Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Pejorative Talk and Thought (PTT)

Goal

This Reading Group combines issues in philosophy of language with some

questions from ethics and meta-ethics, feminist philosophy, and more

generally political and social philosophy. We shall focus on topics such as:

A. slur words and hate speech;

B. sexist language, power and silencing;

C. generics, bias and stereotyping.

The objective is to think of these topics through the workings of language—

in particular what sorts of words and practices count as speech, and what

sorts of communicative acts enable and license acts of oppression towards

members of particular social groups. The aim is to discuss some of this

literature, and its philosophical background.

Questions in philosophy of language concern:

(a) the role of attitude-expression in a theory of meaning: similarities

and dissimilarities between moral and thick terms on the one

hand, and pejoratives and slurs on the other

(b) what kind of speech-acts are performed with slurring acts, sexist

speech and generic speech;

tell us about the nature of meaning, and where such words and

practices fall with respect to the semantics/pragmatics distinction

(d) how such forms of speech contribute to imposing and reinforcing

imbalanced power relations

(e) how “silencing” operates towards members of targeted groups by

virtue of their membership of relatively powerless groups.