The Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) network (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/home) invites you to a talk by Elin McCready (ICREA/Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Christopher Davis (University of the Ryukyus) entitled "The Invocational Impact of Slurs". The talk will take place online on APRIL 7\, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET)\, and is part of the of STAL Seminar series (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/seminar). If you want to participate\, please write to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the Zoom link. Below you can find the abstract.
\nAll welcome!
\nABSTRACT:
\nRappaport (2019) articulates three distinct components that together constitute the meaning profile of slur terms: 1. \;descriptive: Slurs denote particular groups of people\; 2. \;evaluative: Slurs communicate or signal the speaker&rsquo\;s negative attitudes towards the group so denoted\; 3. \;affective: Slurs are capable of&ldquo\;expressing powerful emotions and causing a strong emotional response in hearers&rdquo\;. We build on this three-component model of slur meanings\, arguing that the slur&rsquo\;s descriptive content is encoded in its at-issue semantic denotation. The evaluative component has received the bulk of attention in both the linguistic and philosophical literature. It is this component that drives the intuition that use of a slur term signals some kind of negative sentiment on the part of the speaker toward the group picked out by the term. We argue for a non-conventionalist account of this meaning component\, in which the evaluative component is derived through a particular kind of inference\, as argued by Nunberg (2018)\, Pullum (2018)\, and Rappaport (2019). We argue further that the mechanism underlying this inference is of a kind with (at least some instances of) indexical meaning as articulated in third-wave sociolinguistics (Eckert\, 2008\, 2018). Our primary aim in this talk is to better understand Rappaport&rsquo\;s \;affective \;component\, and to get clarity about how this component relates to the other two. In Rappaport&rsquo\;s formulation\, this component includes (i) the expression of powerful emotions\, and (ii) the elicitation of powerful emotions. It is the second subcomponent we focus attention on here: how do slur terms come by their ability to cause distress to those who perceive them? We concur with Rappaport&rsquo\;s view that the impact of a slur term cannot be fully derived from its evaluative component\, contra e.g. Nunberg (2018) and Pullum (2018). We will argue instead that a slur&rsquo\;s impact derives from what we term \;invocational \;meaning\, whose characteristic property is to unilaterally alter the discourse context by bringing to contextual and cognitive prominence a \;pre-existing \;but possibly backgrounded complex\, achieved by mere mention (or more strictly speaking\, mere perception) of the invoking term itself. Time permitting\, we will discuss extensions of this model to non-slur terms as well.
ORGANIZER;CN=Isidora Stojanovic;CN=Dan Zeman: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR