This paper is about paradigmatic slurs, i.e. expressions that are prima facie associated with the expression of a contemptuous attitude concerning a group of people identified in terms of its origin or descent ('spic'), race ('nigger'), sexual orientation ('faggot'), ethnia or religion ('kike'), gender ('whore'), etc. Our purpose is twofold: (i) explaining their expressive meaning dimension in terms of a version of stereotype semantics and (ii) analysing their original and most typical uses as insults, which will be called with a neologism 'insultive', in terms of a speech act theory.
Keywords Expressive meaning . Slurs . Stereotypes . Speech act theoryThis paper is about paradigmatic slurs, i.e., expressions that are prima facie associated with the expression of a contemptuous attitude concerning a group of people identified in terms of its origin or descent ('spic'), race ('nigger'), sexual orientation ('faggot'), ethnia or religion ('kike'), gender ('whore'), etc. 1 Our purpose is twofold: (i) explaining their expressive meaning dimension in terms of a version of stereotype semantics and (ii) analysing their original and most typical uses as insults, which will be called with a neologism 'insultive', in terms of a speech act theory. Therefore, in the first section, we argue for a conception of the expressive meaning of slurs as culturally determined evaluative stereotypes. In the second section, we put forward an account of their insultive uses by appealing to some central concepts of classical pragmatics. An