Expressivism and The Offensiveness of Slurs

Philosophical Perspectives, 27, Philosophy of Language, 2013
EXPRESSIVISM AND THE OFFENSIVENESS OF SLURS
Robin Jeshion
University of Southern California
On April 12, 2011, upon being issued a technical by referee Bennie Adams,
Kobe Bryant lost his cool and, on national television, called Adams a fucking faggot. The media brouhaha that ensued included a statement by Bryant:
What I said last night should not be taken literally . . . .My actions were out
of frustration during the heat of the game, period. The words expressed do not
reflect my feelings toward the gay and lesbian communities and were not meant
to offend anyone.1 Many civil rights groups quickly branded his statement a
non-apology. Yet a good deal of the resultant discussions in the national media
and blogs focused on the respective differences in offensiveness and derogation
between faggot and other slurs, especially Nigger, with numerous discussions defending, if not excusing, Bryant from the charge of having derogated
gays and lesbians in the way and the degree to which he would have derogated
African-Americans by having called a referee Nigger.2 In an op-ed piece in the
New York Times, John Amaechi, the first NBA player to openly identify as gay,
responded thus:
Right now in America young people are being killed and killing themselves
simply because of the words and behaviors they are subjected to for being
perceived as lesbian or gay, or frankly just different. This is . . . an indication of
the power of that word, and others like it, to brutalize and dehumanize. This Fword, which so many people seem to think is no big deal, is the postscript to too
I presented subsets of this paper in colloquia at Harvard University, USC, UCLA, California State Long Beach, the University of Minnesota, and UCSD, and at the 2010 Southern
California Philosophy Conference, the 2011 Pacific APA, San Diego, the 2011 Society for
Exact Philosophy, Winnipeg, SPAWN 2011, the 2011 ILCL International Workshop on
Semantics, Pragmatics, and Rhetoric in Donostia, the LOGOS Workshop on Slurs at the
University of Barcelona, and the 2012 Dubrovnik Conference on Philosophy of Language.
Thanks to Luvell Anderson, Kent Bach, Liz Camp, Colin Chamberlain, Jonathan Cohen,
Ned Hall, Michael Hardimon, Chris Hom, David Kaplan, Janet Levin, Michelle Mason,
Nenad Misc#evic, Michael Nelson, Bernhard Nickel, John Perry, Mark Richard, Dan Rabinoff, Mark Schroeder, Susanna Siegel, Ken Taylor, and Paul Teller. Special thanks to
Allen Bradford for extended discussion on the use and appropriation of the N-word.
232 / Robin Jeshion

many of those lives cut short . . . Many people balk when L.G.B.T. people, even
black ones, suggest that the power and vitriol behind another awful slurthe
N-wordis no different from the word used by Kobe. I make no attempt at an
analogy between the historical civil rights struggle for blacks in the United States
with the current human rights struggle for L.G.B.T. people, but I can say that I
am frequently called both, and the indignation, anger and at times resignation
that course through my body are no greater or less for either. I know with both
words the intent is to let me know that no matter how big, how accomplished,
philanthropic or wise I may become, to them I am not even human.3
Amaechis brave remarks about Nigger and faggot suggest a perspective

on slurring terms offensiveness4 on which they possess a common capacity as
slurring words to dehumanize. This involves five properties:
(i) slurs function to derogate or dehumanize, by which I mean, that they
function to signal that their targets are unworthy of equal standing or
full respect as persons, that they are inferior as persons;
(ii) slurs function to derogate in the same way
(iii) slurs function to derogate to the same degree
(iv) slurs capacity to derogate is closely associated with the speakers intent
to do so
(v) slurs capacity to derogate is conventional; it is a feature of, a power of,
the words themselves.
As I see it, Amaechis perspective is apt. Properly understood, (i)(v) are correct.
On the view I shall propose, slurring terms, as a matter of their semantics,
have all of these properties. My primary ambition is to provide a comprehensive
theory of the linguistic properties of slurring terms, one that is, I believe, superior
to leading extant accounts especially insofar as it is better able to explain the
features of slurs that Amaechi highlights.5
Slurring terms are expressions used to derogate persons and groups of persons on the basis of their ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality,
gender, occupation, and various other socially significant categories. Familiar
slurring terms of the sort under investigation here include Chink, Kike,
dyke, queer, Spic, as well as the two addressed by Amaechi, Nigger
and faggot. Any comprehensive theory of slurring terms must provide answers
to a spate of questions, but two stand out as the most fundamental: What explains slurs deep offensiveness, their capacity to derogate, to dehumanize? Can
utterances of sentences containing slurring terms be true or false? Here I lay
out my overarching view, and though I include my view on the truth-value of
utterances of sentences containing slurring terms, my primary focus in this paper
is on accounting for slurs offensiveness.6
My view shares a key feature with extant expressivist analyses of slurs
offensiveness: one component of slurs semantics involves the expression of contempt toward targets on account of membership in the socially relevant group.7
Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 233
Expressivist semantics of slurring terms are tailor-made to capture slurs common and conventional capacity to derogate. For according to such theories, on
an occasion of use of a slur with its literal meaning, a competent speaker semantically expresses contempt toward the target, either an individual or a group (or
both), on account of being a member of a certain socially significant group.
A growing trend in the literature on the semantics of slurring terms registers
a perspective at odds with Amaechis remarks and expressivist semantics of
slurs more generally. Recent influential papers deny some or all of properties
(i)(v). First, slurs, as a class, are said to possess derogatory variation, to vary
in their degree of offensiveness. Nigger is said to be more offensive than
Chink, as well as spook and jigaboo, terms used for the same socially
relevant group. Kike, yid, and hymie are said to differ in their offensive
intensity.8 The episode with Bryant reveals it is common wisdom for many that
Nigger is more offensive than faggot. Others maintain that different slurring
terms are associated with different negative attitudes. While some are associated
with contempt, others are associated with disgust, fear, and dismissiveness.9
These challenge (ii) and (iii), and expressivist treatments of slurs offensiveness,
which typically posit a single attitude, contempt, for all slurs, are thought to be
incompatible with or unable to explain such variations in offensiveness.
Second, slurs are also said to possess derogatory autonomy: the offensiveness of a use of a slurring term is autonomous from the beliefs, attitudes, and
intentions of individual speakers,10 and thus conflicts with (iv). Suppose that
speaker S1, who is racist and intends to derogate her target, and speaker S2, who
is not and does not aim to derogate her target, both assert She is a Chink in
a context that is otherwise identical. According to derogatory autonomy, S1 and
S2 both derogate their target in exactly the same way. Hom advocates derogatory autonomy and maintains it is so obviously incompatible with expressivist
analyses so as to render their dismissal uncontroversial.11 Camp maintains that
the existence of speakers who regularly use slurring terms without feeling any
contempt toward their targets or the groups referenced by the slurs neutral
counterparts militates against expressivist semantics of slurs.12
Third, recent papers emphasize accounting for the behavior of slurring terms
in contexts that differ markedly from those Amaechi is flagging. These include
contexts in which slurring terms are not used to derogate a particular group on
account of their group-membership. The most obvious examples are the so-called
appropriated uses of slurs, like the use of Nigger in the African-American
community to signal camaraderie and solidarity, and the casual use of queer
in the gay community. Such non-derogatory uses extend beyond appropriated
uses. Consider Chris Rocks infamous remark I love black people but I hate
Niggers, which contains a derogating element but one that does not appear to
apply to all blacks, or at least was not so intended, and John Lennon and Yoko
Onos song title Woman is the Nigger of the World. Furthermore, there are uses
of slurring terms as all-purpose put-downs of a sort, not restricted to members of
a certain group, which may well have been Bryants use of faggot in application
234 / Robin Jeshion
to Adams.13 And Hom has introduced non-derogatory, non-appropriated uses of

slurring terms, as in There are no Chinks at the University of California; there
are only Chinese people. All of these uses suggest to some theorists that (i) and
(v) are misguided and that expressivist theories on which slurs standardly and
conventionally function to dehumanize via speakers expressions of contempt are
wholly unfit to explain them.14
This recent trend in the literature underestimates the resources and strengths
of expressivist views, but it presents important challenges: Explain, or explain
away, derogatory variation. Explain, or explain away, derogatory autonomy. Offer
an explanation of the non-derogatory uses. My aim in this paper is to detail
a semantic theory of slurring terms, demonstrate its ability to meet all three
challenges and, as well, extend the dialectic by fleshing out the multiple sources
of slurs offensiveness. I shall not advance a positive argument for my own
semantic theory here, for my goals are primarily defensive, to show that the view
can explain all the features of slurring terms offensiveness that have inspired
others accounts. Two key ideas underwrite my view. The first is that there are a
plethora of reasons why a use of a slurring term can be offensive, and we must
tease apart the sources of offensiveness of slurring terms due to their semantic
properties and those that are due to pragmatic phenomena and sociolinguistic
properties. The second is that, as in other semantic theorizing, we must carefully
separate literal uses of slurring terms from non-literal uses.
In 1, I distinguish several types of slurring terms and other pejoratives to
clarify the scope of my semantic analysis, and in 2 distinguish several types of
uses of slurring terms. In 3, I detail my three-component expressivist semantic
analysis. Sections 46 are devoted, respectively, to detailing how that analysis
can account for derogatory variation, derogatory autonomy, and a range of
special uses of slurring terms.
1 Varieties of Slurring Terms

The terms for which I am offering up a semantic analysis in this paper, and
which I offered examples of above, are what I call group-referencing slurring terms.
They typically, though not always,15 possess neutral counterparts, terms that
designate the same socially relevant group yet do so, as a matter of convention,
in a non-pejorative way.16 The neutral counterpart of Chink is Chinese,
Kike is Jew, Spic is Hispanic, and so on. Like their neutral counterparts,
slurring terms appear to function to reference a group, G (or, alternatively,
individuals that have a certain property g, which may define the group G).
Additionally, slurring terms appear to possess a derogating element, one that
distinguishes them from their neutral counterparts.
The primary set of group-referencing slurring terms that are under analysis
here do not contain additional semantic content that purports to characterize or describe the group members with a stereotyping descriptive term. Some
group-referencing slurring terms do contain such additional descriptive material.

