I critically examine Stojnić and Lepore’s key claim from their book Inflammatory Language that articulations are particularly important to the analysis of slurs. I agree with Stojnić and Lepore that we should endorse the significance of articulations for our linguistic intuitions, especially when it comes to the causal and social powers of language; I argue that for locating this approach to the articulations of slurs in a broader context of fiction and taboos. However, while I accept Stojnić and Lepore’s evidence for theorizing some slurs through associations at the level of articulations, I argue for continuing to account for slurs in part through prohibitions and through associations at the level of words and concepts.
This paper critically examines Unnsteinsson’s Collapse Argument, which contends that “Easy” views of saying something or expressing a proposition collapse into the Gricean view (Unnsteinsson 2022: Ch. 4). Easy views maintain that saying/expressing is simply a matter of uttering a sentence with its meaning, without requiring Gricean communicative intentions. Unnsteinsson argues that Easy views must appeal to such intentions to explain what makes saying/expression intentional and rational and that this collapses them into the Gricean view. I show that this argument fails for several reasons. First, the intentions that the Easy views must posit to explain what makes saying/expressing rational are not equivalent to the Gricean communicative intentions. Second, the constitutive question of what makes an act into a saying/ expressing and the rationalizing question of what makes it rational are distinct. Thus, even if Easy theorists would have to appeal to something like Gricean communicative intentions in answering the latter question, this wouldn’t cause their answer to the former question to collapse into the Gricean answer.
In their Inflammatory Language, Stojnić and Lepore present four major criticisms of content-based views of pejorative language: 1) the Projection Argument; 2) the Hyperprojection Argument; 3) the Specificity Argument; and 4) the Reclamation Argument. This paper argues that a content-based view can adequately respond to each of these criticisms. The paper goes on to consider their positive view, the Articulation Account, and argues that it suffers from being both under-specified and overly ambitious. Even when the view is plausibly precisified as a functional role theory of articulations, a serious dilemma arises: focusing on the sound or shape of the articulation is problematic when considering counterexamples like the racist use of ‘Monday’ as code for the N-word, and focusing on the functional role of the articulation is problematic when considering how little functional similarity there is between the Mandarin demonstrative term (‘那个’) and the N-word. The paper also presents the applications of two external criticisms deriving from the Identity Thesis and the Framework Fallacy and concludes that the Articulation Account falls short of being a leading contender in the analytic space of views for pejorative language.
In this précis, we summarize the key themes and arguments of the Inflammatory Language: Its Linguistics and Philosophy.
I defend a lexical account of slurs against criticisms mounted by Stojnić and Lepore, and present positive reasons for preferring a lexical account over the articulation account they put forward. A lexical account, I argue, explains why articulations of a slur give offense: viz., they are recognized as articulations of a particular word. A lexical account also does better than the articulation account in explaining the naive acquisition and use of slurs, facts about mishearing and mispronouncing, the evolution of certain words into or away from status as slurs, and the fact that “reclaimed” slurring words still give offense when used as slurs.
