A puzzle about pejoratives

Hom, Christopher

doi:10.1007/s11098-011-9749-7

Cited by 71 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The use of pejoratives, in the present terminology, is normally taken as being offensive against someone, a quality shared by 'insults' and 'slurs'. This is in line with the nominal definition in [6], where, rather oddly, the author still includes swear words under the same heading. For an alternative classification of pejoratives and slurs see [7].…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

A Contextualist Analysis of Insults

Berkovski

2017

Modeling and Using Context

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Abstract. For a predicate expression F contained in a sentence S ('x is F ') to count as an insult, it should be used in a situation having a number of contextual elements. There should be an audience to whom the utterance of S is addressed. There should be a target of the insult, an individual who the speaker wishes to be shunned, excluded from certain, more or less salient, forms of social cooperation. The purpose of the utterance of S is to persuade the audience, by appeal to their emotions, to shun the target. Slurs have the canonical occasions of use structurally identical to the occasions of insults.

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confidence: 77%

A Contextualist Analysis of Insults

Berkovski

2017

Modeling and Using Context

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“…In some works (e.g. Hom 2008Hom , 2012) the focus in describing variability is on the derogative content of the word. Hom distinguishes derogation and offence as follows: ''offence is a psychological result on the part of the discourse participants, and is a function of their beliefs and values … derogation is an objective feature of the semantic contents of pejorative terms'' (Hom 2012: 397).…”

Section: Variable Offencementioning

confidence: 99%

Slurs, roles and power

Popa-Wyatt

Wyatt

2017

Philos Stud

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Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren't adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. A slurring act is a speech-act that alters the discourse roles of the target and speaker. By assigning discourse roles the speaker unjustly changes the power balance in the dialogue. This has a variety of effects on the target and audience. We show how these notions explain all three types of offence variation. We also briefly sketch how a role and power theory can help explain silencing and appropriation. Explanatory power lies in the fact that offence is correlated with the perceived unjustness of the power imbalance created.

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“…They are elucidated, for instance in reference to their (non-)truth-conditional content (Hom 2012). Swearing and insulting, whether playful and solidaritybuilding or orientated towards impoliteness, may also foster humour experience in some hearers.…”

Section: Notions Related To Impolitenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The landscape of impoliteness research

Dynel¹

2015

Journal of Politeness Research

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This article attempts to give a state-of-the-art picture of impoliteness studies and to indicate a few prospective research directions to enrich them. It critically surveys a number of theoretical and methodological problems (impoliteness vs. rudeness; intention; sanctioned face-threat; and impoliteness strategies), as well as the paramount topics of investigation (such as disagreement; arguments; insults, taboo words; or sarcasm), and discourse domains in which impoliteness can be found. Importantly, this paper brings to focus a selection of notions central to impoliteness, albeit not yet widely recognized in the scholarship on impoliteness. These include: slurs; pejoratives; and a number of phenomena promoted by computer mediated communication (e.g., flaming or trolling).

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A puzzle about pejoratives

Cited by 71 publications

References 16 publications

A Contextualist Analysis of Insults

A Contextualist Analysis of Insults

Slurs, roles and power

The landscape of impoliteness research

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