Pejoratives

Hom, Christopher

doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00274.x

Cited by 96 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(49 reference statements)

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“…Contempt comes in degrees, and not all is at the highest level of moral condemnation. The fact that pejoratives exhibit derogatory variation (Hom , p. 165) is consistent with this. Moreover, there are people we disapprove of (even if not strongly) because of their group membership, without knowledge of further details about their actions, beliefs or intentions: ‘how could you sign up for that ?…”

Section: Fictionalism and Types Of Fictional Discoursesupporting

confidence: 70%

Pejorative Discourse Is Not Fictional

Marques

2017

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

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Hom and May (2015) argue that pejoratives mean negative prescriptive properties that externally depend on social ideologies, and that this entails a form of fictionalism: pejoratives have null extensions. There are relevant uses of fictional terms that are necessary to describe the content of fictions, and to make true statements about the world, that do not convey that speakers are committed to the fiction. This paper shows that the same constructions with pejoratives typically convey that the speaker is committed to racist ideologies, in contrast with fictional discourse that typically does not. The disanalogy undermines the plausibility of fictionalism about pejoratives. Moreover, the exceptions—uncommitted uses in embedded constructions—display features that conflict with Hom and May's explanation of committed uses as conversational implicatures.

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Section: Fictionalism and Types Of Fictional Discoursesupporting

confidence: 70%

Pejorative Discourse Is Not Fictional

Marques

2017

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

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“…Taken together, swearwords and insults, including slurs, are also teased out in the philosophy of language under the blanket term pejoratives, which are defined as expressions which are meant to insult or disparage (Hom 2010). They are elucidated, for instance in reference to their (non-)truth-conditional content (Hom 2012).…”

Section: Notions Related To Impolitenessmentioning

confidence: 98%

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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“…4; see also Hornsby, 2001, p. 129). Hom (2010) further proposed in ''Pejoratives'' that ''for any derogatory word, D, and its neutral counterpart, N [. .…”

Section: The Traditional Assumption That Slurs and Descriptors Are Comentioning

confidence: 99%

The semantics of slurs: A refutation of coreferentialism

Croom

2015

Ampersand

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h i g h l i g h t s• Reviews the coreferentialist assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension.• Considers four sources of empirical evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are not coreferential expressions with the same extension.• Argues that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. • Introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors.• Outlines a family resemblance account of slurs and explains its merits over competing proposals. a b s t r a c tCoreferentialism refers to the common assumption in the literature that slurs (e.g. faggot) and descriptors (e.g. male homosexual) are coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. For instance, Vallee (2014) recently writes that ''If S is an ethnic slur in language L, then there is a non-derogatory expression G in L such that G and S have the same extension'' (p. 79). The non-derogatory expression G is commonly considered the nonpejorative correlate (NPC) of the slur expression S (Hom, 2008) and it is widely thought that every S has a coreferring G that possesses precisely the same extension. Yet here I argue against this widespread assumption by first briefly introducing what slurs are and then considering four sources of supporting evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are in fact not coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. I argue that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. This article additionally introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors actually evidenced in the empirical data, and further considers the inadequacy of common dictionary definitions of slurs. This article therefore contributes to the literature on slurs by demonstrating that previous accounts operating on the assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension, and that they thereby have the same meaning or content, are inconsistent with empirical data and that an alternative account in accord with Croom (2011Croom ( , 2013aCroom ( , 2014b better fits the facts concerning their actual meaning and use.

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Pejoratives

Cited by 96 publications

References 32 publications

Pejorative Discourse Is Not Fictional

Pejorative Discourse Is Not Fictional

The landscape of impoliteness research

The semantics of slurs: A refutation of coreferentialism

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