Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Casting a Vote for Subordination Using a SlurDuckkyun Lee1. IntroductionIn this paper, I develop an account of slurs focusing on their two underappreciated features. The first underappreciated feature is what I call their "communal nature." Slurs are communal. The meaning of a slur depends on the existence of a significant number of people who are bigoted against the target. When this condition is not satisfied, a slur loses its power to offend. This can be seen when we consider how philosophers choose examples of slurs to avoid offending people. For example, Williamson, in his essay "Reference, Inference and the Semantics of Pejoratives," uses a slur for Germans as his main example. What makes the slur for Germans a safe example to use is the fact that there is no widespread bigotry against Germans in any Anglophone country. Had there been strong enmity between Germans and the people in the Anglophone countries, even if Williamson had chosen an outdated slur, his example would not have been such a safe choice. Slurs are words that bigots use to offend and harm the people they are bigoted against. When there are no bigots, neither are there slurs.The focus on the communal nature of slurs leads to the second underappreciated feature of slurs. A bigot does not use a slur just to express his beliefs or feelings, but to subordinate his target. To subordinate others, a bigot needs to cooperate and coordinate with other bigots. In this paper, I will propose a mechanism for how slurs work as a tool for coordinating subordination. To account for the communal and subordinating nature of slurs, I turn to speech act theory and explain what kind of illocutionary act is performed when one uses a slur.1My proposal is to understand utterances made using a slur, or slurring,2 as an act of casting a vote for ranking the target as socially inferior. On this [End Page 37] view, a slur is a conventional tool used to cast a vote demanding the subordination of its target. The considerations that motivate this view are as follows: First, the uses of a slur are the results of consciously choosing it over its neutral counterpart. By explicitly avoiding a neutral counterpart term, one can show their support for fellow bigots and the willingness to participate in whatever activity they do. Second, the point of using a slur does not seem to be exhausted by its role of expressing the bigot's negative beliefs about the target. We can see this when we consider that the way to fight a slur is to impose strict prohibitions against its use, not by objecting to the content of the slurring utterance. This can be better explained when we understand the slur as a conventional tool for the performance of a certain type of action, rather than a word that has distinctive descriptive content different from the descriptive content of its neutral counterpart. Finally, the point of some speech acts is not just expressing the state of the mind of the speaker. The point of some speech acts is to change what is the case in society. To make an utterance using a slur seems to fall into this latter category of speech acts. What would bigots be up to if they were not engaged in the project of creating a society where their target was inferior to them? This consideration suggests that making an utterance using a slur might fall into the kind of speech act Searle calls declaration (Taxonomy 361–68). As a declaration, slurring is an attempt to change society such that the target is subordinated.Insofar as an election is understood as a process within which people collectively decide on what should be the case in society by indicating their stance for or against a proposal, slurring can be understood as a casting of a vote in the election bigots' proposal to subordinate their target. I argue that this account can better explain why a slur cannot function as a slur without there being a significant number of bigots, and how it is used to coordinate the bigots' effort of subordinating their target.The paper...