THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF SLURS READING GROUP
Fridays, 10.00-11.30 (WET)
Faculty of Letters, University of Porto, Via Panorâmica s/n, room 209
This is a biweekly reading group pertaining to my project Slurs and the Lexicon: A Rich-Lexicon Approach to Slurs and Other Evaluative Expressions - LEXISLUR (2023.05952.CEECIND). In recent years, slurs have piqued the interest of philosophers of language and linguists due to their capacity to derogate and offend. As other evaluative expressions, they seem to have both a descriptive aspect and an evaluative/attitudinal one, thus challenging the traditional, truth-conditional approach to natural language expressions. The purpose of this reading group is to get acquainted with these socially-relevant expressions, to study their characteristics and various uses, to see what distinguishes them from other evaluative terms, to survey some of the main theories on the market (both semantics and pragmatic), to understand how they connect with larger social phenomena such as discrimination, etc.
The seminar has ended for the 2024-2025 academic year. Thanks to all participants and see you next year!
Schedule and readings
OCTOBER 25
Ralph DiFranco, "Pejorative Language", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014.
NOVEMBER 22
Robin Jeshion, "Varieties of Pejoratives", in J. Khoo & R. Sterken (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, 211-231, 2021.
DECEMBER 6
Robin Brontsema, "A Queer Revolution: Reconceptualizing the Debate Over Linguistic Reclamation", Colorado Research in Linguistics 17(1), 1-17, 2004.
DECEMBER 20
Claudia Bianchi, "Slurs and appropriation: An echoic account", Journal of Pragmatics 66, 35-44, 2014.
JANUARY 24
Luvell Anderson, "Calling, Addressing, and Appropriation", in D. Sosa (Ed.), Bad Words. Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs, Oxford University Press, 6-26, 2018.
FEBRUARY 28
Bianca Cepollaro & Dan Lopez de Sa, "Who Reclaims Slurs?", Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103(3), 606-619, 2022.
MARCH 28
Dan Zeman, "A Rich-Lexicon Theory of Slurs and Their Uses", Inquiry 65(7), 942-966, 2022.
APRIL 29 [online]
Lauren Ashwell, "Gendered Slurs", Social Theory and Practice 42(2), 228-239, 2016.
MAY 26 [online]
Arianna Falbo, "Slurs, Neutral Counterparts, and What You Could Have Said", Analytic Philosophy 62 (4), 359-375, 2021.
JUNE 6
Eric Swanson, "Slurs and Ideology", forthcoming in R. Celikates, S. Haslanger & J. Stanley (Eds.). Analysing Ideology, Oxford University Press.
