Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) is an international and interdisciplinary network whose primary aim is to promote work on slurs\, pejoratives\, expressives and evaluative terms in general\, from languages that have been seldom discussed in the recent philosophical and semantic literature\, and in particular\, from sign languages and non-Indo-European languages. Its main aim is to bring to light new empirical data and uncover novel interesting phenomena that may have the potential to challenge current theories. Empirical studies of the expressions mentioned from such languages\, comparisons with English slurs\, as well as wider cross-linguistic approaches and developments of extant theories in application to the new data or previously neglected phenomena are encouraged too.
\nThe network's coordinators are \;Isidora Stojanovic \;(Pompeu Fabra University/CNRS-Institut Jean Nicod) &\; \;Dan Zeman \;(University of Porto). More information about the network and its activities can be found at \;https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork. To contact the network coordinators\, please write to stalnetwork@gmail.com.
\nThe STAL Seminar features monthly\, online talks by researchers tackling issues \;related to the study of slurs\, pejoratives\, expressives and evaluative terms in general\, from less studied languages. The meetings in the 2025-2026 academic year take place on MONDAYS\, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET). The list of speakers is the following (exact dates to be provided soon):
\n- OCTOBER 2025: Luvell Anderson (University of Illinois\, Urbana-Champaign)
\n- NOVEMBER 2025: Claire Horisk (University of Missouri)
\n- DECEMBER 2025: Xavier Villalba (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
\n- JANUARY 2026: Daisy Dixon (Cardiff University)
\n- FEBRUARY 2026: Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
\n- MARCH 2026: Leopold Hess (Jagiellonian University)
\n- APRIL 2026: Robin Jeshion (University of Southern California)
\n- MAY 2026: Yim Binh Felix Sze (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
\n- JUNE 2026: Mingya Liu (Humboldt University of Berlin)
ORGANIZER;CN=Isidora Stojanovic;CN=Dan Zeman: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260414T182004Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260420T143000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260420T160000 SUMMARY:What Is Wrong with Slurs? UID:20260422T161248Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-dnjxp TZID:Europe/London DESCRIPTION:The \;Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) \;network (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/home)\, an international and interdisciplinary network whose primary aim is to promote work on slurs\, pejoratives\, expressives and evaluative terms from less studied languages\, invites you to the seventh talk of the 2025-2026 academic year. The invited speaker is \;Robin Jeshion \;(University of Southern California)\, who will give a talk entitled \;"What Is Wrong with Slurs?" \;(see the abstract below). The event will take place online on \;Monday\, APRIL 20\, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET)\, and is part of the of STAL network seminar series (program here: https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/seminar). If you want to participate\, please write to \;stalnetwork@gmail.com \;for the Zoom link.
\nAll welcome!
\nABSTRACT:
\nMany forms of verbal discourse are dangerous and cause harm\, yet slurs are repeatedly distinguished for special moral censure\, so much so that in many liberal democracies\, their use is not legally protected. \;What is wrong with using them? \;In this paper\, I aim to illuminate why slurs are rightly singled out for special\, deeper social censure. Such acts do typically perform wrongs and cause numerous harms: they negatively stereotypes\, reductively de-individualize\, create and perpetuate social hierarchies and social exclusion\, and undermine the target group&rsquo\;s reputation\, as many researchers have shown. Nevertheless\, I believe none of these captures the distinctive moral wrong in slurring speech acts. \;To illuminate their moral dimension\, I take inspiration from moral-psychological work on degradation\, humiliation\, and dehumanization\, as well as work on the distinctive wrong in interrogational torture. \;Sussman\, Luban\, and Kramer have argued that what is \;distinctively \;wrong with interrogational torture is not the extreme pain itself &ndash\; though of course it \;is \;wrong for that. What makes torture distinctively wrong is it being used as a tool to humiliate by forcing the victim \;via their affective experience \;to\, effectively\, collude with the torturer\, and do so against their will. To torture\, the torturer ensures that the victim experiences their own agency as undermined\, as &lsquo\;owned&rsquo\; by the torturer. Building on these ideas\, I argue that a prime source of the perniciousness in weapon uses of slurs that distinguishes them from other harmful types of speech parallels a deep wrong inherent to torture: the perversion and undermining of the slur&rsquo\;s target&rsquo\;s agency by forcing them to perceive and experience \;themselves \;as lesser humans. Weapon uses of slurs in the conditions of most vulnerability are best seen as micro-linguistic acts of torture. I close this paper by addressing the moral dimension of slur-mentions. I argue that there is a foundational moral wrong in slur-mentions\, one that is \;parasitic \;on the moral wrong in using slurs. Slurs\, the words themselves\, function as \;representations \;of the perversion and undermining of their target group&rsquo\;s agency\, akin to the way photographic representations of torture (and lynching and rape) function. In non-legal or non-education contexts\, they can be abused\, with the representations serving as additional \;symbolic \;humiliations and affronts to the human dignity of the target groups.
ORGANIZER;CN=Isidora Stojanovic;CN=Dan Zeman: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR