BEYOND THE CONVERSATION: THE PERVASIVE DANGER OF SLURS

• Authors: Moreno Alba , Pérez-Navarro Eduardo
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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 non-derogatory. 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 non-derogatory, 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 non-derogatory occurrences of slurs potentially harmful too.

Keywords

EN

CONTEXT; DEROGATION; SLURS

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 708 – 725

Contributors

author

Moreno Alba

• Universidad de Granada, Facultad de Psicología, Despacho 256, Campus Universitario de Cartuja, s/n 18011, Granada, Spain

author

Pérez-Navarro Eduardo

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28311