Slurs and Redundancy

According to nearly all theorists writing on the subject, a certain derogatory content is regularly and systematically communicated by slurs. So united, the theorists disagree sharply on the elements of this content, on its provenance, and on its mechanism. I argue that the basic premiss of all these views, that there is any such derogatory content conveyed with the use of slurs, is highly dubious.

     

Social judgment of aggressive language: Effects of target and sender sex on the evaluation of slurs

We investigated the influence of the sex of the target and the sex of the sender on the judgment of slurs (verbal derogation). From previous research, we selected and clustered slurs into seven categories and respondents rated their degree of perceived insult in two consecutive questionnaire surveys (N = 281 and N = 224, respectively). Results confirm that slurs are generally judged as being more insulting when directed towards females than towards males. In comparison, differences in sex of sender were small. When directed towards females, slurs referring to “being loose” were rated as the most insulting. For both target sexes, remarks referring to homosexuality and physical unattractiveness were among those rated as the most insulting. Least insulting were slurs referring to unethical acts, lack of intelligence and cowardliness. A sex of respondent effect was found, suggesting that women rated slurs generally more insulting than men. The pattern of results showed considerable stability across surveys attesting for the reliability of the method for measuring the social evaluation of slurs.     

The Pragmatics of Slurs

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term (and its associations). Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile.     

Slurs and Semantic Indeterminacy

Philosophia - The analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs has recently aroused interest among philosophers of language. A puzzling element of it is its erratic behaviour in embeddings, for...     

Slurs as Illocutionary Force Indicators

Philosophia - Slurs are derogatory words and they are used to derogate certain groups. Theories of slurs must explain why they are derogatory words, as well as other features like independence and...     

Experiencing Racial Humor with Outgroups: A Psychophysiological Examination of Co-Viewing Effects

Research on co-viewing (or group viewing) is scarce. Yet, co-viewing has important implications for the viewers’ entertainment experience and the way viewers respond to and evaluate entertainment—especially those with controversial messages. The present study investigated responses to racial humor content among racial in-group and out-group viewing contexts. Specifically, the study examined the extent to which Blacks and Whites would experience discomfort when viewing racial slurs in comedies with in-group compared to out-group members. Employing real-time psychophysiological data and multilevel time series models, the study found a significant increase in emotional arousal (indicated by SCRs) and distraction (indicated by RSA) among Blacks in the context of out-group viewing compared to in-group viewing, but not for Whites. Implications of findings are discussed.     

Intergroup dynamics of extra-legal police aggression: An integrated theory of race and place

The police are empowered to use various forms of coercion to accomplish legitimate duties, but they also may employ them gratuitously in violation of law or departmental policy. These extra-legal behaviors range in severity from verbal abuse, such as racial slurs and profanity, to unjustified physical force resulting in severe injury or death. Racial and ethnic minorities, especially those residing in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, may be disproportionately targeted for such practices. Scholars have offered several explanations for the differential employment of extra-legal police aggression, but an integrated theory of minority disadvantage has yet to be developed. In this article, we synthesize the existing literature into a model of extra-legal police aggression that considers intergroup dynamics of race and place. We argue that ordinary social-psychological processes triggered by the characteristics of neighborhoods explain extra-legal police aggression against minority citizens.     

An examination of the nature and correlates of ethnic harassment experiences in multiple contexts

The authors examined the nature and correlates of ethnic harassment experiences in 4 predominantly Hispanic samples of working men and women (N = 575) using a newly developed scale. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a 2-factor structure for the Ethnic Harassment Experiences scale (i.e., verbal ethnic harassment and exclusion due to ethnicity). Most experiences of ethnic harassment in the workplace during the previous 24 months included verbal ethnic harassment (i.e., ethnic slurs, derogatory ethnic comments, or ethnic jokes). It was also found that participants who experienced verbal ethnic harassment and exclusion reported negative correlates that could not be attributed to affective disposition. For some correlates, those who experienced low levels of verbal harassment and high levels of exclusion were more negatively affected than others, perhaps as a result of the attributional ambiguity of the situation.     

Ethnophaulisms and exclusion: the behavioral consequences of cognitive representation of ethnic immigrant groups

Ethnophaulisms are the words used as slurs to refer to ethnic immigrant outgroups. This article explores the effects of these cognitive representations of ethnic immigrant groups on exclusion behavior directed toward these immigrant groups. Using archival data spanning a 150-year period of American history, the results of these analyses provide a sobering picture of the effects of the cognitive representation of immigrants: a century and a half of thinking about ethnic immigrant groups in a simplistic and negative manner and a corresponding tendency to exclude those immigrant groups from the receiving society. The implications of these results for theoretical approaches to intergroup relations are considered.     

A puzzle about pejoratives

Pejoratives are the class of expressions that are meant to insult or disparage. They include swear words and slurs. These words allow speakers to convey emotional states beyond the truth-conditional contents that they are normally taken to encode. The puzzle arises because, although pejoratives seem to be a semantically unified class, some of their occurrences are best accounted for truth-conditionally, while others are best accounted for non-truth-conditionally. Where current, non-truth-conditional, views in the literature fail to provide a unified solution for the puzzle, this paper motivates a novel, semantic, analysis of pejorative language. The significance of the proposed solution is not only linguistic in nature, but also philosophical, as it both provides a new argument for, and sheds further light on, the nature of semantic externalism.     

