@article{ref1,
title="A non-ideal approach to slurs",
journal="Synthese",
year="2023",
author="Mühlebach, Deborah",
volume="202",
number="3",
pages="e97-e97",
abstract="Philosophers of language are increasingly engaging with derogatory terms or slurs. Only few theorists take such language as a starting point for addressing puzzles in philosophy of language with little connection to our real-world problems. This paper aims to show that the political nature of derogatory language use calls for non-ideal theorising as we find it in the work of feminist and critical race scholars. Most contemporary theories of slurs, so I argue, fall short on some desiderata associated with a non-ideal approach. They neglect crucial linguistic or political aspects of morally and politically significant meaning. I argue that a two-stage project is necessary to understand the perniciousness of slurs: accounting for the derogatory content of derogatory terms in general and, additionally, explaining the communicative function of slurs more specifically. I end by showing how inferentialism is well-suited to account for the content of derogatory terms whilst allowing for further explanations of the communicative functions of slurs.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0039-7857",
doi="10.1007/s11229-023-04315-y",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04315-y"
}