Slurring Words 1

TLDR: The authors examined the potential slurs carry to offend, and found that even co-extensive slurs vary in intensity of contempt, and argued that slurs are not truth-apt discursive discourses, i.e. statements that are neither true nor false but still represent the world to be a certain way.

Abstract: Increasingly philosophers (and linguists) are turning their attention to slurs— a lexical category not much explored in the past. These are expressions that target groups on the basis of race (‘nigger’), nationality (‘kraut’), religion (‘kike’), gender (‘bitch’), sexual orientation (‘fag’), immigrant status (‘wetback’) and sundry other demographics. Slurs of a racial and ethnic variety have become particularly important not only for the sake of theorizing about their linguistic distribution adequately but also for the implications their usage has on other well-worn areas of interest. In “Reference, Inference, and The Semantics of Pejoratives,” Timothy Williamson discusses the merits of Inferentialism by looking at Dummett’s treatment of the slur ‘boche.’ Mark Richard attempts to show that, contrary to a commitment to minimalism about truth, one is not conceptually confused in holding that slurring statements are not truth-apt discursive discourses, i.e. statements that are neither true nor false, but still represent the world to be a certain way. Others, like David Kaplan, argue that slurs force us to expand our very conception of meaning. Slurs also rub up against various other issues like descriptivism versus expressivism as well as the semantic/pragmatic divide (cf. Potts). Slurs’ effects on these issues make it difficult to ignore them and still give an adequate theory of language. In this paper, we will be particularly interested in the potential slurs carry to offend. Though xenophobes are not offended by slurs, others are—with some slurs more offensive than others. 2 Calling an Asian businessman ‘suit’ will not rouse the same reaction as calling him ‘chink’. Even co-extensive slurs vary in intensity of contempt. Christopher Darden once branded ‘nigger’ the