italian folklore, such proverbs can be considered potentially lacunary in a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, which means the vast majority of them is likely to have zero equivalents in other languages.

The word puto introduced semantic controversy into the 2014 World Cup. The word has been equated by some to a homophobic slur among the ranks of fag and faggot. American media and equality activists petitioned the use of the word in Entertainment and Sports Programming Network and Univision broadcasts. Mexican soccer fans who used the word in a chant during matches argue that the word has no homophobic context in its use and is instead geared at distracting the opposing team. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) opened up an investigation into the use of the word by Mexican soccer fans and concluded that it was not a violation of their code of conduct and permitted its use; however, debate around the word still exists. Even though the debate was covered thoroughly by American media, stories failed to express the views and perspectives of those in support of the chant. The current study employed a textual analysis of tweets defending the chat that included the hashtag #FIFAputos. Employing the theoretical lens of McCormack's homosexually themed language, the findings add nuance to the cultural, temporal, and spatial context of semantic meaning. Four themes also organically evolved from the analysis.

The reclamation of slurs raises a host of important questions. Some are linguistic: What are the linguistic conventions governing the slur post-reclamation and how are they related to the conventions governing it pre-reclamation? What mechanisms engender the shift? Others bend toward the social: Why do a slur's targets have a special privilege in initiating its reclamation? Is there a systematic explanation why prohibitions on out-group use of reclaimed slurs vary from slur to slur? And how does reclamation contribute to shaping social identities and reversing oppressive social norms and stigma? Most analyses of slur reclamation advance a single model to answer these questions. I argue that there are different varieties of reclamation. Two predominate, what I call pride reclamation and insular reclamation. While many features unite pride and insular reclamation, they differ with respect to the purpose of the reclamatory act, the linguistic mechanisms reclaimers employ to execute the linguistic change, and the social and grammatical roles of the reclaimed slur. By distinguishing these two types of reclamation and offering a fine-grained characterization of their properties, I argue that we gain deeper insight into the reasons why slurs may in principle only be ignited by the target group and why pride-but not insular-reclaimed slurs become available for use by out-group members.

Inferentialism seems to be an unpopular theory where derogatory terms are concerned. Contrary to most theorists in the debate on the meaning of derogatory terms, I think that inferentialism constitutes a promising theory to account for a broad range of aspects of derogatory language use. In order to make good on that promise, however, inferentialism must overcome four main objections that are usually raised against Michael Dummett's and Robert Brandom's inferentialist explanations of derogatory terms. This paper aims at debunking these objections and thereby further developing the inferentialist interpretation of derogatory terms. I shall first discuss and reject three of the objections by pointing to the core assumptions of Brandomian inferentialism. Overcoming the fourth objection requires adjusting Dummett's and Brandom's explanation of the meaning of derogatory terms. In order to do so, I shall elaborate on the role that the explication of implicit material inferences plays with regard to different kinds of derogatory terms. The inferentialist account I am proposing fares better in terms of its explanatory power and broadness of application than Dummett's and Brandom's sketchy and oft-criticised views.

Recent research on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has offered insight into several important facts concerning their meaning and use. However, prior work has unfortunately been restricted primarily to considerations of slurs that typically target females, homosexuals, and African Americans. This is problematic because such a narrowly focused attention to slurs in prior work has left theorizing of how slurs generally function relatively uninformed by facts of actual language use. As a result, theoretical accounts of slurs that have so far been proposed have largely failed to accurately reflect actual usage, account for the empirical findings about slurs and general pejoratives from the social sciences, and offer any informative predictions to help guide future research. At this time more empirically oriented homework on the variety of ways that different slurs have been used in different cases would be helpful for theorists to consider so that they can proceed to develop more nuanced and empirically informed theories about slurs, their usage, and their effects. Accordingly, since no account of slurs for Italian Americans has so far been offered, this article provides a systematic and empirically informed analysis of slurs for Italian Americans that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Further, this article demonstrates that the family resemblance account of slurs maintained here has major advantages over previous accounts insofar as it is flexible yet robust enough to accommodate both the derogatory and appropriative use of slurs, can explain many of the psychological effects that slurs actually have on both their users and targets, and is more in accord with the real rather than ideal nature of our organic human psychology.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.03.014
https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2015f

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor emotional content, but rather the fact that ‘chink’ is lexically marked as belonging to different registers than ‘Chinese’. It is, moreover, partly such facts which makes slurring ethically unacceptable.

Ethnic slur terms (“nigger”, “kike”, “kraut”) and other group-based slurs (“faggot”, “spaz”) must be differentiated from general pejoratives (“asshole”, “idiot”) and pure expressives (“fuck”). As these terms pejoratively refer to certain groups of people, they are a typical feature of hate speech contexts where they serve xenophobic speakers in expressing their hatred for an entire group of people. However, slur terms are actually far more frequently used in other contexts and are more often exchanged among friends than between enemies. Hate speech can be identified as the most central, albeit not the most frequent, mode of use. I broadly distinguish between hate speech (central use), other pejorative uses (mobbing, insulting), parasitic uses (banter, appropriation, comedy, youth language), neutral mentioning (academics, PC), and unaware uses. In this paper, authentic examples of use and frequency estimates from empirical research will help provide accurate definitions and insight into these different modes that purely theoretical approaches cannot achieve.

We present a theoretical model of reappropriation—taking possession of a slur previously used exclusively by dominant groups to reinforce another group’s lesser status. Ten experiments tested this model and established a reciprocal relationship between power and self-labeling with a derogatory group term. We first investigated precursors to self-labeling: Group, but not individual, power increased participants’ willingness to label themselves with a derogatory term for their group. We then examined the consequences of such self-labeling for both the self and observers. Self-labelers felt more powerful after self-labeling, and observers perceived them and their group as more powerful. Finally, these labels were evaluated less negatively after self-labeling, and this attenuation of stigma was mediated by perceived power. These effects occurred only for derogatory terms (e.g., queer, bitch), and not for descriptive (e.g., woman) or majority-group (e.g., straight) labels. These results suggest that self-labeling with a derogatory label can weaken the label’s stigmatizing force.

Lo scopo del presente elaborato è quello di delineare e giustificare le caratteristiche peculiari degli epiteti denigratori relativi all’orientamento sessuale. Dopo aver definito il concetto di slur (§ 1), si procederà con una classificazione dei suoi usi (§ 2), seguita da un breve resoconto delle principali strategie esplicative sinora offerte per questo fenomeno linguistico (§ 3). In seguito, si proporrà un quadro concettuale relativo alle proprietà associate all’uso degli slurs (§ 4) e lo si applicherà al fine di motivare le peculiarità degli slurs relativi all’orientamento sessuale (§ 5). Infine, si riassumeranno le conclusioni relative alla giustificazione di queste peculiarità (§ 6).