Taming Uncivil Discourse

In an era of seemingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in much of the industrialized world. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political and social conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or reappropriate, slurs directed against them. Using as a context a U.S. Supreme Court case about whether “The Slants”—a band named after a traditional slur against Asians—can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about reappropriation processes based on a nationally representative sample with an oversample of East Asian Americans and several survey experiments. We find that motives attributions influence how people understand and evaluate potentially disparaging words. In particular, when reappropriation motives are perceived, insulting words are judged to be less insulting. In this sense, uncivil discourse can to some degree be tamed.     

The effect of an overheard ethnic slur on evaluations of the target: How to spread a social disease

An experiment was conducted to assess the effects of an ethnic slur on evaluations of a targeted minority group member by those who overheard the slur. White subjects plus four confederates participated in a study ostensibly concerned with debating skills. Two of the confederates, one of whom was black, were always picked to engage in a debate which the others were to evaluate. The black debator either won or lost the debate. After the debate, one confederate-evaluator criticized the black in a manner that either did or did not involve an ethnic slur; in a control condition, no such comment was made. Based on the notion that ethnic slurs activate negative schemata regarding members of the targeted minority group, it was predicted that when the black debator lost the debate, the ethnic slur would lead to lower evaluations of his skill. This hypothesis was supported. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed.     

Reported Experiences of Anti-Christian Prejudice among Christian Adolescents in England

Christians’ experiences of anti-Christian prejudice are relatively unexplored in sociological research. This article analyses perceived anti-Christian prejudice reported by Christian adolescents in England. Rich interview data were collected regarding Anglican, Baptist, and Catholic adolescents (N=26) over a five-month period in churches and church youth groups in an English city. The young people reported incidents of anti-Christian name-calling (slurs), bullying, labelling, and aggressive questioning about their faith by non-Christian peers, indicating that anti-Christian prejudice may affect the status of Christians in adolescent peer-group hierarchies. They also perceived formal aspects of schooling to be biased against Christian beliefs and practices. These episodes suggest that, like prejudice against other religious groupings, anti-Christian prejudice has historical negative tropes and stereotypes based upon perceived inferiority. However, unlike other kinds of religious prejudice, the analyses also suggest that anti-Christian prejudice may sometimes be related to philosophical objections to religious beliefs rather than perceived negative racial or ethnic attributes. These findings are discussed with reference to the debate about secularisation.     

When less is more: Psychometric properties of Norwegian short‐forms of the Ambivalent Sexism Scales (ASI and AMI) and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) Scale

This paper reports on the development and the psychometric properties of short forms of Ambivalent Sexism Scales toward women (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) and men (AMI; Glick & Fiske, 1999), and a scale measuring rape stereotypes (IRMA; McMahon & Farmer, 2011). The short form AMI/ASI were applied for examining gender and educational differences in university students (N = 512) and in high school students (N = 1381), and for predicting individual differences in rape stereotypes in the latter. The short forms demonstrated good to excellent psychometric properties across samples of emerging adults. Relative to female students, male students reported markedly more hostility toward women and more stereotypical beliefs about rape. Despite sampling from a highly gender egalitarian and secular culture, these gender differences are on a par with those reported internationally. Rape stereotypes were predicted by sexism in high school students. Additional predictors were educational program, relationship status, and acceptance of derogatory sexual slurs. The paper questions the validity of separate constructs for benevolent sexism toward women versus men. The short form versions of the scales may substitute the original versions in future research, and help prevent attrition while measuring the same constructs.     

Trauma,cultural survival and identity politics in a post-9/11 era: Reflections by Sikh youth

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of Sikh immigrant communities after 9/11. Notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ are deeply fragmented for the Sikh families, especially the youth, and these complex social processes are explored. The post 9/11 backlash was pivotal in this community as it created more barriers for the youth in their schools as they became victims of racist slurs, threats and physical assault that were treated with apathy from teachers and administrators. Students stopped going to school, changed their physical appearances, displayed ‘patriotic’ American sentiment to promote an appearance of belonging, became depressed and were even suicidal as a result of the 9/11 backlash. The sense of persecution and of being labeled ‘suspect’ in the eyes of the public was detrimental to the families and the ensuing ‘fear’ for their safety in public spaces provoked many violent memories from India that these families experienced during the Hindu–Sikh riots from 1984 to the mid-1990s. The role of memory and the diasporic imaginary of Khalistan in the Sikh diaspora are understood throughout the article, as well. The findings of the study reveal immeasurable hardships for the Sikh youth in their schools and challenge assumptions about immigrant rigor and the resilience of immigrant youth in the face of hostile experiences and interactions. These hardships that stemmed from the trauma of migration and downward social mobility, the 9/11 backlash and their struggle to find a place led to challenges in identity formation and preservation.     

The Contents of Perception and the Contents of Emotion

Several philosophers think there are important analogies between emotions and perceptual states. Furthermore, considerations about the rational assessibility of emotions have led philosophers—in some cases, the very same philosophers—to think that the content of emotions must be propositional content. If one finds it plausible that perceptual states have propositional contents, then there is no obvious tension between these views. However, this view of perception has recently been attacked by philosophers who hold that the content of perception is object‐like. I shall argue for a view about the content of emotions and perceptual states which will enable us to hold both that emotional content is analogous to perceptual content and that both emotions and perceptual states can have propositional contents. This will involve arguing for a pluralist view of perceptual content, on which perceptual states can have both contents which are proposition‐like and contents which are object‐like. I shall also address two significant objections to the claim that emotions can have proposition‐like contents. Meeting one of these objections will involve taking on a further commitment: the pluralist account of perceptual content will have to be one on which the contents of perception can be non‐conceptual.