La teoria dell’indeterminatezza semantica degli slur / Semantic indeterminacy theory of slurs

Abstract

A puzzling element of\xa0the derogatory aspect of slurs is its erratic\xa0behavior in embeddings, such as negation or belief reports. The\xa0derogatory aspect seems sometimes to scope out from the embedding\xa0to the context of utterance, while at other times it seems to interact with the\xa0linguistic constructions in which the slur is implanted. I argue that slurs\xa0force us to maintain a kind of semantic indeterminacy which, to my knowledge,\xa0has passed largely unnoticed in philosophy of language.