Forthcoming
Critical Notes

Referring and Despising: On Slurs and Expressivity: Semantics and Beyond, by Eleonora Orlando and Andrés Saab

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  • Sofía Micaela Checchi Ugrotte
Sofía Micaela Checchi Ugrotte
Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Lingüística, Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham, Hurlingham, Argentina / Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas / TALK Group, Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1073

Published 2024-11-07

Keywords

  • Términos peyorativos de grupo,
  • Contexto,
  • Condiciones de verdad
  • Slurs,
  • Context,
  • Truth Conditions
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Abstract

In Slurs and Expressivity (2021), Orlando and Saab compile a series of works which addresses slurs from different semantic-pragmatic perspectives. The book is highly relevant given the centrality of this topic in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics. From reading it, anyone interested in recent debates on this issue can immerse herself in a vast recollection of analysis, which, at the same time, allows her to appreciate its complexity and the semantic and pragmatic components involved. In this paper, I offer a critical study regarding inherent aspects of slurs that, according to some contributions in this volume, remain undetermined in the semantics. To do so, I explore some cases in which these underspecifications can lead to undesired interpretations and argue that we need to enrich the semantics.

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