Margins

Preliminary matters

Defining what slurs are, referencing other theories, simply agrees with their answers to the question of how slurs derogate. And we do not. But since we require arguendo a workable notion of slurs, Richard’s definition of a slur as “a conventional means to express strong negative attitudes towards members of a group” (p.12, Richard 2008) seems promising. Authors commonly observe that slurs are products of linguistic communities (p.351, Anderson & Lepore; pp.446-447, Bolinger 2017; p.437, Hom 2008; pp.280-281, Nunberg 2018) and they target members of a group rather than individuals.

Richard’s definition tells us also what derogation by slurs broadly means: It is at the very least the expression of strong negative attitudes towards members of a group. Explaining how this happens is not the same as explaining how slurs offend because a mechanism that at the very least enables expressing strong negative attitudes towards members of a group does not necessitate that the targets of the expressed strong negative attitudes will be offended. Since derogation and offense are conceptually separate, the essay will leave offense aside.

Explaining how slurs derogate is also not the same as giving its sufficient conditions. The word “how” is general enough that any account which sheds light on the way strong negative attitudes are expressed towards members of a group should qualify as an explanation of how slurs derogate. Like Anderson & Lepore 2013, we will offer a necessary rather than a sufficient condition for slurs to derogate.

Making sense of the literature

Existing theories are messy. We need a framework for making sense of them such that their strengths and weaknesses may be better understood. Carnap’s logical syntax has been described as offering tools for the construction of exactly such a framework to objectively assess: (1) how much a theory is in need of modification because it conflicts with our presently-held foundational beliefs, and (2) whether modification entails the adoption of  a different “linguistic framework”, i.e., the replacement of the theory with another (p.449, Yap 2010).

Carnap 1937 contains highly technical expositions of what Carnap describes as the definite language for the exact description of scientific theories. Here only parts of the syntax of Carnap’s definite language relevant to the description and evaluation of major derogation theories will be presented in English:

1. Primitive symbols are the arbitrary and undefinable symbols in an artificial language ready to be arranged into “series…put together according to the rules of formation” (p.6, Carnap 1937).
2. Primitive symbols include predicates and functors. “S(x)” is a predicate if its definition is a sentence, and a functor if its definition is a numerical expression (p.16, Carnap 1937).
3. A predicate or a functor is validly defined iff. (i) The definiens is a valid definition chain, containing, if applicable: (iA) Further predicates and functors with the correct number of arguments, e.g., a one-place predicate (“A”) will not take two arguments (“A(xy)”). (iB) Symbols that are either primitive symbols or defined by another valid definition chain. (ii) The definiens does not contain any variable that is absent from the definiendum.

(pp.69-71, Carnap 1937)

Rules (a)-(c) promise an objective way to arbiter between theories that seek to explain slurs’ derogation through defining the meaning of slurs (i.e., the so-called content theories), moving beyond adducing ad hoc examples as intuition pumps. If we hold this to be a good enough starting point, the following two requirements can be derived: Firstly, if “S(x)” means the same as “x is a slur”, then (cii) in conjunction with (ci) means any further predicates or functors introduced by the theorist to explain derogation by slurs through defining “S(x)” must not make use of anything other than the slur itself (“the exclusivity requirement”). Secondarily, we can achieve economy of explanation by minimising the number of primitive symbols required to validly define “S(x)” (“the minimising requirement”). We can now begin to evaluate the literature.

Hom’s combinatorial externalism grounds the derogation of racial slurs in “social institutions of racism” comprised of deontic attitudes and negative properties (p.430, Hom 2008): x is a slur with the neutral counterpart (i.e., the word picking out the same members in a group minus the derogatory content) y iff. for every y and x, if y is identical to x, then y deserves negative treatment and possesses negative properties. Hornsby’s expressivism (addressing derogatory words of which slurs are a kind) locates derogation in slurs’ equivalence to various illocutionary gestures (p.140, Hornsby 2001): x is a slur iff. for every x, x is sufficient for a potentially infinite number of derogatory gestures. Jeshion 2018’s multi-modal expressivism combines slurs’ neutral counterparts with the emotion of contempt to give derogation: x is a slur with the neutral counterpart y iff. for every y and x, if y is identical to x, then y deserves contempt. Finally, Camp and Bolinger offer pragmatic accounts of slurs’ derogation which treat it as a function of the absence of appropriate linguistic distancing, the degree required correlates with the repugnance of the slurs in context (pp.51-52, Camp; p.450, Bolinger): x is a slur relative to its distancing modification y iff. there exists an arbitrary numerical correlate of x which maps onto a different arbitrary numerical correlate under context Q, and there exists a smallest possible value of y which yields a non-positive number when subtracted from the second numerical correlate. Rewriting these definitions in predicate logic and we can summarise as follows:

Theory	Definition	The exclusivity requirement	The minimising requirement
Combinatorial externalism	S(x, y) ≡ (∀y)w(∀x)r[y = x ⊃ (Ny ∧ Ty)]	Met	Average
Expressivism	S(x) ≡ (∀x)w(G1x ∨ G2x ∨…)	Met	Poor
Multi-modal expressivism	S(x, y) ≡ (∀y)w(∀x)r[y = x ⊃ Cy]	Met	Excellent
Pragmatism	S(x, y) = (∃x)w {[Q(x) = z] ∧ (∃y)r(κy)(z – y ≤ 0)}	Not met	Poor

The method used here might strike one as a massive departure from the ways these debates tend to unfold in the literature. We agree with Nunberg that a non-semanticist approach is necessary as little insight is gained by plunging oneself into debates laboured with makeshift predicates and functors intuited by theorists who are also informed (though not dictated) by systemic bigotry (p.242, Nunberg 2018). Carnap’s logical syntax prima facie reveals that among all the content theories, Jeshion’s is the most economical and illuminating in the sense that her understanding of slurs is not complicated by other potentially ineliminable variables. Whilst pragmatism fares the poorest under both requirements, it qualitatively offers the most sophisticated mechanism of slur derogation by resorting to numerical calculations. The following account is an attempt to have the best of both worlds: To capture numerically the nuances of derogation by slur without creating surplus entities that cannot be understood from the meaning of the theory alone.