For example, Christ killer is a common slurring term used to reference Jewish
people and thus Jew is its neutral counterpart, but unlike Kike it contains
additional semantic descriptive content, being a killer of Christ, yet that content
makes no contribution to determining the terms extension. Jungle Bunny,
for African-Americans, and Beaner, for Hispanics, function similarly. Most
of what I say here about our primary class of group-referencing slurring term
is applicable to these slurs as well, though these contain an additional possible
source of offensiveness in the semantic descriptive content.
Other terms specifically function to stereotype subsets of a group in a way
that can (though need not) derogate a whole socially relevant group. Familiar
examples include Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima, Tiger Mom, and Jewish
American Princess. These are largely outside the purview of my investigation
here.
The group-referencing slurring terms that are our subject-matter have a
multiplicity of grammatical roles, as do their neutral counterparts. These include
functioning as adjectives (Chinky-eyed, dyke-haircut, Kike-lawyer), verbs
(to gyp), and adverbs (Jewed-down the offer). The semantics I offer here
for group-referencing slurring terms applies only to slurring terms occurring as
nouns, not these three.
Group-referencing slurring terms are sometimes said to be different in kind
from other pejorative terms insofar as they are often used to apply to and derogate a group itself as a whole, as opposed to an individual; and when group
slurring terms are applied directly to individuals, they are applied on the basis
of group membership rather than anything about the person in particular17 such
as their personal characteristics or behaviors. Terms like egghead, fatso, and
wino are typically not considered group-referencing slurring terms, indeed, are
often not considered slurring terms at all, just pejoratives, and it is frequently
assumed that their semantic properties must differ. Lets call them personal slurring terms so as to highlight the contrast with group. Fatso is applied on the
basis of a persons weight, girth, or eating habits, all distinctively personal characteristics. Wino and boozer as used in, say, That guy is a wino/boozer
are typically applied to people who regularly abuse alcohol, a personal behavior.
By contrast, group-referencing slurs are standardly thought to be distinguished
insofar as they are applied to group members qua group members, not for behaving in any particular way or having any particular beliefs, or indeed doing
anything in particular. This fact is thought by some to help explain why slurring
terms are more deeply offensive, insidious, and pernicious than personal slurring
termsbecause the terms are applied to groups qua groups, not to individuals
qua individuals or on the basis of behavior.
I find the distinction between group-referencing slurring terms and personal
pejoratives less than illuminating. The way of cutting the distinction, as well as its
semantic significance, is questionable. Many group-referencing slurs are applied
to individuals because of their personal characteristics or behaviors: faggot and
236 / Robin Jeshion
dyke are applied to people who engage in same-sex sex. Terms for members
of religious groupsKike, Yid, Bible thumperare frequently applied
not or not just on the basis of a kind of abstract group-membership, but for
their practicing their or their being of a certain religion, something that cannot
be neatly prised apart from how they behave. Pejorative terms for members of
well-established political groups, like Commie and Tea-Bagger, are likewise
applied to targets on the basis of their beliefs, values, and actions. Whether
someone counts as being G is frequently a matter of behavior and various other
sorts of characteristics that are, to be sure, personal. What matters is what
the conditions for being G involve. In any event, it is far from clear that the
application of group-referencing slurring terms is normally to the individual on
account of being a member of the group G, as opposed to on account of being G,
i.e., on account of, say, being a member of the group of Chinese as opposed to
on account of being Chinese.
In the other direction, some terms that are standardly counted as personal
slursterms that are often applied exclusively on the basis of personal behaviors
or characteristicsare or should be counted as group slurring terms because
there are groups, some organized, some not, composed of members possessing those characteristics or exhibiting that behavior. Terms like whore and
hooker are applied to what certain people do for work, surely constituting their
behavior. Only recently (and more typically in other countries) have they become
socially, culturally, economically, and politically organized as a groupas sex
workers. The terms wino and druggie are used, respectively, for alcoholics
and substance abusers, groups that are not known to be politically organized but
are culturally organizedin support groups and in the medical care community.
And many terms that are now standardly counted as group-referencing slurring
terms started their life as personal terms. Prior to the social and political organization of gay or LGBT groups, faggot and dyke were used to apply to
individuals in virtue of their being gay, not in virtue of their being members of
a group of individuals who are gay. The terms were not typically applied to gay
persons as a class, as a group, but instead as ways to derogate on the basis of
sexual orientation. We would be hard-pressed to say that such terms were not
then slurring terms.
I do not maintain that there is no way to demarcate group-referencing and
personal slurring terms. However, these problems in invoking a clean distinction
should give us pause, and may be a source of insight. It is possible that the
two classes of terms have the same or many of the same semantic properties,
but that what determines whether we commonly and pre-theoretically classify a
term as a slurring term often has primarily to do with extra-linguistic factors
whether there currently exists a politically or culturally organized group that is the
referent of the neutral counterpart, or whether the term itself is, in many contexts,
prohibited. But I doubt that there is any real semantic difference between Kike
and Nigger and faggot on the one hand and whore, wino, and fatso
on the other. While I shall continue to speak of group-referencing slurring terms
and while officially all the arguments in this paper focus on them alone, this
paper ought to be seen as also strongly suggesting reasons for favoring a common
semantic treatment.
Similarly, certain terms are not regarded as slurring terms primarily because
we regard derogation of the class as appropriate or merited. Pimp is a good
candidate. In general, individuals who exploit women and children by selling
their bodies to others for sex are, and are widely seen as, deserving of contempt
for that exploitation, and consequently, there are no prohibitions on its use.
Many would therefore be reluctant to classify this pejorative alongside Kike
Nigger, faggot. But it is not apparent pre-theoretically that our canonical
examples of slurring terms ought to have different semantic properties from
pimp. As will become apparent shortly, I believe the fact that many condemn
the use of one set while regarding the other as acceptable or fitting has nothing
to do with their semantics. Since slur is typically applied only to terms whose
use we do censure, and, I will suggest, they appear to pattern semantically
with derogatory terms and expressions whose use we do not censure, it will be
advantageous to employ derogative when we need to speak about all.
2 Varieties of Uses of Slurs

Just as we need to distinguish varieties of slurring terms, so too do we need
to distinguish types of uses of slurring terms. Two distinctions are fundamental.
One twofold distinction is between what I call weapon- and non-weapon uses.
Slurring terms are used as weapons18 in those contexts in which they are used
to derogate an individual or group of individuals to whom the slur is applied
or the socially relevant group that the slur references. The following sentences,
as spoken by the racist, anti-Semite, homophobe, etc., are all weapon uses of
group-referencing slurring terms:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Yao Ming is a Chink.

Barbara Streisand is a Kike.
He is a faggot.
You Kike!
The actors in that play are all Niggers.
Hire one of the Spics over there.
The movie was about a bunch of Chinks.
These uses are fruitfully contrasted with non-weapon uses, utterances of sentences
containing occurrences of (non-appropriated) group slurring terms yet the slurring terms themselves are not being used to derogate or contemn any groups or
individuals on the basis of their group membership. Consider utterances of slurs
as spoken among friends, perhaps quasi-ironically, as when a non-self-loathing,
non-anti-Semitic Jew, utters [4] to another Jew in an attempt to draw attention to
238 / Robin Jeshion
his Jewish identity. Such uses often transcend in-group membership. A non-Jew
whose anti-Semitism is not in question could, in the right context, say the same
without derogating the target or group. I do not maintain that that precludes it
from being offensive, only that this is a type of use of a slur markedly different
from the weapon uses previously illustrated. In particular, in this example, the
speaker not only lacks the intention to express contempt toward the target on
account of his being Jewish, but intends for his assertion to convey no such
contempt or ill feeling at all.
A related class of non-weapon uses of group slurring terms include utterances containing group slurring terms that are explicitly used to combat and
alter the negative social stigmas and psychological impacts of those targeted by
weapon uses of the slur. These are uses that can contribute to the processes by
means of which a slurring term becomes appropriated, to be discussed in 6.
A different distinction, this one threefold, concerns the range of individuals
that the slurring term is being used to reference. In the context of use of [4] by
the anti-semite, Kike is being used to reference Jews; in the context of use of [5]
by a racist, Niggers is being used to reference African-Americans. The slurring
term is being used to reference the members of the group and only members of
the group that the neutral counterpart references. I call such uses G-referencing.
These are the uses that have been tacitly assumed in most of our examples thus
far.
G-referencing uses must be distinguished from what I call G-extending and
G-contracting uses. In G-extending uses, a speaker intentionally applies a slurring
term to individuals she believes are not members of the group referenced by the
terms neutral counterpart. For example, a racist who knows that his taxi driver
is Arabic and not African-American uses Nigger in a way that is G-extending
in asserting
[8] I dont tip Niggers.
This use is not G-referencing because the speaker knowingly and intentionally
applies Nigger in a fashion contrary to the conventional use governed by the
norm to apply it exclusively to African-Americans. If the speaker had instead simply misidentified the ethnicity of his cab driver, the use would be G-referencing.
Here, rather, the speaker applies the term to someone he knows to be outside
the group referenced by the terms neutral counterpart. In G-extending uses, the
range of application is often to individuals that the speaker regards as having
characteristics encoded in stereotypes of the group referenced by the neutral
counterpart. G-contracting uses function similarly, though here the speakers intended range of application of the slur is contracted to that subset of the group
referenced by the terms neutral counterpart that the speaker regards as possessing certain salient characteristics encoded in racist stereotypes of the group. One
example is Chris Rocks quip
[9] I love black people but I hate Niggers.

Another is a use of
[10] Obama is black but he isnt a Nigger.
Note that in offering these characterizations of G-extending and Gcontracting uses, I am not here taking a stand on the semantic contribution
of Nigger to what is semantically expressed in the utterances [8][10]. I wish
to remain neutral here about the various different competing analyses of the
slurring terms in these different uses.19 My point here is just that in G-extending
and G-contracting uses, the speaker is using the slurring term in a way that
is different from G-referencing uses, which are governed by the norm to apply
the term to those and only those in the extension of the slurring terms neutral
counterpart.
Marking the dual distinctions between weapon verses non-weapon uses and
G-referencing verses G-extending and G-contracting uses is methodologically
fundamental and theoretically significant to my view.20 I shall largely allow these
distinctions to prove their worth by their explanatory power, but note that as in
other domains of semantics, it is essential to mark off literal from non-literal uses
of terms. Our dual distinctions are necessary for doing so with slurring terms. As
I see it, when slurring terms are used literally, they are used to reference the group
referenced by their neutral counterpart and as weapons, to derogate that group.
That is, weapon G-referencing uses of slurring terms exemplify literal uses, uses
of terms that are in accordance with their conventional rules of application, and
as such, are semantically basic. It is for these uses, and these alone, that theses (i)
(v) obtain and to which my semantic theory applies. Non-weapon G-referencing
uses, non-weapon G-extending and G-contracting uses, and weapon G-extending
and G-contracting uses are all semantically parasitic on the semantically basic
uses. I discuss these points in greater detail below.
To help appreciate the significance of this point, notice that neutral counterparts of slurring terms can be used as weapons in much the same way as
group-referencing slurring terms are. When a speaker marks the neutral counterpart with contemptuous intonation, as exemplified by
[11] Yao Ming is ChineseC .
[12] Barbra Streisand is a JewC .
[13] He is a homosexualC .
the utterances function to derogate just as [1][3] do. (I use the convention of
italics to denote intonational stress, with the superscript giving the type of intonation, here C denoting contemptuousness.) Additionally, neutral counterparts
of slurs can be modified with bare pejoratives or negative adjectives to form
another familiar type of weapon use, as in
240 / Robin Jeshion
[14] Yao Ming is a fucking Chinese.

[15] Barbra Streisand is a dirty Jew.
[16] He is a goddamn homosexual.
The expressions in [11][13] and [14][16] are all here used to function semantically like slurring terms, as derogatives.
3 Three Component Semantics

I turn now to spell out the semantics for group-referencing slurring terms.
The semantics involves three components. One is the truth-conditional component.
A slurring term, on an occasion of use by a speaker, references the group that is
referenced by its neutral counterpart. The truth of sentences [1] and [2] depend
only upon whether Ming is Chinese and Streisand is Jewish, and so are truth
conditionally equivalent to [1a] and [2a], sentences that replace slurring terms
for their neutral counterparts:
[1]
[1a]
[2]
[2a]
Yao Ming is a Chink.

Yao Ming is Chinese.
Barbara Streisand is a Kike.
Barbara Streisand is a Jew.
The same analysis obtains when the slurring term occurs in the subject position,
as in [17], which is true just in case [17a] is true.
[17] Niggers live near that beach.
[17a] African-Americans live near that beach.
With each of these sentences, the speaker expresses a truth-evaluable content
to which the slurring term contributes by referencing a group G, the group
referenced by the slurring terms neutral counterpart.21 In this way, slurring terms
share some semantic structure with their neutral counterparts. However, given
that the slur and neutral counterpart make parallel semantic contributions along
this dimension, the truth-conditionally relevant component does not account for
slurs offensiveness. This marks its separation from the other two components
of the semantics, both of which, likewise, make no contribution to the truth
conditions.22
The second component is expressivist: slurring terms are used to express
contempt for members of a socially relevant group on account of their being
in that group or having a group-defining property. This component specifically
captures how slurring terms function to express attitudes. It is fruitfully characterized in the style of Kaplan (2005) by rules of use: for a group slurring term
S with a neutral counterpart NC that references a group G, S is used to express
contempt for members of G on account of their being in G or on account of

their possessing a G-defining property g.23
Note that this component involves the expression of the speakers attitude,
contempt, toward her targets, not a separately semantically encoded descriptive
content, say, contemptible on account of being Chinese. Views on which slurring
terms semantically encode such descriptive contents (as at least one component
of their meaning24 ) are markedly different and fail to capture the expressive
dimension of slurring terms. Suppose that Chink* encodes the descriptive
content given by worthy of contempt on account of being Chinese. Then,
although it is not misconceived to regard the utterances of
[1] Yao Ming is a Chink
[18] Yao Ming is a Chink*
as communicating the same information, they do so in different ways. While the
utterance of [18] encodes the proposition that the target is worthy of contempt
on account of being Chinese, the utterance of [1] does no such thing. It communicates, rather, the speakers contempt itself, which is expressed, not asserted. A
proponent of the analysis involving semantic descriptive encoding will be hardpressed to explain why the negation of [18], as in Yao Ming is not a Chink* or
It is not the case that Yao Ming is a Chink*, are, strikingly, not what would
be used to deny the derogating content of [1]. Yet they ought to do so if Chink
is synonymous with Chink*.25
This expressive component indicates that slurring terms share semantic properties with other expressives like intensifiers (totally in That is totally interesting, damn in The damn cat is stalking my hamster), exclamatives (holy
crap!, Wow! Ouch!) and other explicitly performative expressives (fuckoff!, right on!) which similarly function to express speakers emotional or
attitudinal states and do not contribute meaning by predicating a descriptive
content. An utterance of holy crap! is governed by a convention to use it to
express that one is astonished or fearful; and an utterance of ouch! is governed by a convention to use it to express that one is in pain. These analyses are
rough in the extreme but are adequate for underscoring a commonality between
slurring terms and some other expressives.
Despite this similarity in semantic structure with other expressives, do not
assimilate the expressive component of slurring terms to the mere expression
of a feeling, like a flash of anger or a state of frustration. While contempt is an
affectively laden attitude, often accompanied by feelings of abhorrence, hostility,
and hatred, no particular raw subjective feeling need be felt by one who uses a
slur. Indeed, one could possess and express contempt for someone coolly, without any heat-of-the-moment feeling. Furthermore, the expression of contempt
differs from the expression of purely subjective feelings like pain or fear or astonishment, which are largely insulated from normative assessment and neither
implicate nor represent their objects as pain-, fear-, or astonishment- worthy.
242 / Robin Jeshion
By contrast, contempt, like resentment, is a highly structured affectively- and

