3. The semantics of hybrid evaluatives
3.2 The descriptive content
The descriptive content of slurs displays different features from that of thick terms.
As we said, most slurs are nouns rather than adjectives and slurs are typically about people rather than things, actions and behavior. Moreover, while the descriptive content of thick terms is typically gradable and multidimensional, the descriptive content of slurs is not. In chapter 6, I shall argue that these differences are only superficial contrasts and do not challenge the claim that slurs and thick terms rely on the same linguistic mechanism of encoded evaluation.
Let’s now consider the descriptive content of hybrid evaluatives in greater detail.
As we said, the descriptive content of most thick terms consists of gradable expressions, making them gradable adjectives, too. When thick terms can felicitously take degree modifiers, also their descriptive counterparts can:
51. Nancy is very generous.
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52. Nancy is very disposed to give without expectation of receiving anything in return.
53. Nancy is somewhat lewd.
54. Nancy is somewhat sexually explicit beyond conventional boundaries.
Moreover, when thick terms locate objects on a scale, their non-loaded counterparts do, too:23
55. Their last movie is lewder than the previous one.
56. Their last movie is more sexually explicit beyond conventional boundaries than the previous one.
57. Nancy is more generous than Lucy.
58. Nancy is more disposed to give without expectation of receiving anything in return than Lucy.
While it is no wonder that slurs – qua nouns – are not gradable, we observe that slurring adjectives, in their literal uses, do not seem to be gradable either. They do not normally take degree modifiers such as ‘very’ and ‘somewhat’ or admit comparative constructs, nor do their neutral counterparts:
23 This is in a way reminiscent of Kaplan (1999)’s contrast between the intuitively valid argument A and the intuitively invalid argument B:
A. Premise A: That damn Kaplan was promoted. Conclusion A: Kaplan was promoted.
B. Premise B: Kaplan was promoted. Conclusion B: That damn Kaplan was promoted.
Kaplan’s point is that one can safely infer from an evaluatively charged statement (like Premise A) a descriptive statement (like Conclusion A), but not the other way around. The reason is that in the evaluative utterance “there is more semantic information” than in the descriptive one.
For a development of Kaplan’s proposal in terms of “use-conditional meaning”, see Gutzmann (2015). For an analysis of slurs in terms of inferential role, see Tirrell (1999).
50 59. ? John is somewhat queer.24
60. ? John is somewhat homosexual.25
61. ? John is very queer.
62. ? John is very homosexual.
63. ? John is queerer than Luca.
64. ? John is more homosexual than Luca.
65. ? Bianca is more of a wop than Luca.
66. ? Bianca is more of an Italian than Luca.
Moreover, most thick terms are multidimensional, as their descriptive content is multidimensional. As a matter of fact, when thick terms can be uttered felicitously with ‘in every/some/most respect(s)’ constructions, also their descriptive counterparts can:
67. The movie is lewd in some respects.
68. The movie is sexually explicit beyond conventional boundaries in some respects.
24 I can access two readings of (59) under which the utterance is felicitous. They would be (i) a reading where ‘queer’ is a synonym for ‘weird’, ‘strange’, not a homophobic slur and (ii) a reading where ‘queer’ is a slur, but it is used in a sort of figurative way, used to talk about the stereotypical properties and applicable to a subject that does not belong to the target class. As a matter of fact, one can force a scale on non-gradable predicates in a figurative way. Take for instance utterances such as
‘My bag is more hand-made than the one you bought’ or ‘Jane is more of a New Yorker than Peter’.
These figurative readings, however, do not do any harm to the argument. Thanks to Pier Marco Bertinetto for drawing my attention to these cases.
25 Again, there is reading where ‘homosexual’ is used in a sort of figurative way to talk about the stereotypical properties. This does not show that ‘homosexual’ is gradable. As a matter of fact we can force non-gradable adjectives into figurative uses: ‘this is more hand-made than that’, ‘Sue is more an engineer than Peter’, etc.
51 69. Nancy is generous in every respect.
70. Nancy is disposed to give without expectation of receiving anything in return in every respect.26
Unlike most thick terms, the descriptive content of slurs is typically unidimensional and slurs inherit this unidimensionality, as we can see from the infelicity of the following constructions, that include both nominal and adjectival slurs:
71. ? Bianca is a wop in some respects.
72. ? Bianca is Italian in some respects.
73. ? Bianca is queer in most respects.
74. ? Bianca is homosexual in most respects.
I acknowledge that the description that I sketched of how thick terms work is quite complex. However, this is not surprising: It is required the amount of contextual contribution involved for any multidimensional adjective, plus the determination of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ featuring in the evaluative content. The case of most slurs looks simpler, since, as we saw, the truth-conditional content of slurs is typically non-gradable.
In a nutshell, the evaluation triggered by both slurs and thick terms carries a certain amount of context sensitivity stemming from the occurrence of terms like
‘good’ and ‘bad’. Moreover, in the case of most thick terms, the descriptive content is a further source of context sensitivity, as it features expressions which are gradable
26 Note that when the descriptive content is very complex, it can be a bit unclear what is the scope of expressions such as ‘in every respect’. A better formulation might be: ‘Nancy is in every respect disposed to give without expectation of receiving anything in return’.
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and multidimensional. This additional source of context sensitivity constitutes a further source of disagreement and negotiation, as we shall see in chapter 4.