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A puzzle about pejoratives

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Semantic externalism is the view that the meaning of a linguistic expression may supervene on more than the internal, psychological states of the speaker that uttered it, and, hence, can also depend on external facts about the speaker’s linguistic community; facts that the speaker may be entirely unaware of. See Kripke (1972), Putnam (1975), and Kaplan (1977).

  2. It should be noted that speakers can also use (1) to convey positive emotions such as excitement or amazement. This kind of variability will be addressed in greater detail later in the paper.

  3. See Potts (2005, 2007, 2008).

  4. See Potts (2007, p. 166). For the purpose of presenting the puzzle, this paper sets aside other features of pejorative expressions such as the variation, autonomy and appropriation of their derogatory content. See Hom (2010) for a detailed presentation of these features.

  5. The central point originates in Kaplan (1999, pp. 14, 16), but Potts (2007, Pp. 169–172) offers the most detailed examination of this phenomenon. The wide-scoping conclusion is also endorsed by Hornsby (2001, p. 133), Potts (2005, p. 159ff), and Richard (2008, p. 17).

  6. Potts (2007, p. 170). The example originates in Kaplan (1999, p. 14). It is worth pointing out the limitations of examples with adjectives embedded under complex demonstratives, as the contents of such adjectives project away from truth-conditions regardless of whether the adjective is pejorative or not. The limitation of this particular kind of example is orthogonal to the central point that contents of pejorative adjectives appear to project away generally from truth-conditions. We can more clearly motivate the central point by considering pejorative/non-pejorative adjective pairs embedded under different quantifiers. In the following examples, the non-pejorative adjective clearly contributes to the truth-conditions of its sentence, while the pejorative adjective does not:

    1. a.

      Only infuriating managers are being laid off. (Non-infuriating managers are staying on.)

    2. a′.

      Only fucking managers are being laid off. (*Non-fucking managers are staying on.)

    3. b.

      Every infuriating manager should be laid off. (Non-infuriating managers should stay on.)

    4. b′.

      Every fucking manager should be laid off. (*Non-fucking managers should stay on.)

    Similarly when we examine pejorative versus non-pejorative adverbs, the same distinction arises:

    1. c.

      Every time the manager annoyingly issues orders, the workers ignore him. (But when he does so nicely, they pay attention.)

    2. c′

      Every time the manager fucking issues orders, the workers ignore him. (*But when he does so nicely, they pay attention.)

    Thanks to the anonymous referee at this journal for helpful discussion on this matter.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid. Potts also points out the agent-centering of EA’s—namely that EA’s are centrally tied to the immediate attitudes of their speakers. This immediacy is brought out explicitly in the next example.

  9. Ibid at p. 171.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Or, at the very least, their expressive contents must be non-truth-conditional.

  12. See Potts (2008, pp. 10–11) and Potts et al. (2009, pp. 357–361).

  13. Potts (2005, 2007, 2008) concludes that pejorative content must be explained at the level of conventional implicature. His views are carefully considered in the next section. Other non-truth-conditional theories include Kaplan (1999), Copp (2001), Hornsby (2001), Macià (2006), Schlenker (2007), Richard (2008), and Williamson (2009).

  14. Kratzer (1999, p. 6).

  15. Schlenker (2003, p. 98).

  16. Hom (2008, p. 429).

  17. These classifications of semantic with truth-conditional, and pragmatic with non-truth-conditional are merely terminological, and not intended as a substantive thesis on the semantic-pragmatics distinction. For example, the paper takes no position on whether conventional implicatures are non-truth-functional, semantic contents, and nothing in the overall argument hinges on this.

  18. One possible response to the puzzle is that pejorative terms are simply ambiguous, requiring no further explanation than to say that pejorative nouns and verbs are explained semantically, while pejorative adjectives and adverbs are explained pragmatically. Call this a disjunctive analysis of pejorative terms. While this paper will not directly argue against a disjunctive analysis, such a view seems to run counter to the intuition that expressives in their different syntactic forms still share a common, core meaning. Notice how strange it would be for seemingly synonymous occurrences of the same term (albeit framed in different grammatical categories) to generate such similar expressive results through such differing linguistic processes. It would be as if closely related pairs such as ‘happyAP’ and ‘happinessNP’, or ‘boringAP’ and ‘boringVP’ received different explanations—the former in each pair pragmatic, the latter in each pair semantic.

  19. Potts has recently relinquished his position that expressives are univocally wide-scoping (see Harris and Potts 2009, p. 524), opting instead for “an account based in pragmatically-mediated perspective shifting” that is developed as part of the non-propositional, conventional implicature view that he endorses in his (2007, 2008). As we will see in the next section, this view is problematic, so the move is not especially promising.

  20. These theories include expressivism, nominalism, contextualism, inferentialism, presupposition and conventional implicature views. See Hom (2010) for a detailed summary and critique of each view.

  21. See Grice (1975, p. 174).

  22. The view is first suggested in Stenner (1981) and Kaplan (1999), and developed in Potts (2005) and Williamson (2009).

  23. See sentences (42c) and (43c).

  24. Another common reaction is to deny that these are genuine occurrences of pejorative terms in sentences like (14)–(30), and that they are instead metalinguistic occurrences. For example, see Horn (1989, p. 372) for a metalinguistic treatment of negated slurs. The problem is that a metalinguistic analysis seems ad hoc given the wide range of operators beyond negation that occur in non-orthodox examples. Thanks to David Copp for helpful discussion on this matter.