normatively-guided moral attitude that is subject to evaluation for its appropriateness. As such, in using slurs, speakers not only express their own contempt for
the target, but also implicitly represent (but still do not say or assert that) their
targets as worthy of contempt. And because contempt is a moral attitude specifically held toward those one regards as inferior as persons, users of slurs thereby
implicate that targets ought to be so-regarded as inferior. This contributes to
explaining why, when left unchecked, uses of slurs are especially socially and
psychologically destructive.26
The third component to slurs semantics is what I call the identifying
component.27 As a matter of the semantics of the slurring term, an utterance of
[3] He is a faggot
does not simply ascribe a property to the target, here, that of being gay. It
classifies the target in a way that aims to be identifying. In calling someone
faggot, the homophobe takes a property that he believes someone to possess
and semantically encodes that it is the, or a, defining feature of the targets
identity. As such, it is used to dictate how others ought to treat, regard, think
of, and respond to its target. As a matter of their semantics, Kike, Chink,
Nigger, faggot, whore are used so as to signal that being Jewish, Chinese,
black, gay, a prostitute identify what its targets are.
The classification of the target in a way that aims to be identifying should
not be conflated with any notions of metaphysical identity or essentialism. In
wielding slurs, racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes are not in the business of
presenting their targets group membership either as an essential, metaphysically
necessary property, or as determining or explaining their other properties.28
Rather, they express that the targets group membership is the, or among the, most
central characteristic(s) for classifying what the target is, as a person, construed
along a broadly moral dimension.
Notice that the identifying component is dependent upon the expressive
component because the identifying component partially captures what it is to regard someone with contempt. That is, it follows from what it is to find someone
contemptible on the basis of being gay that one takes that persons sexual orientation as the most or among the most central aspects of that persons identity.
This dependence is, at heart, moral-psychological, but is manifest in the semantics. A speaker who expresses contempt toward her target for being G thereby
also expresses and implicitly represents G as fundamental to her targets identity
as a person. Thus, within a single speech act, the speaker expresses both her
contempt and way of identifying the target as a person.29
This expressive component is the location of a performative element in
slurring terms. Because utterances containing slurring terms are governed by
the use condition given above, and because contempt is a form of regarding
an individual as inferior as a person, a speaker who intentionally makes such
utterances with full understanding has thereby, with that speech act, derogated
her target and the group referenced by the slurring terms neutral counterpart.
Together, the expressive and identifying components explain slurs common
and conventional capacity to derogate. As a matter of their semantics, slurs
function to express the speakers contempt for his target in virtue of the targets
group-membership and that his target ought to be treated with contempt in virtue
of that group-membership, because what the target is, as a person, is something
lesser, something unworthy of equal or full respect or consideration. In this way,
slurs, as a class, conventionally function to dehumanize.
4 Explaining derogatory variation: assorted sources of offensiveness

I turn now to defend my semantic theory against the charge that it is unable
to explain derogatory variation. Recall that derogatory variation is the thesis
that different slurring terms vary in their degrees of intensity of offensiveness.
Presumably, the thesis is intended to apply only to slurring terms when used
literally, what I have been calling G-referencing weapon uses.
Critics have flagged derogatory variation as sufficient grounds for rejecting
any expressivist semantic theory of slurring terms. The reasons have not been fully
articulated by proponents, but the rationale, in application to my own theory,
would appear to go as follows: because contempt is the attitude expressed for all
slurring terms and the semantics lacks a placeholder for the contempts intensity,
it makes no room for variations in offensiveness in G-referencing weapon uses
of different slurring terms. Therefore, the theory is incompatible with derogatory
variation, and so must be rejected.
What I wish to cast into doubt is the inference to the conclusion. My trilevel semantics is only incompatible with versions of derogatory variation that
stipulate that the variation derives from the semantics:
Derogatory Variation-Semantics: by virtue of their semantics, different slurring
terms vary in their degrees of intensity of offensiveness.
But this thesis possesses little, if any, intuitive support.30 In registering intuitive
judgments about the degree of offensiveness of different slurring terms, considering the term itself and not particular utterances of it, we invariably reflect upon
a host of different factors that, depending upon the slur, can contribute, and in
different degrees, to its power to offend. Often, when we reflect upon two slurring
terms, considering which is worse, we lump together with semantic knowledge
that which we know about societal stereotypes of the group referenced by the
slurring terms neutral counterpart, frequency of use of the slurring term, intensity of racism or bigotry toward the group referenced by the term, how vigilantly
the term is prohibited in various social contexts, histories of that groups oppression, our feelings of guilt and responsibility for that oppression, and likely
a host of other factors. (Amaechi perceptively highlights this tendency with his
244 / Robin Jeshion
qualification that, in advocating derogatory-constancy between Nigger and

faggot, he is making no analogies between civil and human rights struggles
for blacks and LGBT people.) Whatever is guiding our intuitive comparative
judgments, they at most support the following thesis, which is compatible with
my semantic theory:
Derogatory Variation-Utterance: utterances of different slurring terms engender
different degrees of intensity of offensiveness.
This thesis is compatible with my semantic theory because G-referencing weaponuses of slurring terms are offensive for numerous reasons, only some of which are
due to their semantics. To flesh this out, I first catalogue some of the many ways
such uses of slurring terms are offensive specifically to their primary targets. I
then discuss how they are offensive to non-targets.
4(a) Semantic Sources

G-referencing weapon-uses of slurring terms are offensive to their primary
targets because the speaker intentionally expresses contempt toward them for
being G. This source of offensiveness is semantic because it is governed by the
rules of use of slurring terms. Whenever a speaker uses a slurring term with full
understanding, the speaker expresses his contempt for the target and group G,
and thus, qua targets of contempt for being G, the utterance is typically (and
obviously) offensive to them. Correlatively, because linguistic expressions of contempt constitute speech acts of derogating, the speaker derogates the targets. This
source of offensiveness is plainly not separable from the semantic rules governing
slurring terms, and thus, even if classified as pragmatic, it is nevertheless still conventional. Notice that weapon uses of neutral counterparts involving marking
the counterpart with contemptuous intonation, as in [11][13], are offensive for
precisely the same reason as an utterance containing the corresponding slurring
term.
A further semantic source of offensiveness is due to the identifying component. Slurs capacity to offend via their semantics involves speakers expressions
of contempt for targets belonging to the socially relevant group, which in turn
encompasses marking that socially relevant group as what the subject is, which
in turn can contribute to making that membership the targets social identity.
In addition to offense due to the contempt, with which it is inextricably boundup, this can be offensive to a target who does not embrace that group identity
as what she is or who objects to having her social identity defined by another.
Notice that this variety of offensiveness is different from that due to treating an
entire group as classifiable as a group, where this involves not only subsuming
an entire group to a single mode of classification, but also making less salient
group-members other individualizing features. Whatever negative aspects are
encompassed in such genericizing, or de-individualizing, they are distinct from

that carried by the third component of slurring terms.
4(b) Perlocutionary effects: stereotype activation and compounding

oppression
Other sources of offensiveness of literal uses of slurring terms are exclusively
pragmatic, often perlocutionary effects. As such, none obtains by virtue of conventional linguistic properties of slurring terms, i.e., meanings or conventional
rules of use or conventional implicatures. Still, many are commonplace and socially and psychologically predictable. One such perlocutionary effect arises in
those contexts in which the utterance containing the slurring term triggers activation in the minds of hearers of the socially existing stereotype of the group
that the slurring term references. Such circumstances will be frequent, for hearing someone expressing his contempt with a slurring term frequently activates
stereotypes in hearers. Since stereotypes of different groups are offensive in different degrees, the strength of offensiveness to slurs targets will vary with the
slur.
Because of the prevalence of group-stereotypes, and because they are so
easily activated in the minds of hearers, and because hearers will frequently infer
that the stereotypes are endorsed by the speaker, it is natural to suppose that
they are semantically encoded rather than just perlocutionary effects.31 There
are, however, strong theoretical reasons for denying this. On my view, one is
fully competent with a slur if and only if one knows that speakers use slurs
to express contempt for individuals and a group on account of being in the
group. On stereotype views on which slurring terms semantically encode group
stereotypes, this is neither necessary nor sufficient. Instead, knowledge of the
group stereotype is necessary, and often sufficient, to either use a slurring term
or understand what is meant by a G-referencing weapon use of one. But hearers
and users need not possess knowledge of group stereotypes to understand the
content of the utterance. A homophobe might well target Amaechi with You
faggot! while possessing no knowledge whatsoever of gay stereotypes, say as
sexually promiscuous or as stylish dressers. His homophobia may be fully independent of such stereotypes, based on abhorrence of same-sex-sexual relations.
When confronted, the homophobe could sincerely deny any commitment to such
stereotypes. Such cancellability is broadly applicable across slurring terms. A
racist could call someone Chink to express contempt for the target on the
basis of her ethnicity, but be entirely uninformed of stereotypes of Chinese as
being unfit for managerial positions, bad drivers, and so on, and, when informed
of these stereotype features, could successfully deny endorsement of them. For
those that uphold cancellability as a test on semantic content, these genuine
cancellations reveal that stereotypes are not part of the slurs semantic content.32
In the other direction, applicable to those views that regard stereotypes as the
246 / Robin Jeshion
primary or sole source of slurs offensiveness, one who stereotypes need not
thereby derogate the group on the basis of so stereotyping them. This point is
dramatized by reflecting on the fact that many stereotypes contain neutral or
positive, not just negative, characteristics of the group. Stereotypes of Chinese
persons include being top-test-takers, hard-working, and technologically savvy.
Yet if those properties are what racists express with Chink, the slur is both
derogatory and complimentary. But it is notthe slur is unmistakably exclusively derogatory.33 Both problems reveal the most fundamental issue: the way
that stereotyping offends need not line up with the way that weapon uses of slurring terms offend. It is one thing to represent Jews as, say, cheap and neurotic on
account of being Jews. It is another to represent them contemptuously. Neither
one entails the other.34
Our comparison with utterances of neutral counterparts marked by contemptuous intonation can further bolster the point. It is highly plausible that
the shift from the literal semantic properties of neutral counterparts when used
unmarked and when used with contemptuous intonation ought to be a function
only of the contribution by the intonational marking. It is also highly plausible and a point advanced above, that the semantic properties of such neutral
counterparts when used with contemptuous intonation is the same as that of
slurring terms. Assuming both points, then, slurring terms, by virtue of their
semantics, do not encode descriptive contents characterizing stereotypes of the
group reference by the slurring term.
A different perlocutionary effect that can assist in accounting for Derogatory Variation-Utterance concerns the varying degrees of psychological and social damage caused by utterances of slurs due to their compounding the effects
of current and past institutional bigotry and oppression on their targets. An
utterance of Nigger will typically cause considerably worse psychological and
social damage than an utterance of honkey in part because the former occurs
against the background of current widespread racism, history of slavery, and
historical civil rights struggles for African-Americans, and nothing comparable
for Caucasians. Why not encode this effect into the semantics, ensuring that
it is conventional, occurring with every weapon use of the slur? For one, it is
doubtful that this effect occurs with every utterance. Furthermore, the same interaction with current and past bigotry and oppression generally occurs when
neutral counterparts are used as weapons, as when they are uttered with a contemptuous intonation: those blackC kids vs. those whiteC kids. Again, the
semantics of such utterances ought to be a function only of how the contemptuous intonation operates on the semantics of the neutral counterpart itself. Since
the additional source of offensiveness that is due to interaction with the history
is here just a perlocutionary effect, it should be as well for the slurring term.
All of the preceding sources of offensiveness of utterance of slurring terms
on their targets are also sources of offensiveness to target-sympathizers. The
expressions of contempt and correlative speech acts of derogation are secondarily offensive to non-targets who empathize with the targets and group, finding
inapt expressions of contempt repugnant and unjust. Stereotype-activation in

