How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words

Croom, Adam

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2013.03.008

Cited by 133 publications

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References 91 publications

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“…Jay (2009) has pointed out, for example, that prohibitions on taboo words are often reinforced during child-rearing practices. In several studies focusing on slurs, Croom (2011Croom ( , 2013 has further suggested that descriptive expressions like male and female are commonly used and understood to be most apt for neutrally picking out public items of the shared inter-subjective or objective world, that expressive expressions like fuck and yikes are commonly used and understood to be most apt for expressing one's own heightened (positive or negative) emotional state, and that slur expressions like slut and chink are commonly used and understood to be most apt for typically targeting certain members on the basis of their descriptive attributes (such as their race or sex) in order to derogate, offend, or disassociate (or in cases of appropriation, affiliate) with them on this basis (Croom, 2008, p. 38-45;Croom, 2011, p. 349-353). That is to say, language-users that have developed a facility or attunement to the use-conditions for slur expressions will typically expect that their use will correlate with the speaker being in a heightened derogatory or discriminatory state toward some target member (or wishing to create that impression), and accordingly, that speakers will only use slurs when they are in a heightened derogatory or discriminatory state toward some target member (or wishing to create that impression).…”

Section: Face Threating Acts and The Paradigmatic Derogatory Use Of Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Cf. adequacy condition 2 of 6 on p. 355 in Croom (2011) and adequacy condition 2 of 7 on p. 200 in Croom (2013). Note also that although the expressions property and feature are often used in the extant literature to identify that which can be ascribed to individuals (for example, race, sex, and so on), here I try to use the expression attribute instead since it does not seem to suggest as strongly that what is being ascribed to these individuals is something that the individual is actually endowed with.…”

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“…adequacy condition 7 of 9 on p. 428 in Hom (2008), adequacy condition 4 of 6 on p. 355 in Croom (2011), and adequacy condition 6 of 7 on p. 200 in Croom (2013). 6 Note that in this article I will primarily be using the expression Mexican American instead of Hispanic or Latino since Rodriguez (2014) recently reported that, although ""Hispanic" and "Latino" are often used interchangeably and aim to describe the same group of people […] within Hispanic communities in the United States, most people identify with their country of origin and often use hyphens to represent their loyalties to both cultures: like "Mexican-American"" (cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Johnson, 2009;Croom, 2011, p. 355;Rahman, 2012;Croom, 2013, p. 200;Galinsky et al, 2013;Bartlett et al, 2014;Beaton & Washington, 2014;  3 Cf. adequacy condition 1 of 9 on p. 426 in Hom (2008), adequacy condition 3 of 6 on p. 355 in Croom (2011), and adequacy condition 3 of 7 on p. 200 in Croom (2013). 4 Cf.…”

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“…So in contrast with other classical accounts of slurs that incorrectly assume that the possession of some criterial attribute is essential for x to be considered a member of N (see, for instance, Camp, 2013, p. 338, 342 fn. 16), the alternative account of slurs proposed by Croom (2011Croom ( , 2013 and expanded upon here maintains (in accord with the family resemblance account) that, for example, although different individuals that are referred to by the slur expression nigger are very likely to share different subsets of attributes (for example, A1-A10) with other individuals also referred to by this slur (due to common knowledge of how this expression is typically used) it must not be the case (for the sake of the felicitous application of that slur) that each and every slurred x must share some criterial attribute with every other slurred x (cf. Sweetland, 2002, p. 514;Croom, 2011, p. 356;Croom, 2013, p. 199).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Spanish slurs and stereotypes for Mexican-Americans in the USA: A context-sensitive account of derogation and appropriation

Croom

2014

Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics

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Slurs such as spic, slut, wetback, and whore are linguistic expressions that are primarily understood to derogate certain group members on the basis of their descriptive attributes (such as their race or sex) and expressions of this kind have been considered to pack some of the nastiest punches natural language affords. Although prior scholarship on slurs has uncovered several important facts concerning their meaning and use -including that slurs are potentially offensive, are felicitously applied towards some targets yet not others, and are often flexibly used not only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation with ingroup members-the literature remains largely focused on slurs that typically target African Americans (nigger), male homosexuals (faggot), and sexually active females (slut). Since no account of slurs that typically target Hispanics or Mexican-Americans has so far been proposed, here I offer the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of these that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Importantly, this article reviews over a dozen Spanish stereotypes and slurs and explains how the descriptive attributes involved in a stereotype associated with a slur can contribute to the predication of certain content in the application of that slur toward its target in context. This article further explains how the psychological effects of stereotype threat and stereotype lift can be initiated through the application of a relevant slur towards its target in context as well. Resumen: Las expresiones peyorativas tales como spic ('spic'), slut ('zorra'), wetback ('espalda mojada') y whore ('puta') son expresiones lingüísticas que se entienden principalmente para minusvalorar ciertos miembros de un grupo sobre la base de sus atributos descriptivos (como la raza o el sexo). Se ha considerado que las expresiones de este tipo conllevan algunos de los puñe-tazos más desagradables que el lenguaje natural puede proporcionar. Aunque la literatura especializada sobre expresiones peyorativas ha descubierto varios hechos importantes en cuanto a significado y uso -entre los que se incluyen que tales expresiones son potencialmente ofensivas, apuntan efectivamente hacia unos objetivos pero no hacia otros, y con frecuencia se utilizan con flexibilidad no sólo despectivamente para ofender a miembros por fuera de un grupo, sino que también de forma no despectiva para afiliar con miembros dentro de un mismo grupo-, tal literatura sigue centrada en gran medida en las expresiones peyorativas que típicamente apuntan contra los afroamericanos (nigger 'negro'), los homosexuales varones (fagot 'maricón'), y las mujeres sexualmente activas (slut 'zorra'). En tanto que no se ha propuesto al momento dar cuenta de expresiones peyorativas dirigidas contra hispanos o mexicano-americanos, en este trabajo se ofrece el primer análisis sistemáti-co y empíricamente informado de tales expresiones, tanto en sus usos despectivos y de apropiación. Es ...

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Section: Face Threating Acts and The Paradigmatic Derogatory Use Of Smentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 98%

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confidence: 99%

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Spanish slurs and stereotypes for Mexican-Americans in the USA: A context-sensitive account of derogation and appropriation

Croom

2014

Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics

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The Social Life of Slurs

Hill¹

2008

The Everyday Language of White Racism

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We wear two hats when we talk about slurs, as engaged citizens and as scholars of language. The words had very little theoretical interest for philosophy or linguistic semantics before they took on a symbolic role in the culture wars that broke out in and around the academy in the 1980s. 1 But once scholars' attention was drawn to the topic, they began to discern connections to familiar problems in meta-ethics, semantics, and the philosophy of language. The apparent dual nature of the words-they seem both to describe and to evaluate or expressseemed to make them an excellent test bed for investigations of non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, of certain types of moral language, of Fregean "coloring," and of hybrid or "thick" terms, among other things. There are some writers who take slurs purely as a topical jumping-off point for addressing those issues and don't make any explicit effort to bring their discussions back to the social questions that drew scholars' attention to the words in the first place. But most seem to feel that their research ought to have some significance beyond the confines of the common room.That double perspective can leave us a little wall-eyed, as we try to track slurs as both a social and linguistic phenomenon. The distinction between the two perspectives isn't always 1 That isn't to say that scholars have ignored the sorts of words we now describe as slurs. They've

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