The Impoliteness of Slurs and Other Pejoratives in Reported Speech (original) (raw)
Related papers
The meaning and use of slurs. An account based on empirical data
Pejoration (Linguistics Today, Benjamins), 2016
This paper focusses on some aspects of the meaning and use of slurs that have been neglected in the literature so far. On the pragmatic side, it concentrates on non-pejorative uses and the distinction between target groups and in-groups. It shows that emotions play a critical role in all contexts of use, irrespective of whether these contexts are derogatory or not. On the semantic side, the paper adopts a multiple component approach and brings empirical evidence that slur terms do not only have a referential and pejorative component but also a component of degree of offensiveness. There are many sources informing a speech community about a term's offensiveness, including racist institutions, stereotypes, prohibitions, perlocutionary effects, and meta-linguistic discussions. All of these fluctuating influencing factors add to the complex picture of slur terms and make their semantic components subject to enormous changes.
Offensive communication-the case of pejoratives
Pejoratives carry with themselves as part of their meaning the stereotype containing representations (concepts) of negative qualities ascribed to the target, and the claim that target is bad because it has them. This is the kernel of our conceptual truth conditional proposal. The paper expounds and defends the proposal. It starts with a brief taxonomy of views, and very briefly mention the reasons for disagreement with the majority of them. Introducing our truth-conditional conceptual view it argues for it from ordinary nasty inferences involving pejoratives, and then passes to figurative pejoratives offering a novel argument from metaphorical nature of them. Decoding metaphorical meaning is a cognitive task; since cognition has to do with semantic traits, and since the cognitive task is a good indicator of semantic structure, this further indicates that this cognitive complexity indicates interesting semantic properties of pejoratives, namely that the negative material involved in the traditional uses of a such a pejorative is not merely expressive, but is part of its cognitive, truth-evaluable meaning. Some objections and replies follow. The conclusion briefly discusses the pragmatics of pejoratives pointing to the ubiquitous but little noticed use of pejoratives in the third person, slurring in absentia. This use suggest novel interpretation of the perlocutory nature of the use of pejoratives.
Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, 2015
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
Beyond the conversation: The pervasive danger of slurs
Organon F, 2021
Although slurs are conventionally defined as derogatory words, it has been widely noted that not all of their occurrences are derogatory. This may lead us to think that there are “innocent” occurrences of slurs, i.e., occurrences of slurs that are not harmful in any sense. The aim of this paper is to challenge this assumption. Our thesis is that slurs are always potentially harmful, even if some of their occurrences are nonderogatory. Our argument is the following. Derogatory occurrences of slurs are not characterized by their sharing any specific linguistic form; instead, they are those that take place in what we call uncontrolled contexts, that is, contexts in which we do not have enough knowledge of our audience to predict what the uptake of the utterance will be. Slurs uttered in controlled contexts, by contrast, may lack derogatory character. However, although the kind of context at which the utterance of a slur takes place can make it nonderogatory, it cannot completely deprive it of its harmful potential. Utterances of slurs in controlled contexts still contribute to normalizing their utterances in uncontrolled contexts, which makes nonderogatory occurrences of slurs potentially harmful too.
How bad is it to report a slur? An empirical investigation
Journal of Pragmatics, 2019
In this paper, we present three studies on slurs and non-slurring insults presented (i) in isolation (Pilot study), (ii) in direct speech (Study 1) and (iii) in indirect reports (Study 2). The Pilot study showed that on average slurs are perceived as more offensive than non-slurring insults when presented in isolation. In Study 1, we found some surprising results: when they occur in atomic predications of the form 'X is a P', in average slurs are perceived as less offensive than when they occur in isolation, while insults are perceived as more offensive than when they occur in isolation. In order to explain these two findings, we have developed an information-based hypothesis that crucially illuminates the distinction between slurs and non-slurring insults in terms of the information they carry and the function that they fulfil. Such a perspective is more compatible with hybrid views (e.g. presuppositional) rather than with expressivist theories. Moreover, Study 2 showed that indirect report of the form 'Z: Y said that X is a P' decreases (without deleting) the offensiveness of utterances featuring slurs and insults. Such results speak against prohibitionist theories on slurs and pose challenges to the non-prohibitionist accounts.
