The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs

Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” inte...

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Autor principal:	Chang Liu
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	CS EN SK
Publicado:	Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences 2021
Materias:	derogation expressives offense pejoratives slurs speech acts Philosophy (General) B1-5802
Acceso en línea:	https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28307 https://doaj.org/article/affd4151beaa45b8a5b5c86bb575bbdf
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:affd4151beaa45b8a5b5c86bb575bbdf2021-11-30T16:22:32ZThe Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurshttps://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.283071335-06682585-7150https://doaj.org/article/affd4151beaa45b8a5b5c86bb575bbdf2021-08-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/09211827orgf.2021.28307.pdfhttps://doaj.org/toc/1335-0668https://doaj.org/toc/2585-7150Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” interchangeably. This paper defends and explains the distinction between slurs’ derogatory force and offensiveness by fulfilling three goals. First, it distinguishes between slurs’ being derogatory and their being offensive with four arguments. For instance, ‘Monday’, a slur in the Bostonian argot, is used to secretly derogate African Americans without causing offense. Second, this paper points out that many theories of slurs run into problems because they conflate derogatory force with offensiveness. For example, the prohibition theory’s account of offensiveness in terms of prohibitions struggles to explain why ‘Monday’ is derogatory when it is not a prohibited word in English. Third, this paper offers a new explanation of this distinction from the perspective of a speech act theory of slurs; derogatory force is different from offensiveness because they arise from two different kinds of speech acts that slurs are used to perform, i.e., the illocutionary act of derogation and the perlocutionary act of offending. This new explanation avoids the problems faced by other theories.Chang LiuInstitute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciencesarticlederogationexpressivesoffensepejorativesslursspeech actsPhilosophy (General)B1-5802CSENSKOrganon F, Vol 28, Iss 3, Pp 626-649 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	CS EN SK
topic	derogation expressives offense pejoratives slurs speech acts Philosophy (General) B1-5802
spellingShingle	derogation expressives offense pejoratives slurs speech acts Philosophy (General) B1-5802 Chang Liu The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
description	Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” interchangeably. This paper defends and explains the distinction between slurs’ derogatory force and offensiveness by fulfilling three goals. First, it distinguishes between slurs’ being derogatory and their being offensive with four arguments. For instance, ‘Monday’, a slur in the Bostonian argot, is used to secretly derogate African Americans without causing offense. Second, this paper points out that many theories of slurs run into problems because they conflate derogatory force with offensiveness. For example, the prohibition theory’s account of offensiveness in terms of prohibitions struggles to explain why ‘Monday’ is derogatory when it is not a prohibited word in English. Third, this paper offers a new explanation of this distinction from the perspective of a speech act theory of slurs; derogatory force is different from offensiveness because they arise from two different kinds of speech acts that slurs are used to perform, i.e., the illocutionary act of derogation and the perlocutionary act of offending. This new explanation avoids the problems faced by other theories.
format	article
author	Chang Liu
author_facet	Chang Liu
author_sort	Chang Liu
title	The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
title_short	The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
title_full	The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
title_fullStr	The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
title_full_unstemmed	The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs
title_sort	derogatory force and the offensiveness of slurs
publisher	Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
publishDate	2021
url	https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28307 https://doaj.org/article/affd4151beaa45b8a5b5c86bb575bbdf
work_keys_str_mv	AT changliu thederogatoryforceandtheoffensivenessofslurs AT changliu derogatoryforceandtheoffensivenessofslurs
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The Derogatory Force and the Offensiveness of Slurs

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