Abstract
This talk argues for an analysis of slurs with three components: the denotational, indexical, and invocational. The denotational component is a predication of group membership. The invocational component produces direct changes in the world in a way modelable as a kind of direct update distinct from previous uses of this term in the literature. The indexical component signals the speaker’s positioning in a social space, in a way that also commits the slur user to certain ideological positions in a way corresponding to sociolinguistic indexicality. (This is joint work with C. Davis.)
Bio
Elin McCready is a research professor at ICREA and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her academic work is mainly in linguistics and philosophy of language and has published extensively on topics including trust and evidence, the interaction of language and social structure, political speech and hate speech, and the limits and possibilities of language.