Inferentialism, Representationalism and Derogatory Words

1 Introduction In the philosophy of language, examining the role and significance of derogatory words serves to counter our tendency to divorce theories of meaning from the social settings in which the phenomenon is found, and the communicative acts, attitudes and shared interests they incorporate. 1 Hornsby stresses the significance of this in a recent paper, which will form the basis for discussion. According to Hornsby, derogatory words have the following distinguishing features: First, they apply to people and are commonly understood to convey hatred and contempt. Secondly, for each such word there is, or at least perfectly well could be, another that applies to the same people but whose use does not convey these things. (2001: pp. 128–9) Consider, for example, the pairs 'faggot' and 'male homosexual', 'nigger' and 'black' and 'Kike' and 'Jew'. The paired expressions have the same extension, but in each case the derogatory counterpart (when uttered) carries or conveys additional, offensive connotations. Precisely how one is to understand 'convey' here is a central concern of this paper. A further and important feature of derogatory words that Hornsby notes, and that will occupy us, is that they are 'useless for us'. 2 While they are 'intelligible to us', they are not 'sayable by us': it is not merely that one does not count oneself among the word's users so that one is not in a position to make their claims. One cannot endorse anything that is done using these Hornsby does not draw our attention to this, or any other feature, with the aim of providing a definition of the concept of a derogatory expression by stating necessary and sufficient conditions. And that is not the aim of this paper either. I think that it is clear, or sufficiently so for present purposes, how the examples enumerated above could be continued, and so which class of expressions Hornsby has in mind. That said, it is evident that the features Hornsby highlights are not shared by all derogatory expressions (and although she does not make this clear, presumably she does not intend to suggest otherwise). Consider, for example, the class containing terms such as 'wanker', 'twat' and 'bastard', which is distinguished from that discussed above in the following ways. First, while an expression belonging to this class of pejorative often corresponds to a purely descriptive term, or has (or has had) a purely descriptive use, it is …