the minds of target-sympathizers can have a similar effects, and the degree of
such responses are frequently intensified the greater the bigotry and oppression
suffered by the group. No doubt a host of additional psychological and social
factors contribute to intensifying or diminishing slurs degree of abhorrence.
4(c) Perlocutionary effect: breaking prohibitions

One further perlocutionary effect that helps explain Derogatory VariationUtterance concerns prohibitions against individual slurs use, a source of slurs
offensiveness emphasized by Anderson and Lepore (2013). Using slurring terms
is, in many contexts, taboo, and thus utterances of slurring terms are offensive
to those for whom prohibitions on their use matter. Because the strength of
the prohibition varies with the slurring termin many contexts, weapon uses
of Nigger are more taboo than such uses of honkey; uses of Kike more
taboo that uses of yidthe offensiveness due to breaking it will help explain
Derogatory Variation-Utterance.
Anderson and Lepore maintain that slurring terms are semantically equivalent to their neutral counterparts, possessing no semantic properties that account for their offensiveness. For them, everything about slurs offensiveness is
accounted for by extra-linguistic facts, most prominently35 by how utterances of
them break prohibitions. Is there reason to embrace this minimalist semantics
with its attendant lean prohibitionist account of the source of slurs offensiveness?
Anderson and Lepore advance two main reasons. One is that if slurs contained
any conventional linguistic properties responsible for their capacity to be offensive, there would be no way to explain non-slurring uses of slurs, uses that are
inoffensive. They ask rhetorically, if a slurs offense is part of its meaning, how
can its non-slurring uses exist? We believe this worry about non-slurring uses
of slurs extends to any account that pins the offensive potential of a slur on its
content.36 I take this up in depth in 6 below, but for now it should be clear that
my main line of defense is that slurring terms being conventionally, literally, used
as weapons is not threatened by the existence of non-weapon uses, which are
treated as polysymous, their meanings parasitic on the literal use. Their second
reason is that, in contexts in which a slurring term is prohibited, all occurrences
of it will be offensive, including occurrences in indirect and direct quotation, as
in
[19] Shane said that Yao Ming is a Chink
[20] Shane said Yao Ming is a Chink
as well as in constructions like
[21] Nigger is a derogatory word for African-Americans.
248 / Robin Jeshion
Moreover, they claim, no linguistic constructions containing a slur can insulate

the speaker from properly being taken as the source of offensiveness.37 But the
fact that slurring terms can be offensive in such constructions fails to support
a minimalist semantics and prohibitionism as the sole source of slurs offensiveness. Even if we grant the implausible claim that there are blanket prohibitions
on direct quotation of slurs, the existence of such prohibitions can account for
but one source of offensiveness, one that fails to distinguish differences in the
way that a weapon use of a slur and a direct quotation of a slur offend. And
there are clear, well-recognized differences. The racist who says Yao Ming is a
Chink or You Chink! to Yao Ming breaks a prohibition on saying Chink
just as does (let us suppose) a witness who testifies against that racist by saying
He said Yao Ming is a Chink. Yet the former is clearly much more deeply
offensive because the racist has specifically derogated Yao Ming and Chinese
persons, while the witness has not. Breaking prohibitions on use only tracks
a particular social dimension of slurs offensiveness, yet, by itself, entirely fails
to account for the fact and the specific way that slurs derogate their targets.38
Contrast prohibition-breaking with all the varieties of offensiveness previously
discussed: all the others are first and foremost offensive to targets, secondarily
to non-targets, as sympathizers. Offense to taboo-breaking captures no difference in offense to targets and non-targets, applying to both homogenously. Yet
a complete analysis of the offensiveness of slurring terms needs to mark the
difference.
5 Explaining derogatory autonomy

What of derogatory autonomy, the thesis that a slurs capacity to derogate
its target is independent of the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the speaker,
that slurs carry the same derogatory force no matter how racist or non-racist the
particular speaker? Assuming that this thesis is supposed to pertain specifically
to weapon-uses, the first thing to notice is that speakers intentions must matter
at least enough to determine whether the utterance constitutes a weapon or nonweapon use of the slurring term. But lets bracket this, and distinguish two main
theses.
Derogatory Autonomy-Utterance: with a weapon use, an utterance of a slurring
term is capable of being offensive and derogating its targets independent of the
beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the speaker.
Derogatory Autonomy-Semantics: with a weapon use, by virtue of its semantics
alone, an utterance of a slurring term is capable of being offensive and derogating
its targets independent of the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the speaker.
Derogatory Autonomy-Utterance should be recognized as uncontroversial because weapon uses of slurring terms can derogate their targets via the
various non-semantic mechanisms discussed aboveby activating stereotypes,

by raising to salience histories of group oppression, and so on. They can also
be offensive to targets and target-sympathizers by breaking prohibitions on use.
All of these sources of offensiveness obviously may transpire entirely independent of the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the speaker. As previously noted,
they can all occur in direct and indirect quotation. They may even be generated
by innocent uses of words that are phonologically and orthographically similar
to slurring words, yet possess no etymological or semantic ties to them, as in
the use of niggardly.39 Thus, while Derogatory Autonomy-Utterance is, like
Derogatory Variation-Utterance, true, it is fully compatible with my semantic
theory.
The more serious worry concerns Derogatory-Autonomy-Semantics, which
isolates the semantic dimension of derogation due to what the speaker expresses.
As applied to literal uses of slurring terms, the challenge to our semantics is that
a fully competent speaker could use a slurring term while harboring no contempt
toward the group and its members for being in that group, yet, the speaker herself,
by her words, does nevertheless derogate her targets, and thus slurring terms could
not function semantically to express the speakers attitude of contempt. Now, I
grant that a speaker could use a slur while harboring no contempt. Typically,
though, this either betrays the speakers inadequate linguistic understanding,
or, if she possesses full understanding, her incaution or disregard for how her
words are understood. Childrens uses of slurring terms can often simply reflect
their employing the only or the most familiar term they know for the group,
modeling the mode of reference for the group made by family and peers, while
failing to pick up on its derogatory force. Alternately, a user may entirely
lack contempt for the group and understand that the word is conventionally
used to convey contempt but use it nevertheless, perhaps for other purposes,
such as to convey alliance with others who are themselves bigoted. While the
former case is not one in which we have a fully competent speaker, derogatory
autonomy is handled essentially the same way. In both cases, the speaker would
not be expressing, giving vent to, an attitude toward the group that she lacks,
and so would not be derogating them with that attitude. However, hearers do
correctly presume that the speaker does harbor, and has expressed, contempt.
That is, hearers rightly regard the speaker as having expressed contempt toward
the targets on account of ethnicity, race, religion, etc., by her words, and so as
having conveyed that targets are worthy of contempt. Thus there is an important
sense in which, by her words, and in virtue of their semantic properties alone,
the utterance is deeply offensive and derogating. In this way, slurs do possess
the capacity to offend irrespective of the attitudes of the speaker that uses it.
Nevertheless, my account has preserved room for hearers to take a more nuanced
view of such speakers. Upon learning why the speakers made the utterance, a
hearer may well, and indeed perhaps ought to have a less intense response than
if the utterance was made by a bigot whose aim it was to express his bigoted
attitudes.
250 / Robin Jeshion
Notice that a similar challenge can be offered to demonstrate inadequacy in

expressivist analyses of expressions like fuck off and intensifiers like damn
in The damn cat is stalking my hamster. One might suggest that fuck off is
sometimes used by those who entirely lack aggressive feelings toward those being
addressed and regard that, together with its derogatory autonomy, as a reason
for rejecting an expressivist type of analysis. But, as with slurs, this would be
misguided, for we can still explain derogatory autonomy by appealing to norms
on understanding the speakers words.
6 Explaining non-derogatory and other special uses

