RT Journal Article
T1 Beyond the conversation: The pervasive danger of slurs
A1 Moreno Zurita, Alba
A1 Pérez Navarro, Eduardo
K1 Context
K1 Derogation
K1 Nonderogatory occurrences of slurs
K1 Normalization
K1 Slurs
AB Although slurs are conventionally defined as derogatory words, it has been widely noted that not all of their occurrences are derogatory. This may lead us to think that there are “innocent” occurrences of slurs, i.e., occurrences of slurs that are not harmful in any sense. The aim of this paper is to challenge this assumption. Our thesis is that slurs are always potentially harmful, even if some of their occurrences are nonderogatory. Our argument is the following. Derogatory occurrences of slurs are not characterized by their sharing any specific linguistic form; instead, they are those that take place in what we call uncontrolled contexts, that is, contexts in which we do not have enough knowledge of our audience to predict what the uptake of the utterance will be. Slurs uttered in controlled contexts, by contrast, may lack derogatory character. However, although the kind of context at which the utterance of a slur takes place can make it nonderogatory, it cannot completely deprive it of its harmful potential. Utterances of slurs in controlled contexts still contribute to normalizing their utterances in uncontrolled contexts, which makes nonderogatory occurrences of slurs potentially harmful too.
PB Slovak Academy of Sciences
SN 1335-0668
YR 2021
FD 2021-08-30
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32479
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32479
LA eng
NO Moreno, A. & Pérez-Navarro, E. (2021). Beyond the conversation: The pervasive danger of slurs. Organon F, 28(3), 708-725
NO This paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the research project “Disagreement in Attitudes: Normativity, Affective Polarization and Disagreement” (PID2019-109764RB-I00), by the Regional Government of Andalusia under the research projects “Public Disagreements, Affective Polarization and Immigration in Andalusia” (B-HUM-459-UGR18) and “The Inferential Identification of Propositions: A Reconsiderationof Classical Dichotomies in Metaphysics, Semantics and Pragmatics” (P18-FR2907), and by the University of Granada under a “Contrato Puente” fellowshipand the excellence unit FiloLab-UGR (UCE. PPP2017.04). The authors wouldalso like to thank Alex Davies, María José Frápolli, Andrés Soria, Neftalí Villanueva, Dan Zeman, and two anonymous reviewers for Organon F, as well asaudiences at EvalLang-2019, FiloLab International Summer School 2019, Epistemological and Cognitive Analyses of Cognition, Beliefs and Knowledge, andthe IX Meeting of the Spanish Society for Analytic Philosophy, for their helpfulcomments and suggestions.
DS Minerva
RD 25 abr 2026