Philosophy of Language: Linguistics and Philosophy of Pejorative Language

Pejorative language provides powerful linguistic weapons; it is prone to provoke an offensive sting. But what is the nature and source of this offense? The predominant assumption has been that pejorative language is offensive because of some aspect of meaning - either semantically encoded or pragmatically conveyed. In this seminar, we reconsider this widespread assumption, and defend an alternative: the source of a pejorative effect is neither meaning nor even language.