I turn now to defend my tri-level position against the charge that it is
incompatible with the many distinct ways that slurring terms are used. Critics
have been especially insistent that expressivist views are inconsistent with uses of
slurring terms in which there is no expression of contempt or intended derogation
involved on the part of the speaker.40 Various types of examples have been put
forward as especially problematic. The most prominent, with which I begin,
involve appropriated uses of slurring terms.
It is well known that certain slurring terms have been appropriated by their
targets as a means of neutralizing their offensiveness. Forty years ago, an utterance of Youre queer, spoken to someone thought to be gay, would standardly
function to derogate the person addressed, and indeed all gay people. Today, the
word is still often used in just this fashion, as a weapon, but it is also often used
neutrally: many gay and lesbian persons self-apply the term queer without a
tinge of irony or self-hatred, and others have followed suit. The term has become
well-enough entrenched that various institutions employ the term queer, as in
universities Queer Studies programs or departments. What, precisely, is the problem that is associated with appropriated uses of slurring terms? One might think
the problem about appropriation is that of accounting for the terms meaning
post-appropriation, and one might think that an analysis of what, say, queer
means when so used neutrally is somehow especially problematic for any view
that explains slurs capacity to derogate semantically.41 But as a point against
any view that semantically encodes derogation, including that offered here, it is
easy to diffuse because it is plausible that the term acquired a new meaning via
the process of appropriation. On this analysis, queer became semantically ambiguous upon appropriation. Initially, it was non-ambiguous, its only linguistic
standing as a slur, one whose derogating capacity can be accounted for semantically. Later, it came to have another conventional use, one that is non-pejorative.
Because the post-appropriation meaning is newly acquired and distinct, it is
not incompatible with the existence of the pre-appropriation pejorative meaning
(encoded into the semantic content) that persists. Alternatively, an appropriated
non-pejorative meaning can come to replace the pejorative meaning (as with
the term gay). Clearly, because this line depends only upon distinguishing an
additional meaning of the term as the outcome of appropriations, this defense

is available for any slurring term. So there appears to be a simple resolution
regarding this problem regarding appropriation.42
However, this isnt the end of the story about appropriation. For although
positing an ambiguity is a satisfying way to explain the outcome of a terms
appropriation, there is a different problem that concerns the process by which
a slur comes to be appropriated. Early uses of the slur, uses prior to and that
contribute to the conventionalization of its post-appropriated meaning, cannot
be so explained away. Our expressivist theory needs to be compatible with and to
be able to explain how such early uses by its targets can be non-derogating. While
a full analysis of the mechanisms governing the processes by which slurs become
appropriated is well beyond the scope of this paper, I suggest here that some
such mechanisms are rooted in ordinary non-weapon uses, which may simply
be widely reproduced or may be self-consciously and publically employed to
effect appropriation. So I turn now to discuss how our expressivist theory can
handle these and other non-standard uses and will briefly explain their role in
contributing to appropriation.
As noted earlier, G-referencing weapon uses of slurs are semantically basic, literal uses of slurring terms. Non-weapon uses and G-extending and Gcontracting uses ought to be regarded as non-basic, non-literal uses. Though this
goes against recent trends in the literature on slurs, these claims should not be
terribly controversial. Consider, for example, an ordinary use of girl as in
[22] There is a girl in the classroom
in which girl is used as synonymous with young female person. Such a use is
semantically basic. When used literally, girl has in its extension girls and only
girls. But girl is also frequently also used non-literally, as when young boys
apply it to other boys if they are insufficiently sporty, inadequate in hiding their
feelings, care to be clean, and so on. Here, a stereotype of girls governs such uses
of girl. Girl is often also used as an all- or multi-purpose putdown for anyone
who exhibits what sexists take to be canonical properties of girls, typically some
variety of weakness as measured contextually by standards imposed or assumed
by the speaker.43 The presence of such uses is not an adequate reason for thinking
that girl, when used literally, is not synonymous with young female person.
We rightly regard such uses as special non-literal uses or as having secondary
meanings, or otherwise as instances of polysymy. And we can regard this use as
sexist even if we think that girl is semantically ambiguous.
We should uphold the same standard in our theorizing about slurring terms.
This special non-literal uses of girl is analogous to our primary example of a
G-extending use of Nigger
[8] I dont tip Niggers
252 / Robin Jeshion
in which the term is intentionally applied to someone that the speaker knows
is not in the extension of Nigger when used literally. In our example, girl
is applied by schoolboys to persons that they know are not in the extension
of girl when used literally. So [8] ought to be regarded as a non-literal use
of a slurring term. To further work the analogy, girl has G-contracting uses.
Consider this passage from To Kill a Mockingbird: Jem told me I was being a
girl, that girls always imagined things, thats why other people hated them so, and
if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.44
The narrator is, of course, the wonderful Scout, and the implicature is that Jem
is using girl in a way that contracts the class of girls to a subset of those in the
extension of the term when used literally, a subset to which Scout herself does
not, even in Jems eyes, ordinarily belong. This is analogous to our examples of
G-contracting uses of slurring terms
[9] I love black people, but I hate Niggers.
[10] Obama is black but he isnt a Nigger.
as in [9] and [10]. All three are special non-literal uses, and because of that status,
are legitimately outside the sphere of our tri-level analysis. But our analysis does
help account for how new meanings become conventionalized.45 Whore is
currently used conventionally not just as a group-referencing slur for prostitutes
but also, more generally, for loose women or even, more generally still, for
someone who compromises principles for personal gain. In addition to its weapon
G-referencing uses as in [3], faggot is, as Bryant suggested, often conventionally
used an all-purpose put-down. In such uses, there is no intention to apply the
term exclusively to those that are gay. Yet the term is of course still offensive
because, as Hornsby notes, the new meaning does not simply supplant the old;
it trades on the fact of the words having had its former hateful or contemptuous
element.46
Of course, none of the examples just given are non-derogatory; [8] is plainly
derogating, as are both [9] and [10]. This is because the non-literality morphs
the truth-conditionally relevant component of the tri-level semantics, with the
speaker knowingly applying the term in a way that expands or contracts the
range of persons in the slurring terms normal extensions, not the expressivist
component. But if we regard these uses as non-literal, we should equally regard
as non-literal uses that morph the expressivist component. Lets again illustrate this semantic shift on expressive meaning with a non-slurring term, an
ordinary pejorative. Consider a context in which a wayward teacher lashes out
at two students, calling them idiots, and detaining them afterwards. This is
a literal use, applying the pejorative expression to express a negative attitude
toward the students. It exemplifies a weapon use. Now, one of the students
might later say to his fellow, hey idiot, as a means of expressing and establishing solidarity over the incident. This latter ironic remark is clearly a nonweapon use of idiot, yet does not and should not incline us to abandon a
semantic analysis of idiot as a term used to connote and express negative

affect toward and estimation of the individual to whom it is applied. Indeed,
the ability to secure the speaker-meaning in the non-weapon use depends upon
the terms possessing the ordinary weapon meaning. Initial, pre-appropriation,
in-group uses of Nigger function in many ways in parallel to our example
with idiot, in particular with respect to the excision of the encoded contempt
in exchange for an expression of solidarity. The details of how such uses becomes widespread, public, and eventually conventionalized requires extensive
discussion, and this case only characterizes one type of semantic shift on the pejorative element, but the brief illustration reveals that an expressivist semantics
is compatible with and capable of explaining processes effecting slurring terms
appropriation.
What of the Lennon-Ono song title Woman is the Nigger of the world?
How can it convey, as Lennon said, that women are treated as the slaves of the
slaves? Here we have a metaphorical use of the slurring term, which is frequently
regarded as a type of non-literal use. It is comparable to similar uses of proper
names as in She is the Einstein of the class. In the latter, the speaker uses
Einstein to convey that the referent of the pronoun resembles Einstein in a
certain respectpossessing great intelligencethat is made salient by the use
of Einstein. In the Lennon-Ono line, the authors are conveying that women
resemble blacks in a certain respectbeing subject to extraordinary bigotry and
oppressionthat is made salient by the use of Niggers (and that would not be
as salient or potent by using a neutral counterpart). Though the details of how
to handle the semantics and pragmatics of metaphor vary, it is clear that this too
is a type of special use that may receive special treatment.
In sum, we have a simple answer to the charge that expressivist theories are
unable to explain non-derogatory uses of slurring terms. We can explain them;
we just take seriously that these are special uses, uses that do not force us to alter
the semantics that governs only literal uses.
Finally, lets consider utterances like Homs
[23] There are no Chinks at the University of California; there are only
Chinese people.
where the speaker is said to be using Chink in a way that does not derogate
Chinese persons on account of being Chinese. [23] and others like it are said to
be incompatible with our semantics. To be a serious problem for our view, the
slurring term must here be used literally and involve no intent to derogate or
express contempt at all. Should we employ the same strategy for dealing with
[23] that we did in the others? No, for it is implausible that the intended meaning
of [23] can be captured by appealing to some kind of contraction or extension
of the G-referencing component of our semantic theory or to a morphing of the
expressivist component by means of irony or another device. Indeed, it seems that
the intended non-derogating content of [23] cannot be captured by any shift in
254 / Robin Jeshion
meaning of Chink at all. However, this case admits of a natural explanation as

