Social judgment of aggressive language: Effects of target and sender sex on the evaluation of slurs (original) (raw)
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The Impoliteness of Slurs and Other Pejoratives in Reported Speech
Corpus pragmatics, 2020
Some linguistic expressions do not have only a referential component, through which they refer to something in the world, but also (or exclusively) a connotative component, through which they express a speaker's attitudes or feelings toward that which the expressions refer. Pejoratives are connoted expressions through which speakers express a negative attitude toward a person, a class of persons, or a state of affairs. Slurs, in particular, are pejoratives that express negative attitudes toward a class of people sharing the same race, sexual orientation, religion, health status, etc. The use of pejoratives and slurs is often impolite and offensive, but it is not clear to which degree their use in reported speech may also be offensive. On one hand, the reporter does not seem to express contempt toward the target by merely reporting what others have said. On the other hand, reporting a pejorative seems a form of association with the original speaker's opinion anyway. Different theories on the status of the connotative component of slurs make different predictions about their offensiveness in reported speech. To investigate the matter, a questionnaire was designed with the aim of comparing the offensiveness of slurs and pejoratives directly addressed to their target with their offensiveness when they are used in reported speech. The findings collected through our questionnaire suggest that some of the theories on the connotation of slurs do not account for speakers' intuitive judgments on the offensiveness of slurs in reported speech.
Gender and the Use of Sexually Degrading Language
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2000
Based on feminist social constructionist theory, it was proposed that the sexual language women and men used would reflect male sexual power over women through degradation and objectification. In the first study, 79 women and 88 men (36 of whom were fraternity members) reported anonymously on the sexual language they used. The strongest effects found were that men (particularly those in a fraternity) were likely to use sexually degrading terms to refer to female genitals. Men were more likely than women to use aggressive terms to refer to copulation. In a second study, 56 women and 47 men college participants listened to a conversation between either two women or two men in which they were talking about having sex with someone they just met the night before. The speaker either used more degrading or less degrading language. In general, people judged anyone who used degrading language negatively. The person who was the object in the more degrading conversation compared to the less de...
Social Theory and Practice, 2016
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.
Slurs against masculinity: masculine honor beliefs and men's reactions to slurs
Language Sciences, 2014
We examined the manifestation and effects of slurs against men and masculinity. In Study 1, we created a taxonomy of slurs against men and masculinity. In Study 2, we established that men may respond with physical aggression when targeted by these slurs. In Study 3, we demonstrated that slurs in different categories of our taxonomy produce varying levels of perceived offensiveness and likelihoods of aggressive responses. Finally, in Study 4, we showed that men's masculine honor beliefs are associated with their perceptions of slurs as offensive and the ratings of their likelihood of responding physically, especially for slurs that directly challenge their masculinity. These findings extend the extant literature that has examined the content of and reactions to slurs and physically aggressive responses to provocation, as well as that which has examined conceptualizations of masculine honor from both cultural and individual difference perspectives.
Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language
2000
Despite documented, negative effects of sexist language, some people still strongly oppose inclusive language. Their attitudes need study, but existing measures of attitude lack comprehensiveness or validity. This paper reports construction and validation of the 42-item Inventory of Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language (IASNL), which is based on a conceptual framework related to beliefs about language, recognition of sexist language, and willingness to use inclusive language. Four studies tested the IASNL's content validity (9 content experts, 329 other participants), construct validity, and reliability (31 advocates of inclusive language, 298 additional respondents). Cronbach alphas were high and validity measures were strong. Two short forms of the IASNL were also created-the IASNL-General and the IASNL-Sport. The IASNL-General is in the Appendix.
Attitudes Toward Women Mediate the Gender Effect on Attitudes Toward Sexist Language
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2004
Studies of attitudes toward sexist language have consistently revealed a gender gap, with women considerably more supportive of inclusive language than men. The present study investigated this gender gap in the presence of "attitudes toward women," a potential mediator variable. Participants were a convenience sample of 18-to 20-year-old college students (N = 278). Most were European American/White (87%) women (60%). Data were collected using the Modern Sexism Scale, Neosexism Scale, Attitudes Toward Women Scale, and Inventory of Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language-General. The customary gender gap in attitudes toward sexist language was found in this sample. Regression tests of mediation, however, revealed that when measures of attitudes toward women were included in the analysis, the gender effect diminished by as much as 61% (p < .01). These findings provide empirical evidence of a link between attitudes toward sexist language and the cultural construct, attitudes toward women.
Understanding subtle sexism: Detection and use of sexist language
Sex roles, 2004
In the present research we examined the association between Modern Sexist beliefs and identifying and engaging in subtle sexist behavior. In Study 1, we found that those who endorsed Modern Sexist beliefs were less likely to detect the occurrence of normative sexist behavior (i.e., the use of sexist language), and this oversight was a function of their failure to define such behavior as sexist. In Study 2, we found that those who endorsed Modern Sexist beliefs were more likely to use sexist language and less likely to use nonsexist language. Use of nonsexist language was a function of personal definitions of sexist language. Results are discussed in terms of motivations to self-correct discriminatory behavior and conceptualizations of current forms of sexism.
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
Explaining Age and Gender Effects on Attitudes toward Sexist Language
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 2005
This study examined perspective taking, empathic concern, and attitude toward women as potential mediators of age and gender effects on college students' attitudes toward sexist language. Perspective taking fully mediated the small age effect found in men. Attitude toward women partially mediated the gender effect, reducing it by 51%. Empathic concern mediated neither age nor gender effects.
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.