Abstract
What accounts for the offensive character of pejoratives and slurs, words like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’? Is it due to a semantic feature of the words or to a pragmatic feature of their use? Is it due to a violation of a group’s desires to not be called by certain terms? Is it due to a violation of etiquette? According to one kind of view, pejoratives and the non-pejorative terms with which they are related—the ‘neutral counterpart’ terms—have different meanings or senses, and this explains the offensiveness of the pejoratives. We call theories of this kind, semantic theories of the pejoratives. Our goal is broadly speaking two-fold. First, we will undermine the arguments that are supposed to establish the distinction in meaning between words like ‘African American’ and ‘nigger’. We will show that the arguments are suspect and generalize in untoward ways. Second, we will provide a series of arguments against semantic theories. For simplicity, we focus on a semantic theory that has been proposed by Hom (J Philos 105:416–440, 2008) and Hom and May (Anal Philos 54:293–313, 2013). By showing the systematic ways in which their view fails we hope to provide general lessons about why we should avoid semantic theories of the pejoratives.
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Notes
We use these three terms interchangeably in accord with definitions given in the American Heritage Dictionary (Third Edition). It defines a ‘pejorative’ as a ‘disparaging or belittling word or expression’ and ‘slur’ in the relevant sense as ‘a disparaging remark’. It defines ‘derogatory’ as ‘disparaging or belittling’, so that a derogatory term would be a disparaging or belittling term. An anonymous referee pointed out that some philosophers seem to draw a distinction between pejoratives and derogatory terms. We have no objection to using the terms to draw finer distinctions, but we treat them as equivalent.
See Richard (2008) for a semantic view that treats (many) sentences with pejorative terms as lacking truth values altogether.
Potts (2005) distinguishes between ‘at-issue’ truth-conditional content and ‘not at-issue’ content. In these terms, we construe semantics in the narrow sense to be concerned with ‘at-issue content’.
Miščević (2011), Richard (2008), Croom (2013) and Bach (2014) defend semantic accounts. Jesion (2013) presents an account that is not semantic by our lights and Camp (2013) offers a perspectival account that we believe doesn’t count as semantic by our lights. Anderson and Lepore (2013a) offer a non-semantic theory of the pejoratives in which the offensive character of pejoratives is explained by a general prohibition against using them. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helping us clarify this point. Hom (2010) offers a helpful and comprehensive taxonomy of views regarding pejoratives.
This is just a toy example of a theory of the meaning of ‘nigger’. An anonymous referee pointed out that it is not necessarily the case that ‘nigger’ and ‘black’ have the same extension on this theory since some racists might lack contempt for some black people. There are more subtle ‘same extension theories’ one could imagine but we do not pursue the issue here.
For a similar view, see Bach (2014).
It’s worth noting that some pejorative terms are narrower in presumed extension than the presumed non-pejorative counterpart. Chris Rock’s ‘Niggas vs. Black People’ gives an example of trying to narrow the extension of ‘nigga’ by comparison with the extension of ‘African American’. On his account, the non-pejorative counterpart of ‘nigga’ might be a highly complex property (involving being African American, shooting at movie screens, and so on, for example).
Moreover, as Hom (2008) points out, PEJ will have to be fairly complex in nature if it is to be able to capture the differences in pejorative terms that are generated from the same non-pejorative counterpart (i.e. ‘Heeb’ seems to be less pejorative in nature than ‘Kike’). Non-semantic views will have to explain degrees of pejoration as well.
See Hom and May 2013, p. 299, note 15, where they seem to make this stipulation.
Thanks to Kent Bach for discussion and examples.
In conversation, Kent Bach suggested to us that perhaps the notion of convention typically at play is a misleading one to apply to cases such as ‘but’. We aren’t really invested in the name or any particular theory of how the contrastive nature of ‘but’ claims arise so long as they are, as per orthodoxy, not truth-conditional effects.
A referee pointed out that people don’t refuse to assent to (36) only because it is infelicitous. We agree. We aren’t trying to give the full explanation of the strength of people’s refusal to assent to (36). Presumably the full story would refer to the deplorable attitude one would be conveying by asserting (36), not merely the infelicity of assenting without having the attitude.
We owe this idea to Jason Stanley, who floated the idea that thinking and conversing appear to have analogous dynamics. There are difficult issues here, however, that go beyond the scope of this paper. We hope the abuse of use and mention in this paragraph is justified by making the text more readable.
Hom and May (2014) argue that a non-racist who rejects anti-Semitism cannot consistently accept that ‘kike’ and ‘Jew’ have different senses and also hold that (14) is true. They recommend on this basis denying (14). In effect, they are here arguing that a semantic theory of the pejoratives must be a DE theory. We do not understand their argument so we set it aside.
Hom and May (2014) object that on this kind of view, a non-racist would have to eschew the use of ‘kike’ in both speech and thought and that therefore she would be unable to formulate (14). She would be unable to form the thought that Jews and kikes are one and the same. On this kind of view, they contend, the thought that Jews are kikes could only be formulated by someone in the state of mind of an anti-Semite. But their argument rests on a misunderstanding of the kind of non-semantic theory we are describing. According to the kind of view we are describing, it is infelicitous to use ‘kike’ either in speech or thought unless one has a relevant negative attitude toward Jews. This is the kind of infelicity involved in addressing a person using the French ‘tu’ if one is not on familiar terms with that person. But nothing prevents a Frenchman who is not on familiar terms with you from using ‘tu’ infelicitously in speaking or thinking of you. Similarly, on the kind of view we are describing, nothing prevents a non-racist from formulating (14) even though it would be infelicitous of her to do so. As a non-racist who is linguistically competent she would eschew the use of ‘kike’ in speech and thought but this would not make her unable to formulate (14). It would only make her uncomfortable to do so.
See Sider (2001) for a description of Lewis’ notion of ‘best fit’ semantics.
Sider (2001) argues for an analogous position regarding criteria of personal identity.
Anderson and Lepore (2013b, p. 361, fn. 20) make a similar point.
We are noncommittal as to whether presupposition failure robs sentences of a truth value in the relevant contexts. It isn’t relevant to our point.
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Sennet, A., Copp, D. What kind of a mistake is it to use a slur?. Philos Stud 172, 1079–1104 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0338-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0338-4