History of Use Cannot Explain the Derogatory Impact of Slurs: The Case of Multimorphemic Slurs in Danish.
Various theoretical approaches have sought to account for the derogatory impact of ethnic slurs, paradigmatically exemplified by nouns such as 'Kike or 'Spic'. Content-based accounts of this derogatory impact hold that it owes to a slur's conventional content, e.g., semantic content or conventional...
| Published in: | Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy Vol. 45; no. 1; pp. 91 - 103 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Mar2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=192011086&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 192011086 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01677411 NM2 jtl: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy issn: 01677411 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2026 vid: 45 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 192011086 10.1007/s11245-025-10185-5 ppf: 91 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 673KB tig: atl: History of Use Cannot Explain the Derogatory Impact of Slurs: The Case of Multimorphemic Slurs in Danish. aug: au: Petersen, Esben Nedenskov affil: https://ror.org/03yrrjy16 Department for Design, Media, and Educational Science, Section for Philosophy, and Department for Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230, Odense, Denmark su: Taboo Danes Social stigma Discriminatory language Lexicology sug: subj: Taboo Danes Social stigma Discriminatory language Lexicology keyword: Construction morphology Conventional implicature Expressive meaning History of use Multimorphemic expressions Slurs ab: Various theoretical approaches have sought to account for the derogatory impact of ethnic slurs, paradigmatically exemplified by nouns such as 'Kike or 'Spic'. Content-based accounts of this derogatory impact hold that it owes to a slur's conventional content, e.g., semantic content or conventional implicature. Alternatives to such content-based accounts instead argue that the source of a slur's derogatory impact resides outside its content. According to one family of such alternative approaches, a slur's derogatory effect derives from facts about its use history, especially facts relating to its use by speakers with hateful views of the slur's targets. According to prohibitionism, another alternative to content-based accounts, the derogatory impact of using a slur arises from the presence of a social taboo prohibiting the term's use. This paper discusses how slurs denigrate, focusing primarily on certain multimorphemic slurs in Danish. These multimorphemic slurs, I argue, pose a previously unrecognized problem for history of use accounts. I also briefly argue against prohibitionism and accounts which hold that a slur's derogatory impact owes to its semantic content. After concluding that the derogatory impact of multimorphemic slurs in Danish cannot owe to history of use, taboo or semantic content, I argue that the evidence supports a conventional implicature account of how these terms denigrate. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy is a copyright of Springer, 2026. All Rights Reserved. item: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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