Episode 72: Robert May discusses pejorative expressions
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What is the episode’s main focus on pejorative expressions?
Hey, Matt Techman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show, to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. Alright, thanks.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Tigman.
And I'm Emily Dupree.
With us today is Robert May, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of California, Davis. And he is here to discuss pejorative expressions. Robert May, welcome. Thank you.
So we thought it would be wise to begin before we started talking about the substance of your view, begin first with just um Maybe you can comment on the difficulties with writing about pejorative expressions to begin with, whether we use the expressions in our work or if we refer to them in some sort of opaque way, um and where you stand on this and why.
Okay. Uh well first of all I hope that we never use these words to defer to a philosophical distinction. We want to be careful to distinguish between use and mention. And all of our usage in uh philosophical work or discussion would be with respect to just mentioning these words and talking about them, their characteristics, their meanings, the way that they could be used as opposed to using them. So there is a general proviso that we are being respectful of a use mention distinction. When I started working on this, I did sort of think a bit about what I felt about whether the words should be mentioned or some euphemism should be employed. And I came to the decision in part for uh personal reasons and in part because of, you know, reasons of my point of view, that I don't think th euphemisms really do much.
I mean, we know what just if I say a euphemism, it doesn't mean that sort of you're not thinking that word in a sense. So I don't think it's there's really any point to doing the euphemisms. I do tend and I try to uh find the following rule which my co-author on this paper we'll be discussing, Chris Hom does as well, is to use ones which are self-applying. So I tend to use kike and he uses chink. So I've I've now done it. I've now these words have come out of my mouth. Uh having said that, let me be very clear. I mean part of what we're going to talk about is when people do use these words, what the significance of that use is in terms of what their personal attitude students are, their states of mind, their psychology and so on.
But it is clear that for some people, even those who are h you know understand the context in which the words are being employed, just those sounds they find distasteful, offensive, and so on. I think that's something which I understand, but I think you know it's part of their personal issues about their own personal life experiences. Of course, one has to always be very careful if you're going to these sounds are going to sort of come out of your mouth, have to be careful that people may and may misunderstand the context. Although I do think people are rather more understanding of sort of philosophical discussion, even sort of, you know, cocktail lounge philosophical discussion than we let on. So I think that given we understand our context in which we're using these and given that we are understanding that these
Words being mentioned are not in any way reflective of the attitudes or beliefs of the utter. I think that it's just appropriate to just employ the words rather than speaking euphemistically, which leads to a point of view which we'll probably talk about called silentism, and whether silentism is sort of a reasonable way to deal with the relationship between language. language use and the attitudes that underlie language use. So I'll maybe we'll get to that topic a little later.
Okay, well uh I'm in the somewhat unfortunate position of belonging to neither of the groups you just mentioned, but uh I guess I'll have to go ahead and use the term anyway. So to take your example, kike, what does the word kike mean on your view?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the episode’s main focus on pejorative expressions?
0:00–8:30
2
What is the 'use vs. mention' distinction for pejorative words?
8:30–10:40
3
What moral content do pejorative terms carry according to the guests?
10:40–16:12
4
How do the authors argue that pejoratives have null extension and moral innocence?
16:12–20:31
5
How does truth‑value change when a slur replaces a neutral group term?
20:31–25:11
6
What role does reclamation play in transforming pejoratives like ‘queer’?
25:11–29:53
7
How do pejorative terms intersect with law, free speech, and social policy?
29:53–34:20
8
What are the key takeaways and future directions discussed at the episode’s end?
34:20–38:41
Speakers
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