  25. See Hom (2008, pp. 424–426).

  26. Bach (1999, p. 340). The effectiveness of this fourth criticism of the CI account depends on the extent to which the reader accepts Bach’s IQ test as a valid test for CI’s. Some might claim that the IQ test effectively rules out CI content entirely, so that the criticism depends on the much stronger claim that there is no CI content. Given the limited scope of this paper, I remain neutral on this matter, and simply note the conditional nature of this criticism. Thanks to the anonymous referee at this journal for helpful feedback here.

  27. See Hom (2008, pp. 424–426) for other examples of indirect reports that illustrate how pejorative content passes the IQ test, and is, thus, not detachable from what is said.

  28. See Hom (2010) for detailed descriptions and examples of such factors. Note that the criticism is only that the CI view is, at least, incomplete in crucial ways, and not that the CI view is, in principle, blocked from providing such explanations.

  29. Potts recognizes this concern when he says, “I do not at present see a way to formulate these denotations in a way that allows for carefully controlled positive uses” (2007, p. 188).

  30. Again, see Hom (2010) for a detailed summary and critique of the pragmatic accounts of pejoratives.

  31. MacFarlane (forthcoming, p. 18). MacFarlane is specifically addressing the priority of a semantic analysis for epistemic modal claims, but his point holds generally. As noted previously, a multidimensional account, without ‘common currency’, faces the problem of dimensional closure.

  32. Hom (2008, pp. 430–432).

  33. As with racial slurs, this view is subject to empirical, sociological, investigation to determine the precise practices and ideological properties that are contributed to the semantic value. That there is the perverse nexus in these social dynamics that generates a complementary relation between genders is especially odious.

  34. See Pinker (2007, pp. 346–349) for a concise characterization of the social taboo surrounding ‘fuck’. Other swear words like ‘shit’ or ‘damn’ are responsive to the less severe social norms with regard to bodily waste and Christianity, respectively, and hence carry less derogatory force than ‘fuck’. As each of the social taboos changes over time, so do the corresponding semantic values.

  35. Recall that slurs have empty extensions, according to CE, as no one deserves to be treated negatively for having stereotypical properties because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

  36. See Hom (2008, pp. 437–438).

  37. See Hom (2008, p. 432).

  38. Hopefully it is clear that the occurrences of slurs and pejoratives in this paper fall under the category of potentially offensive, yet non-derogatory language.

  39. While there are other mechanisms for explaining metaphoric content, the view is consistent with well-established theories that derive metaphoric content from truth-conditional content.

  40. I take no position as to whether these are cases of dead metaphors, whereby the conversationally implicated content is codified after the standardization of its use.

  41. The ease with which the extended CE account explains pejorative metaphors does not decisively rule against non-truth-conditional accounts, but does indicate certain limitations for such accounts; namely that they are not immediately compatible with cognitivist theories of metaphor that derive metaphoric content from truth-conditional content.

  42. Following Grice, I take the calculation of conversational implicatures to be merely a rational reconstruction, and not necessarily a conscious inference pattern for the hearer.

  43. The extremity of the speaker’s judgment of the situation need not be negative. For example, imagine contexts of utterance where the dog had been seriously injured and had gone through months of physical therapy to regain its movement, and the speaker is happily surprised to see that the dog has made it onto the couch without assistance.

  44. In particular, the appeal to conversational implicature avoids the previously mentioned problem of dimensional closure; i.e. how pejorative content explained as conventional implicature can also be explained truth-conditionally.

  45. See Hom (2010, pp. 178–179) for other examples of the cancelability of pejorative content.

  46. Refer back to Sect. 2 of this paper.

  47. It should be noted that the examples in (50) meet the more complex, phonological constraints for infixation set forth in McCawley (1978).

  48. For example, speakers don’t normally use a term t unless they are committed to the extension of t as non-empty. So if t is a slur, then hearers often interpret their speakers to be committed to there being members of the neutral category that should be treated negatively because of their stereotype. This explains the offensive that often follows mere the mentioning of slurs as plausible conversational implicatures.

  49. As we saw in Sect. 3, there are problems with both forms of the conventional implicature analysis of pejoratives. Other non-truth-conditional explanations are surveyed and critiqued in Hom (2010).

  50. Kripke (1972, pp. 95–97) and Putnam (1975, pp. 227–229).

  51. Putnam (1975, p. 227).

  52. Burge (1979, pp. 79, 83).

  53. The direct response is further supported when we note that speakers often accommodate for the linguistic confusions of others. This disposition to accommodate for the racist’s use of slurs is a plausible explanation for our initial, and in my view, mistaken, intuition that pejoratives have non-empty extensions.

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful for thoughtful feedback from Jacob Beck, Ray Buchanan, John Doris, Michael Glanzberg, Robert May, Christopher Potts, Jeremy Schwartz, Josh Sheptow, the participants of the Spring 2009 Philosophy of Language seminar at Texas Tech University, and the anonymous referee at this journal.

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    Christopher Hom

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Hom, C. A puzzle about pejoratives. Philos Stud 159, 383–405 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9749-7

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