A novel account

To offer a simpler and more powerful alternative, we shall begin with Nunberg’s observation that for most slur users it matters only what such uses say about their own affiliation (pp.253-254, Ibid.). Slurs derogate as their users choose them over another truth-functionally equivalent but unmarked expression as part of a ventriloquist implicature to pragmatically announce their allegiance to derogatory institutions (p.266, Ibid.). It might be argued here that prohibitionism, the idea that slurs are simply prohibited words (Anderson & Lepore 2013), similarly marks derogatory slurs, but then it leaves how slurs derogate completely unexplained.

But Nunberg’s account suffers problems. For one, self-affiliation needs not involve derogation. If slurring is nothing over and above using slangs like “mad” in order to fit in (pp.288-289, Nunberg 2018), it may be as Camp observes that derogation becomes a sidenote rather than being the main event (p.45, Camp 2018). Secondly, Nunberg is much less convincing when explaining the presence of derogation in a slur-permissive society and the absence of derogation in reclaimed uses: His insistence that “affiliatory intention is morally decisive” (pp.286-287, Nunberg 2018) in the former case resurrects Hom’s externalism that he so convincingly refutes mere paragraphs ago (p.287, Ibid.), and his ad hoc invocation of the speech acts of the ironic and the defiant (pp.288-289, Ibid.) leaves disjointed what would otherwise be a unifying account of how slurs derogate: How is it that these specific speech acts nullify derogation?

Nunberg successfully reminds us of the perspectival dimension of slurs’ derogation, e.g., the n-word is used by white people for white people. But he overcorrects by neglecting that, e.g., the n-word is also used for white people to harm black people. However slurring reveals one’s self-affiliation, it more crucially does so in a non-negotiable manner. The slurring discourse is not as Hom describes – dyadic (p.437, Hom 2008). Rather it is always monadic, because the user lacks proper recognition of the target as an equal party to the discourse. Derogation happens when the user speaks as if the target is not there, using words that should be highly contested as-a-matter-of-factly. This goes beyond just an emotion of contempt (Jeshion 2018), or an instance of silencing (McGowan 2004). What has been frustrated is the discourse itself, which Habermas describes as a “procedural practice” that is “intersubjective” and results in “the model of an agreement” (pp.27-28, Habermas 1993). By slurring, the discourse is no longer intersubjective (i.e., mutual) because the user expects acquiescence from a target they fail to acknowledge, and the target fails to recognise themselves in the slurs being used against them non-negotiably. In addition, ethical discourse which “guarantee(s) in principle freedom of access, equal rights to participate, truthfulness on the part of participants, absence of coercion in adopting positions, and so on” (p.31, Ibid.) becomes impossible. These standards are salient enough such that frustrating them by slurring is derogatory because to the extent that the user addresses their target, they undertake to participate in a discourse, and to the extent that they undertake to participate in a discourse, they are bound by its “transcendental constraints” (p.31, Ibid.). Slurring therefore derogates discourse and the target much like thieving disrespects civic conscience and property owners. Formally our account can be expressed as: S(x, y) = [P(x ∧ ~y|x ∨ y) = 1], where P() denotes the relative probability of the user selecting the slur x over its linguistic default y.

Finally, since the foregoing account builds on that offered in Nunberg 2018, it inherits its ability to explain linguistic phenomena related to slurs with some added twists: Firstly, using slurs in the academic context for exposition (p.129, Hornsby 2001; p.435, Hom 2008) is no longer quarantined from derogation. To the extent that academics non-discursively decide with certainty that using slurs is permissible, whatever the grounding, such non-negotiability triggers the used slurs’ derogatory force. Secondarily, explanations of slurs’ derogation surviving linguistic embedding no longer stops at the patchy ways in which embedding renders slurs not-at-issue, since the derogation in slurs’ being not-at-issue has been identified with the broader discourse’s non-negotaibility. Thirdly, reclamations no longer rely on ad hoc speech acts to be successful, it is constituted by slurring: The user being 100% self-certain about not acknowledging the target means the target is 100% failing to be acknowledged; reclamation can initially simply be an illocution of the target’s “unseenness” (to be distinguished from Jeshion 2020’s visibility as a perlocutionary effect of reclamation acts) within the monadic discourse. Even when we are ignored, we would still be capable of issuing illocutionary expressives of shock, disbelief and frustration since these do not have to fit the world or change the world to fit us in any way (p.16, Searle 1979) . Fourthly, the case of the imagined absolute user (e.g., someone pictured to be completely ignorant of slurs’ derogatoriness within a particular linguistic community or someone irredeemably bigoted) becomes unproblematic since they are now neither excused (pp.286-287, Nunberg 2018) nor merely giving rise to “rational but unwarranted” offense (p.449, Bolinger 2017) for choicelessly, i.e., 100% committedly, slurring. Lastly, for borderline cases where our intuition swings both ways, only when discourse surrounding slurs remains open (“[insert slur].” “Hey, that’s not very nice!” “Why?”…) may these words ever have any hope of loosening their derogatory connotation.

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