Abstract
In this paper, I am going to examine the intricate connection between indirectly reporting and translating, to move forward with the application of this connection to slurring. Since I consider (more or less) slurring a derogatory speech act (albeit an orthogonal or secondary speech act, one that cannot be carried out unless one performs another speech act, like, e.g., asserting), the question I examine reduces to how one can indirectly report or translate the speech act of slurring. I will give some attention to the idea that slurring is a derogatory speech act (and possibly one in a series of speech acts aimed at maintaining the status quo (that is the social distinction between social categories (e.g., blacks vs. whites). This idea of slurring as a derogatory speech act is similar to the idea by Croom (2008, 2011, 2013a, b, 2014, 2015) (and other scholars such as Saka (1998) and Potts (2007)) that slurring contains both an ideational component and an expressive one. However, the expressive dimension is more regulated than one may have thought, so much so that I venture the idea of a speech act (with an appropriate distinction between the micro speech act of slurring and the macro speech act of dominating by a series of micro speech acts) (see van Dijk 1980 on macrostructures).
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Notes
- 1.
As Croom (p.c.) says, it would be closer to the truth to say that black interlocutors often call each other ‘nigga’ – or more often ‘my nigga’ as in ‘what’s up my nigga?’ – but do not typically call themselves this in isolation or on their own. The non-derogatory use often occurs in these kinds of dyadic in-group exchanges.
- 2.
I accept Hom’s (2008) view that the semantics of slurring expressions has a potential for doing harm; however, it is the uses to which these expressions are put that determine the ultimate meanings of such expressions.
- 3.
This is not to say that there have never been episodes of racism – surely there have been, but we have never seen the revolting episodes described by Kennedy (2002) in connection with American history.
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Capone, A. (2016). Indirectly Reporting and Translating Slurring Utterances. In: Capone, A., Kiefer, F., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_12
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