On the situation of slurs

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51359/2357-9986.2021.250139

Keywords:

Slurs, reference, context, situation semantics

Abstract

Recent bibliography on group pejoratives has faced a classification problem. Díaz Legaspe (2018) offered a new taxonomy: out-group and normalizing slurs. The first subgroup includes slurs that do not depend strongly on context or use and co-refer with neutral. This guarantees that there are no differences concerning the truth conditions among statements that contain a slur and those which include its neutral counterpart. Normalizing slurs are distinguished by their referential restriction –the reference of these terms is quantitatively inferior to the one of their neutral counterparts, and this affects the truth conditions of these slurs. The present article provides an explanation to referential restriction from Barwise & Perry’s situational semantics. it is a proper model to account for the contextual sensitivity that normalizing slurs show, given that the reference situation contains the prevailing social norms. The features of the utterance situation will be decisive in order to determine the focal situation, i. e., the reference.

References

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Published

2021-04-11

Issue

Vol. 48 No. 1 (2021): Filosofia Analítica Sul-Americana

Section

Dossiê temático dedicado à Filosofia Analítica Sul-Americana

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Copyright (c) 2021 Sofia Checchi

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