What and How Slurs Mean : An Empirical Investigation

In this talk, I will present some early results of an empirical study on the meaning of slurs conducted with the help of Rodrigo Diaz (IFS-CSIC, Madrid). Many hypotheses have been proposed in the philosophical and linguistic literature about the meaning of slurs, both in terms of what information these words communicate and by what linguistic mechanisms they communicate it. Our empirical study aims to test, via questionnaires, laypeople’s intuitions to establish to what extent these intuitions correspond to the hypotheses in question. The study focuses on three English-language slurs, but I hope to be able to also present some results on Swiss German and Swiss French slurs.

More info about the Surring Terms Across Languages seminar