some variety of conversational denial of earlier derogatory utterances of Chink,
where Chinks serves to implicitly mention them. Such utterances could be
local and specific, having taken place earlier within the immediate conversation.
Alternatively, Chinks could be used to implicitly mention or make salient more
distal and general utterances of the term in the wider social environment. After
all, an assertion of [23] would be very strange if it occurred discourse initially,
with no background knowledge of past semantically basic derogating uses of
Chink to which it is implicitly quoting or making reference to.
Compare [23] with an example involving bare pejoratives. Your daughter
charges off the soccer field, swearing, Those bastards are playing unfair or
That refs call was total bullshit, to which you might reply
[24] There are no bastards on the soccer field.
or
[25] There are no bullshit calls; there is only the refs judgment.
Like [23], utterances of [24] and [25] would be infelicitious if they were discourse
initial. Both function in the discourse as denials of your daughters choice of
words. Your denials involve only mentions of your daughters words, what is
typically signaled in spoken discourse with intonation and, in writing, with scare
quotes. Because you are only implicitly referring to her uses, but not yourself
using bastards and bullshit, your utterances fail to encode any speech acts
of swearing on your part.47
As with our earlier cases, we should keep parity between standards on our
theory of slurring terms and our broader semantic theory. The special properties
of terms when used quasi-quotatively, to reference others utterances but not
use the expressions, should not incline us to treat bullshit and bastards
in a non-expressive fashion. The same conclusion should be drawn about the
significance of [23] to expressive theories of slurring terms.
Notes
1. N.B.A. fines Kobe Bryant $100,000 for Directing Gay Slur at Referee, New
York Times, April 13, 2011.
2. Obviously, here I mean using Nigger with its non-appropriated meaning.
3. A Gay Former N.B.A. Player Responds to Kobe Bryant, New York Times,
April 15, 2011.
4. Offensiveness has become the term of choice to flag whatever it is that bothers
us so much about hearing an utterance of a slurring term. Though I regard it as
too coarse, for convenience I follow the literature in using this term.

5. I emphasize the distinctiveness of my approach here, but my work builds upon
that of others. I have learned much from Tirrell (1999), Hornsby (2001), Kaplan
(2005), Saka (2007), Richard (2008), Hom (2008, 2010), Williamson (2009), Anderson and Lepore (2013), Camp (2013), as well as more general accounts of
pejoratives and expressives in Potts (2005, 2007), Schlenker (2007), and Gutzmann (2013).
6. I give separate attention to whether utterances of sentences containing slurs can
be true or false in The Truth About Slurs, as well as in Jeshion (2013b).
7. Though he never directly puts forward a theory of slurs per se, Kaplan (2005)
would appear to favor an expressivist component to explain slurs offensiveness. Richard (2008) invokes only an expressivist component, with no descriptive
component truth-conditionally independent of the expressivist component. For
Richard, slurring sentences truth-value depends entirely on the slur-users representing their targets contemptuously on account of their socially significant
group, and because, he claims, all such representations would be misrepresentations, all sentences containing slurs lack truth-value. Other expressivists include
Saka (2007) and Gutzmann (2013).
8. The term derogatory variation is due to Hom (2008), who advanced the explanation of derogatory variation as a condition of adequacy on any theory of slurs.
Anderson and Lepore (2013) agree with Hom on slurs derogatory variation.
Hom offers up the comparison between Nigger and Chink; Anderson and
Lepore advance the other comparisons cited above. Both of them also offer others
comparisons that I regard as less appropriate as data points in this context. For
example, Boche and Limey are said to be considerably less offensive than
Nigger, but Boche and Limey are already somewhat antiquated, rarely
used in this country at this time, whereas Nigger is. Cf., also Camp (2013) for
some subtle thoughts backing derogatory variation.
9. Camp (2013).
10. Hom (2008), 24. Anderson and Lepore (2013), 33, concur that slurs possess
derogatory autonomy, citing as examples xenophobes assertions of sentences
like I love wops. They are my favorite people on earth.
11. Hom (2008), 25, remarks that given derogatory autonomy, expressivist accounts
are not even minimally viable, and engages in no further discussion of them.
12. Camp (2013).
13. For the purposes of this paper, it does not matter whether Bryant was in fact using
faggot as an all-purpose putdown. Those to whom Amaechi was responding
argued that faggot, the word itself, lacks the power and vitriol of Nigger.
Indeed, it is for this reason that they think that the use as an all-purpose putdown
is no big deal. In any event, on the view I sketch in this paper, slurring terms,
including faggot and Nigger, share a common semantics, one which accounts
for (i)(v). I discuss the use of faggot as a generic putdown in 6.
14. Cf., Hom (2008) and Anderson and Lepore (2013).
15. Some obviously racially-based slurs lack a clear neutral counterpart. The term
Gook has no neutral counterpart, having been used dominantly for Korean
and Vietnamese primarily by those within the United States military during the
Korean and Vietnam wars. Perhaps because it was simply applied to enemies
of the US military during those wars, it is also used far more generally for
east-Asians.
256 / Robin Jeshion

16. Some terms that I do take as group-referencing slurs reference a subset of a
larger group, and in turn derogate the larger group. Take Shiksa. While it
references non-Jewish women or girls, and is often used for a woman who is
dating, married to, or potentially an object of attention from a Jewish man, it
invariably also derogates, as a wider group, non-Jews.
17. Bach (2012).
18. In choosing the locution weapon uses of slurs, I was influenced by Camps
discussion of weapon metaphors, a term originally used by Booth (1978).
19. For example, the content of the special use could be treated as a purely pragmatic phenomena, in which case Nigger in the G-extending and G-contracting
uses would have the same semantic properties that it has in G-referencing uses.
Alternatively, the expressed content of the special use could be treated as involving a semantic shift, so that Nigger, in this context, has a different meaning
from that had in ordinary uses. A further option is to regard the utterances as
employing a distinct term having new meaning yet which is phonologically and
orthographically the same as Nigger.
20. Many theorists rejection of expressivist views and preference for alternative
semantic analyses is at least partly based on the assumption that a single unified
semantic analysis must accommodate all (or nearly all) uses of slurs. Cf., Hom
(2008) and Tirrell (1999). Essentially the same push for uniformity is present in
Anderson and Lepores (2013) main rationale for abandoning all accounts that
linguistically encode offensiveness.
21. When the slurring term occurs in sentences that are not declaratives, and so lack
truth-value, or occur in appositive clauses whose truth is not at issue, they
still possess a truth-conditional component. Spics and Hispanics possess the
same content along the truth conditionally relevant dimension in Look at those
Spics and Look at those Hispanics, even though the sentences are not up for
evaluation as true or false.
22. On the separation of the truth-conditionally relevant and the offensivenessexplaining aspects of the semantics, I am in agreement with Williamson (2009)
and Anderson and Lepore (2013)despite the fact that we all explain that offensiveness in different ways. Here, we part ways with Hom (2008) and Richard
(2008).
23. Alternatively, one might semantically encode the speakers contempt via a conventional implicature, as opposed to this rules-of-use analysis. On such views, a
weapon use of a slurring term conventionally implicates that the speaker has contempt for the target or group on account of her group membership. I have reservations about the notion of conventional implicature, as employed by both Grice
(1975) and Potts (2005, 2007). Still, nothing of substance turns upon whether the
expressive component of slurring terms is cashed out according to the rules-ofuse analysis or the conventional implicature analysis. A presuppositional account
like that in Schlenker (2007) is not, however, compatible with this analysis.
24. Here I include views that regard such semantic descriptive contents as the sole semantic content of slurs. Cf., Hom and May (2013). But there are other views one
might take, allowing multiple propositions to be expressed with an utterance of
He is a Chink with one or more counting as truth-conditionally relevant. E.g.,
one might adopt a view incorporating my first component, with a second component that separately accounts for the derogation yet does so via the assertion
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
of the separate and truth-conditionally irrelevant content worthy of contempt

on account of being Chinese. Or one might regard both as truth-conditionally
relevant; the sentence expresses two separate propositions, both of which have
truth-conditions.
Contrast with Misc#evic (2011) who regards contemptable because of being
Chinese as part of the semantic content of Chink.
For analysis of the moral psychology of contempt, and, in particular, its normative standing, cf., Mason (2003) and Bell (2013). cf., also Richard (2008)
for similarly maintaining that one who uses a slurring term represents the
target as worthy of contempt but does not assert that as a semantic descriptive content. I am unsure if we share the same reason for thinking
that expressions of contempt are also representations of targets as worthy of
contempt.
Extant expressivist views neglect this component, and thus, to my mind, havent
gone far enough in accounting for how the nature of contempt infects slurring
terms semantics. Contempt involves taking those properties that are the basis
for regarding the target contemptuously as fundamental to the targets identity
as a person, and this feature of contempt is encoded.
Camp has flirted with the view that slurs encode the slur-users commitment to the
idea that the targets group membership determines or accounts for most of his
or her other properties (physical and psychological characteristics, occupation,
political views, and so on), a feature of stereotypes that she dubs essentialism.
See Camp (2013) for discussion and a softened stand on the semantic encoding
of such essentialism.
I offer theoretical reasons in favor of this semantic theory in Dehumanizing
Slurs.
Proponents do not specify their basis for advancing derogatory variation. I surmise that the support is supposed to be somehow intuitive.
Hom (2008) and Misc#evic (2011) advocate such a stance. Camp (2013) registers
sympathies mixed with reservations.
I regard cancellability intuitions as useful tools, not definitive tests for whether
something is semantically encoded.
There are many additional reasons to reject accounts that semantically encode
stereotypes. One problem is accounting for the offensiveness in slurring terms to
groups for which there are no associated societal stereotypes. Take, for example,
a context in which a white male attends a mostly black school and, on a daily
basis, is called honkey. Or consider the Yiddish goy applied wholesale to nonJewish persons. There are no negative stereotypes of either whites or non-Jews that
are manifest within societal institutions (though of course there are stereotypes of
both within black and Jewish communities, respectively). Additionally, statements
like the following are not analytic: Those Kikes are so cheap and scheming;
Those Chinks cant drive. Even if you flesh out the whole content of the
stereotype within the predicate, they still will not be analytic. In Jeshion (2013a),
I discuss in greater detail these and other reasons not to encode stereotypes into
slurs semantic content.
This is not to deny that those who wield slurs typically, often, represent the
targeted group via stereotypes. But that is matter of psychology, and nothing
follows from it about the semantics of slurring terms.
258 / Robin Jeshion

