A non-ideal approach to slurs.

Philosophers of language are increasingly engaging with derogatory terms or slurs. Only few theorists take such language as a starting point for addressing puzzles in philosophy of language with little connection to our real-world problems. This paper aims to show that the political nature of deroga...

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Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 202; no. 3; pp. 1 - 26
Autor principal: Mühlebach, Deborah
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2023
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        au: Mühlebach, Deborah
        affil: Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Philosophie, Habelschwerdter Allee 30, 14195, Berlin, Germany
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      keyword:
        Derogatory language use
        Derogatory terms
        Inferentialism
        Pejoratives
        Semantics
        Swearwords
      ab: Philosophers of language are increasingly engaging with derogatory terms or slurs. Only few theorists take such language as a starting point for addressing puzzles in philosophy of language with little connection to our real-world problems. This paper aims to show that the political nature of derogatory language use calls for non-ideal theorising as we find it in the work of feminist and critical race scholars. Most contemporary theories of slurs, so I argue, fall short on some desiderata associated with a non-ideal approach. They neglect crucial linguistic or political aspects of morally and politically significant meaning. I argue that a two-stage project is necessary to understand the perniciousness of slurs: accounting for the derogatory content of derogatory terms in general and, additionally, explaining the communicative function of slurs more specifically. I end by showing how inferentialism is well-suited to account for the content of derogatory terms whilst allowing for further explanations of the communicative functions of slurs.
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