Recent literature on slurs has focused primarily on a number of English slurs targeting race, nationality, sexual orientation, disability etc. On the other hand, current discussions of slurs focus on several well-established uses: derogative, internalized or appropriated. My aim in this presentation is twofold. First, I want to bring to light a certain, hitherto unexplored use of slurs, which I dub “self-identificatory”. I illustrate this type of use by bringing evidence from Romanian and other languages from Eastern Europe – in particular, the word “țigan” (translated in English as “gypsy” and applied to Roma ethnics). According to a Romanian Governmental Report (2009), 66% of the Roma ethnics interviewed use “țigan” to self-identify, while when asked how offensive they find the term, 38.3% found it “not offensive at all”. The self-identificatory use of “țigan” is thus solid and, given that it cannot be reduced to other uses of slurs, it should be included in the data to be explained by a theory of slurs.

My second aim is to propose a semantic/pragmatic framework that accounts for all uses of slurs. This is the framework developed by Del Pinal (2017) and Del Pinal & Reuter (2016), where the meaning of words is represented by a tuple consisting in an extension and a conceptual structure. The conceptual structure comprises a multitude of meaning dimensions, such as (in the case of common nouns) PERCEPTUAL, CONSTITUTIVE, AGENTIVE, TELIC etc. While the full meaning of a word comprises the conceptual representation with all its dimensions, particular uses of a word highlight certain dimensions in the detriment of others. Thus, in a sentence like “This book is heavy”, the CONSTITUTIVE dimension is foregrounded, while in “This book is interesting”, a different dimension is. This approach explains how expressions can get different interpretations in different contexts, while preserving their full meaning.

Applying this framework to “țigan” and to slurs in general presupposes the introduction in the conceptual structure associated with these expressions of an expressive dimension (EXPRESSIVE) responsible for the slurs’ derogatory force. Since the framework allows one to foreground certain dimensions in the detriment of others, both derogatory uses and self-identificatory uses are explained easily: in the former the evaluative dimension is foregrounded, while in the latter it is not. This avoids both the postulation of ambiguity and making the meaning of slurs (entirely) depend on speakers’ intentions: the derogatory force of “țigan” and other slurs is part of the EXPRESSIVE dimension of the conceptual structure and thus encoded in language, despite the different uses they can be put to.

 

 

References:

Del Pinal, G. (2017) A multidimensional Putnam-style semantics for Truth-conditional Pragmatics. Forthcoming in Linguistics and Philosophy.

Del Pinal, G. & Reuter, K. (2016). Dual character concepts in social cognition: Commitments and the normative dimension of conceptual representation. Cognitive Science 41 (S3), 477-501.  

Romanian Government Report (2009). Barometrul relaţiilor interetnice. Mai-iunie 2009. Etnici romi-raport parţial. (Interethnic Relations, May-June 2009. Roma ethnics, partial report).