Bianca Cepollaro

In this paper I offer a brief introduction about what derogatory epithets are, how we use them and why they should ever interest philosophers of language and lin-guists; I will present three kinds of possible analyses of slurs, focusing on what kind of intui-tions they account for and what kind of problems they encounter. In the last session, I sketch the theory I defend: an analysis of slurs’ derogatory content in terms of presuppositions. Be-sides presenting the explanatory advantages of such approach, I briefly present the challenges this strategy faces and propose possible solutions to the main objections.

We present two experimental studies on the Italian expressive ‘stronzo’. The first study tests whether, and to which extent, the acceptability of using an expressive is sensitive to the information available in the context. The study looks both at referential uses of expressives and predicative uses of expressives. The results show that expressives are sensitive to contextual information to a much higher degree than the non-expressive control items in their referential use, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, in their predicative use. The second study tests whether the lower acceptability of expressives in their predicative use may be simply due to saying something negative about someone. A comparison between expressives, such as ‘jerk’, and non-expressive negative terms, such as ‘nasty’ or ‘unbearable’, suggests that it is the expressive nature of these terms, rather than the mere negative valence, that affects acceptability. Our studies present a major challenge to the existing accounts of expressives, and raise several theoretical issues that still call for an answer.

In this paper, I bring attention to how intersectionality affects reclamation—something that is hardly explored in the social philosophy of language. The reclamation of slurs is the linguistic practice whereby speakers— typically members of the target group—employ these (otherwise derogatory) terms to express pride, foster camaraderie, manifest solidarity, fight discrimination, etc. Whether and how reclamation achieves such results is an open question, vividly discussed within academia and in the public debate. Intersectionality is the theory according to which various axes of oppression (e.g., ethnicity, class, gender, etc.) interact in a way that creates distinctive kinds of discrimination—so, for instance, white and Black women experience sexism in deeply different ways. Taking intersectionality into account when assessing reclamation means, among other things, that we cannot investigate whether and how reclamation is beneficial or detrimental without relativizing the inquiry to intersectionally different segments of the targeted group. In this work, I consider the reclamation of “slut” within SlutWalks and the intersectional concerns that it raised—roughly, the worry that the reclamation of “slut” excludes Black women and thus betrays feminism’s globalist values. I distinguish the empirical and normative questions that arise from the intersectional worry and argue that it is hardly possible to assess the latter, if the former are not settled first. I thus turn to the existing experimental studies and illustrate the ways in which they have failed to take intersectionality into account. I conclude that future experiments should adopt a more critical stance in assessing whether their research questions require an intersectional stance and interpret their findings accordingly.

Over the past few years, there has been much debate about how autistic people should be described and labeled. Two main tendencies have emerged in this discussion, usually known as the person-first approach and the identity-first approach. While the former proposes to talk about ‘person(s) with autism’, the latter claims that ‘autistic person’ is more adequate. We first discuss person-first and identity-first approaches along with the reasons that have been offered for embracing one or the other. Then we focus on the consequences that both approaches entail: first, the conception of autism as a condition, along with metaphysical conceptions of self and identity; second, linguistic emancipatory possibilities, such as reclamation. We argue that these two approaches ultimately promote a different stance on autism as a condition and that while the reclamation of ‘autistic’ is more clearly aligned with the identity-first view, the person-first approach is not entirely incompatible with some reclamation projects.

In this paper, we identify and examine an overlooked strategy to counter bigoted speech on the spot. Such a strategy we call ‘bending’. To ‘bend’, in our sense, is to deliberately give a distorted response to a speaker’s harmful move – precisely, an ameliorative response, which may turn that move into a different, less harmful, contribution. To substantiate our proposal, we distinguish two ideas of uptake – interpretation and response – and argue for the general claim that a distorted response on the hearer’s part may end up transforming a speaker’s contribution. Patterns of distortion have been analyzed in the literature as unjustly undermining speakers’ agency and exacerbating oppression. Our analysis shows that, under certain circumstances, distortion can be employed to derail bigoted speech and thus serve the purposes of social justice. We close by discussing the virtues and limits of bending vis-à-vis a different, much-discussed, counterspeech strategy, i.e. ‘blocking’ (Langton 2018).