THE DIRECT REFERENCE THEORY OF PEJORATIVES IN HATE SPEECH
Philosophia:International Journal of Philosophy , 2021
The use of language in hate speech is understandably offensive. Though words do not kill, they convey an alarming message that can harm the victim. To understand how words can harm, it is necessary to understand the nature of the meaning of pejoratives or slurs that are used in hate speech. Pejoratives are undeniably offensive. However, they are puzzling as they can be used in two directions, namely, the offensive power preservation and the offensive power destruction. This paper proposes that the direct reference theory of pejoratives can solve the puzzle. A characterization of pejoratives is that it has the property of immediacy. They refer directly to the object of speech. Grounding on a shared context, any descriptions are unnecessary for understanding the offensive message of pejoratives. In this sense, pejoratives have indexical content as it is context-sensitive. The kind of indexical content that pertains to pejoratives is action-oriented. However, its object of reference is empty. In discussing pejoratives that are used in hate speech, some examples of Thai slurs are shown.
COGS 301: Slurs and Stereotypes (Syllabus, Spring 2024, CWRU)
Slurs are generally considered the most offensive terms in a language, but how do slurs communicate the negative content or force that they generally do? How do slurs differ from words of other kinds, and how does the use of slurs impact the cognition, emotion, and social status of users and targets? Given that slurs are generally used for negative purposes to dehumanize targets, are attempts at reappropriating slurs ever successful? In this course, we’ll investigate the fascinating yet dangerous power of words and their relation to social identity, social status, and varying contexts of language use. We’ll also investigate the relationship between slurs and stereotypes to examine how slurs draw upon and impact the negative and positive stereotypes of those that they typically target. Throughout this course, we will survey a variety of slurs that target members of different groups, consider how the attributes of language-users and different contexts of communication can influence the interpretation of slurs as being more or less offensive, as well as investigate possible methods for mitigating the harmful impact of slurs and stereotypes in society. Students in this course will read an interdisciplinary collection of original research articles on slurs and stereotypes from the contemporary literature (1996-2024), practice using Gorilla Experiment Builder to create an original Implicit Association Test (IAT) of their own, and prepare an original research-based presentation about a topic that is of greatest interest to them from this course.
Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 2016
This essay examines the semantics and pragmatics of a handful of potential slurring terms identifying many of their uses in extant texts in order to assess slurring and non-slurring instances. Also examined are benchmarks for politeness that feed into so-called 'political correctness' and attitudes to what language expressions and behaviour are socially acceptable. People who find completely unacceptable those language expressions which are often employed as slurs or insults will regard reports of slurs as themselves slurring. The evidence, however, shows that, divorced from context, language expressions themselves do not slur, though they may be used in order to disparage, besmirch, insult, etc.-i.e. slur. It is a speaker/writer's perlocutionary intention to slur which is truly reprehensible. Reports of slurs in themselves therefore do not slur unless the reporter subscribes to the intention to slur; a reporter who does not subscribe to the slur needs to somehow make clear their attitude.
The hurtfulness of slurs, nouns and adjectives as group labels
Linguistics in the Netherlands
Slurs are pejorative terms for groups of people, relating to for example their nationality, their sexual orientation, etc. While there is a lot of discussion about slurs, they are typically characterized in relation to a neutral noun. In this article we will explore this distinction between neutral and offensive group labels. By means of a small experiment, we show that slurs are indeed considered to be more hurtful than their corresponding ‘neutral’ nouns, but that at least some of these nouns themselves are experienced as more hurtful than adjective noun combinations. We suggest that the results are in line with analyses in which the degree to which a term is considered to be hurtful is based on its inherent (i.e. conventionalized) properties, as well as the context in which it is used. We suggest that such analyses could be extended to nouns, such that terms can be neutral or non-neutral to various degrees.
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.