Semantic relativism, expressives, and derogatory epithets.
Semantic relativism maintains that the truth-value of some propositions is sensitive to a judge parameter, facilitating cases whereby a proposition can be true relative to one judge, but false relative to another. Most prominently, semantic relativism has been applied to predicates of personal taste...
| Publicado en: | Inquiry Vol. 66; no. 4; pp. 471 - 492 |
|---|---|
| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
May2023
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=163024945&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 163024945 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0020174X B8P jtl: Inquiry issn: 0020174X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2023 vid: 66 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 163024945 10.1080/0020174X.2019.1612778 ppf: 471 ppct: 21 formats: tig: atl: Semantic relativism, expressives, and derogatory epithets. aug: au: Berškytė, Justina Stevens, Graham affil: Philosophy Department, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK su: Oxford University Press Relativity sug: subj: Oxford University Press Relativity keyword: derogatory epithets expressives predicates of personal taste Semantic relativism ab: Semantic relativism maintains that the truth-value of some propositions is sensitive to a judge parameter, facilitating cases whereby a proposition can be true relative to one judge, but false relative to another. Most prominently, semantic relativism has been applied to predicates of personal tastes (PPTs). Recently, Lasersohn [2007. "Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition." Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230; 2017. Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press] has urged an extension of semantic relativism to terms traditionally construed as expressives including derogatory epithets (e.g. 'asshole') and, more tentatively, expressions like 'damn'. In this paper, we challenge Lasersohn's extension of relativism. Section 1 gives a background on semantic theories for expressives and on semantic relativism. In Section 2, we focus on Lasersohn's [2007. "Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition." Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230] account where he attempts to apply relativism to a wider range of expressives. We argue that because PPTs and expressives have fundamentally different semantic functions, the prospects for a relativistic account are slim. Several problems are presented. Our focus is on the perspective sensitivity of expressive content and the phenomenon of projection failure, as both reveal a fundamental disparity between expressives and PPTs. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2023 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|