Expressivism

A prominent defender of an expressivist account of slurs is Robin Jeshion. She argues for a three component semantics for slurs. The first is the truth-conditional component. A slur, in her view, refers to the group which its neutral counterpart refers to (Jeshion 2013, p.240). The second component is the expressivist one: “slurring terms are used to express contempt for members of a socially relevant group on account of their being in that group or having a group-defining property” (Jeshion 2013, p.240). This component is not descriptive. In other words, one cannot find a description that is equivalent to the expressive component of a slur. Finally, the third component is the identifying component. Jeshion claims that slurs ascribe a classificatory property as if this property is the defining property of the target’s identity (Jeshion 2013, p.242).

Explaining derogatory variation among slurs is often mentioned as a problem for Expressivism by its critics.15 _{For instance, the n-word is considered more offensive}

than a slur like “Boche”. Jeshion deals with this problem and counts several possible sources for derogatory variation. One of them is the stereotypes associated with the group a slur refers to: “Since stereotypes of different groups are offensive in different degrees, the strength of offensiveness to slurs’ targets will vary with the slur” (Jesh- ion 2013, p.245). However, the role stereotypes play is perlocutionary in her view. Offensiveness caused by stereotypes is “exclusively pragmatic, often perlocutionary effects. As such, none obtains by virtue of conventional linguistic properties of slur- ring terms, i.e., meanings or conventional rules of use or conventional implicatures” (Jeshion 2013, p.245).

Let us turn to the problems of this account. First of all, the last two components seem theoretically obscure to me. It is hard to see what this expressivist dimension is. Jeshion claims that slurs and other expressives share the same semantic properties, but she also claims that unlike other expressives, expressive dimension of a slur is not mere feeling (Jeshion 2013, p.242). The best explanation she gives is as follows:

(...) contempt, like resentment, is a highly structured affectively-and

normatively-guided moral attitude that is subject to evaluation for its appropriateness. As such, in using slurs, speakers not only express their own contempt for the target, but also implicitly represent (but still do notsay orassertthat) their targets asworthy of contempt. And because contempt is a moral attitude specifically held toward those one regards as inferior as persons, users of slurs thereby implicate that targets ought to be so-regarded as inferior. (Jeshion 2013, p.242)

Hence, in Jeshion’s view, a slur represents its target as “worthy of contempt” and contempt is a “highly structured” and “normatively guided” moral attitude. How- ever, why we should think such a seemingly loaded attitude as having no descriptive content still remains puzzling.

A similar problem arises for the third component. In Jeshion’s suggested se- mantics for slurs, only the first component is relevant to the truth-condition of the sentence. That is, only this component is asserted. So, it is again obscure how the semantically encoded third component does all its job of identifying its target with- out asserting anything. Related to this third component Jeshion makes the following claim: “As a matter of their semantics, ‘Kike’, ‘Chink’, ‘Nigger’, ‘faggot’, ‘whore’ are used so as to signal that being Jewish, Chinese, black, gay, a prostitute identify

what its targetsare” (Jeshion 2013, p.242). One may think that the italicized “are” in this quote means something like “are essentially” or “are by definition”. However, Jeshion rejects this interpretation:

In wielding slurs, racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes are not in the business of presenting their target’s group membership either as an essential, metaphysically necessary property, or as determining or ex- plaining their other properties. Rather, they express that the target’s group membership is the, or among the, most central characteristic(s) for classifying what the target is, as a person, construed along a broadly moral dimension. (Jeshion 2013, p.242)

I find Jeshion’s third component similar to the parametercentralityin Camp’s notion of characterization.16 _{Understood in this way, the third component in the seman-}

tics of a slur signals that the first truth-conditional component is central, in other words, it is causally responsible of many other features the subject of the slur has. However, it is not clear why this semantic component is a peculiarity of slurs. For instance, when “astronaut”, “professor of philosophy”, or “Polish” are predicated of people, aren’t they identify what “their targets are”? Again we can see these as central features. One’s profession or one’s nationality is a central feature that can be considered causally responsible of many other features. If so, why slurs would have a special semantic component that other “identifying” phrases lack is not clear at all. Hence, Jeshion either has to build this third component into the semantics of all other identifying phrases, which would be found unacceptable by many, or she should explain how slurs are different from other identifying phrases.

A final problem with Jeshion’s Expressivism concerns in-group (or appropriated) uses and slurring with neutral words. In her view, for instance, in the early history of the n-word, black people used to use this word for each other with “the excision of the encoded contempt in exchange for an expression of solidarity” (Jeshion 2013, p.253). This earlier in-group use is an instance of non-literal use in her view. Since the word has been overused since then, eventually the word has become ambiguous between derogatory and in-group meanings. Two objections can be raised here: First, according to Jeshion’s explanation, there is no ambiguity in the early uses of the n-word. There is only one word and one semantic meaning, but the black people use the word in a different way in their community. They cancel or “excise” the encoded contempt. But, in Jeshion’s view, encoded contempt is one of the components of the semantics of slurs. Hence, there seem to be an internal tension

in Jeshion’s picture. It is widely accepted that a semantic content of a phrase or a clause is not cancellable; cancellability is a feature of the pragmatic content. Jeshion might resist this objection by denying that to excise means to cancel. But then what does it mean? I cannot see any other option. Secondly, Jeshion’s claim that slurs are ambiguous between their in-group and out-group uses seems a costly approach to the problem. Recall Grice’s motto: “Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” If Grice’s advice is followed, an account of slurs which explains this phenomenon without appealing to ambiguity will be more attractive.

Jeshion’s suggestion for the slurring with neutral words is along the same lines. She claims that a neutral counterparts of slurs, when they are used with contemptu- ous intonation, can be used for slurring. What is more, the semantics she suggests for the words in this way is the same as their counterpart slurs: “It is also highly plausible (...), that the semantic properties of such neutral counterparts when used with contemptuous intonation is the same as that of slurring terms” (Jeshion 2013, p.246). For example, “Chink” and “ChineseC”17have the same semantics. I find this suggestion very implausible. How intonation can change the semantics of a word is left unexplained by Jeshion. She neither refers to a theory which develops an account of this nor develops one by herself. On the contrary, Jeshion’s observation, again, suggests a pragmatic approach to the phenomena. There are several pieces of research on how intonation affects pragmatic interpretation.18

To conclude this section, I think the general problem with Jeshion’s account is the obscurity of the semantics she suggests, and its shortcomings to explain the non-paradigmatic uses of slurs. Let us then turn to the third question. If one accepts that slurs are used to express some descriptive content, and this descriptive content causes the derogation of the target group, this question asks if this content is encoded in the word semantically or not. We will continue with Hom’s semantic account.19