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SUMMARY:The semantics and pragmatics of racial and ethnic language: Toward
 s a comprehensive radical contextualist account - Dr. Roberto B. Sileo (Un
 iversity of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20180215T160000Z
DTEND:20180215T173000Z
UID:TALK99946@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Calbert Graham
DESCRIPTION:While racial and ethnic slurs are primarily used by bigots to 
 derogate and/or offend individuals that they despise\, they can also be us
 ed by members of a certain ethnicity group\, for example\, to communicate 
 self-appropriated messages of camaraderie. While it is widely acknowledged
  that slurs can convey either deprecating or friendly\nmessages in various
  contexts of utterance\, the debate continues as to whether slurring meani
 ng is to be pinned down either in semantic (sentence-based) or in pragmati
 c (context-based) terms.\n\nIn my search for a cognitively real theory of 
 slurring natural language\, I identify context-specific and context-free a
 spects of slurring meaning\, look for a comprehensive theory which can acc
 ount for slurring language in use\, and construct a theoretical representa
 tion of slurring language processing. I argue\, by extending the scope of 
 application of Jaszczolt’s (2005\, 2010\, 2016) Default Semantics\, that
  speakers’ main intended and successfully communicated messages (primary
  meanings) are to constitute the object of study of a psychologically real
  account of slurring language interpretation\, and I propose\, based on th
 e claim that slurs comprise a descriptive race\, ethnicity and/or national
 ity-determined aspect of meaning and a flexible (but default) derogatory a
 nd/or offensive layer of expressiveness\, that both descriptiveness and ex
 pressiveness are apt to contribute to primary meanings\, the extent of suc
 h a contribution varying from context to context.\n\nThe shift from an ana
 lysis of lexical items or fully contextually determined understandings to 
 an analysis of the meanings that speakers intend to communicate and that h
 earers actually recover yields an account of slurring language in which th
 e semantic/pragmatic distinction loses its now long-standing predominance.
  It is a balanced interaction between language and context that leads to s
 lurring primary\nmeanings.
LOCATION:English Faculty Lecture Room GR-06/07\, 9 West Road\, Sidgwick Si
 te.
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