Coining a slur: on the pejoration of 'fake news'

Louis Kohlmann (Humboldt University, Berlin), Emanuel Viebahn (Universität Hamburg)

Polysemy in the Evalutive Sphere is a seminar pertaining to the project Slurs and the Lexicon: A Rich-Lexicon Approach to Slurs and Other Evaluative Expressions - LEXISLUR (https://danzeman.weebly.com/lexislur.html) featuring monthly talks by specialists in polysemy. We cordially invite you to a talk by Louis Kohlmann (Humboldt University) & Emanuel Viebahn (University of Hamburg) entitled "Coining a slur: on the pejoration of 'fake news'" (see the abstract below). The event takes place online on Friday, JANUARY 16, 11.30-13.00 Western European Time (WET). Please write to [email protected] for the Zoom link.

All welcome!

ASBTRACT:

The aim of this talk is to argue that the expression ‘fake news’ has been turned into a slur: in addition to its descriptive meaning applying to pieces of information or reports, it has gained a novel pejorative meaning that slurs journalists. To this end, we survey descriptive and pejorative uses of ‘fake news’. We show that pejorative uses display features that are typically exhibited by slurs, and argue that such uses are best captured by views on which the expression has become ambiguous, with one descriptive and one pejorative meaning. Finally, we consider the process of pejoration through which ‘fake news’ was turned into a slur and how this process differs from mechanisms of reclamation.