The Social Life of Slurs, Reconsidered

This dissertation is a philosophical study of the sociolinguistic factors implicated in slurring. It aims to understand the unusual linguistic patterns of slurs. It departs from existing research by de-emphasising traditional semantic questions about derogatory meaning. Instead, it develops a novel sociolinguistic analysis that supplements rather than supplants semantic theorising. It does so by studying four often neglected social features of slurs. (I) First, this project analyses what it means to consider 'slur’ a normatively loaded, historically contingent and culturally sensitive label. (II) It then explores how slurs threaten the addressee's social standing. (III) To continue, it examines what slurs signal about the social identities of their users. (IV) Finally, it presents a sociopragmatic theory of derogatory meaning that reserves an explanatory role for social prohibitions against uttering slurs.