35. In places, Anderson and Lepore appear to claim that all of slurs offensiveness,
for every use, is to be explained by breaking of taboos on utterance.
36. Anderson and Lepore (2013), 36.
37. In fact, they go further, maintaining that in indirect quotation, a slur cannot
(can never) properly be taken as representing the belief reportees views, only
the belief reporters views. This is doubtful. Although perhaps true for some
belief reports (when the slur is in subject position, signaling that it is not at-issue
content), others can signal that the slur encodes the thinking of the reportee, not
the reporter.
38. A related concern about Anderson and Lepores analysis: for them, what makes
slurs slurs is just that they target groups, not individuals, and that they are
prohibited. This makes it exceptionally difficult to distinguish slurring terms
from other prohibited words. Numerous types of words are taboo, and some
even reference socially relevant classes. The term virgin used to be strongly
prohibited simply because it made implicit reference to or an allusion to sex.
Pregnant was prohibited until about the mid-20th century, as was rape (whose
prohibition extended beyond mid-century). So too then would be pregnant
women and rape victim, terms that reference classes, indeed socially relevant
classes. But, obviously, these are not pejoratives at all. A related problem is that
in taking slurs offensiveness to be dependent upon being prohibited, Anderson
and Lepore have to treat a term pre-prohibition as simply a term that references
a group. But Nigger was a slurring term far before blacks had sufficient power
in society to banish its use.
39. In 1999, a political aide to Anthony Williams, then Washington D.C. mayor,
used the term niggardly during a meeting with staff members. The aide, David
Howard, who used the word to describe his administration of a fund, ended
up resigning upon the public outrage sparked by his choice of words. Several other incidents involving use of the term engendered public outcry. Cf.,
wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies about the word niggardly.
40. Cf., Hom (2008) and Anderson and Lepore (2013). Hornsby (2001) also maintains that all expressivist views of the general sort I am advancing are unable to
account for the many distinct types of speech acts that slurring terms are used to
perform.
41. Anderson and Lepore (2013) urge this conception of the problem, and offer it as a
rationale for taking slurring terms as synonymous with their neutral counterparts.
42. Cf., Richard (2008) for a similar line.
43. Here, as before, do not misconstrue this as my maintaining that in such uses,
girl semantically encodes the stereotype, i.e., is synonymous with person who
is insufficiently sporty, (etc.) . . . . I am not taking a stand on the semantic
contribution of girl in such uses.
44. Lee (1960), 45.
45. From various types of G-extending and G-contracting uses, additional groupreferencing slurs often develop: White Nigger for whites regarded as having
lower-status, Cab Nigger and Sand Nigger for those of Middle Eastern
descent.
46. Hornsby (2001), 135.

47. This explanation is similar to but not precisely the same as appealing to metalinguistic negation in the sense of Horn (1985). Denials are not assimilable to
instances of metalinguistic negation.
References
Anderson, L. and Lepore, E. [2013] Slurring Words Nous, 47, 2548.
Bach, K. [2012] Mean and Nasty Talk: On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Slurs, online.
Bell, M. [2013] Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Booth, W. [1978] Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation, Critical Inquiry, 5:1,
4972.
Camp, L. [2013] Slurring Perspectives, Analytic Philosophy, 54, 330349.
Croom, A. [2011] Slurs Language Sciences 33, 343358.
Grice, H.P. [1975] Logic and Conversation in Syntax and Semantics, Cole, P. and Morgan, J.
eds., New York: Academic Press.
Gutzmann, D. [2013] Expressives and Beyond: An Introduction to Varieties of Use-Conditional
Meaning in Beyond Expressives: Explorations in Use-Conditional Meaning, Gutzmann,
D., and Gartner, H., eds., Leiden: Brill.
Hom, C. [2008] The Semantics of Racial Epithets Journal of Philosophy, 105, 41640.
Hom, C. [2010] Pejoratives Philosophy Compass, 5, 16485.
Hom, C and May, R. [2013] Moral and Semantic Innocence, Analytic Philosophy, 54, 293
313.
Horn, L. [1985] Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity Language, 66, 12174.
Hornsby, J. [2001] Meaning and Uselessness: How to think about derogatory words Midwest
Studies in Philosophy: Figurative Language, 25, 12841.
Jeshion, R. [2013a] Slurs and Stereotypes Analytic Philosophy, 54, 314325.
Jeshion, R. [2013b] Embracing Corruption: A Response to Hom and May Analytic Philosophy, 54, 325329.
Jeshion, R. [ms] Dehumanizing Slurs.
Jeshion, R. [ms] The Truth about Slurs.
Kaplan, D. [2005] The Meaning of Ouch and Oops, unpublished manuscript.
Lee, H. [1960] To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Collins Publishers.
Mason, M. [2003] Contempt as a Moral Attitude Ethics 113, 234272.
Misc#evic, N. [2011] Slurs and Thick Concepts: Is the New Expressivism Tenable? Croatian
Journal of Philosophy, 11, 15780.
Potts, C. [2005] The Logic of Conventional Implicatures Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Potts. C. [2007] The Expressive Dimension Theoretical Linguistics, 16597.
Richard, M. [2008] When Truth Gives Out Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saka, P. [2007] How to Think About Meaning Berlin: Springer.
Schlenker, P. [2003] A Plea for Monsters Linguistics and Philosophy, 26, 29120.
Schlenker, P. [2007] Expressive Presuppositions Theoretical Linguistics, 33, 23745.
Tirrell, L. [1999] Racisim, Sexism, and the Inferential Theory of Meaning in Language and
Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language, Christina Hendricks and Kelly Oliver,
eds., SUNY Press, 4179.
Williamson, T. [2009] Reference, Inference, and the Semantics of Pejoratives in The Philosophy
of David Kaplan, Almog, J. and Leonardi, P. eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Copyright of Philosophical Perspectives is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content

may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.

Expressivism and The Offensiveness of Slurs

Încărcat de

Informații document

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Expressivism and The Offensiveness of Slurs

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Philosophical Perspectives, 27, Philosophy of Language, 2013

EXPRESSIVISM AND THE OFFENSIVENESS OF SLURS

232 / Robin Jeshion

Amaechis brave remarks about Nigger and faggot suggest a perspective

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 233

234 / Robin Jeshion

to Adams.13 And Hom has introduced non-derogatory, non-appropriated uses of

1 Varieties of Slurring Terms

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 235

group-referencing slurring terms do contain such additional descriptive material.

236 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 237

2 Varieties of Uses of Slurs

Yao Ming is a Chink.

238 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 239

[9] I love black people but I hate Niggers.

240 / Robin Jeshion

[14] Yao Ming is a fucking Chinese.

3 Three Component Semantics

Yao Ming is a Chink.

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 241

contempt for members of G on account of their being in G or on account of

242 / Robin Jeshion

By contrast, contempt, like resentment, is a highly structured affectively- and

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 243

4 Explaining derogatory variation: assorted sources of offensiveness

244 / Robin Jeshion

qualification that, in advocating derogatory-constancy between Nigger and

4(a) Semantic Sources

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 245

encompassed in such genericizing, or de-individualizing, they are distinct from

4(b) Perlocutionary effects: stereotype activation and compounding

246 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 247

inapt expressions of contempt repugnant and unjust. Stereotype-activation in

4(c) Perlocutionary effect: breaking prohibitions

248 / Robin Jeshion

Moreover, they claim, no linguistic constructions containing a slur can insulate

5 Explaining derogatory autonomy

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 249

various non-semantic mechanisms discussed aboveby activating stereotypes,

250 / Robin Jeshion

Notice that a similar challenge can be offered to demonstrate inadequacy in

6 Explaining non-derogatory and other special uses

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 251

additional meaning of the term as the outcome of appropriations, this defense

252 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 253

semantic analysis of idiot as a term used to connote and express negative

254 / Robin Jeshion

meaning of Chink at all. However, this case admits of a natural explanation as

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 255

256 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 257

of the separate and truth-conditionally irrelevant content worthy of contempt

258 / Robin Jeshion

Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs / 259

Copyright of Philosophical Perspectives is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content

S-ar putea să vă placă și