Abstract
Two claims that are hard to deny are that slurs can be offensive, and that not all uses of language are communicative. It’s therefore perplexing why no one has considered the possibility that slurs might be offensive not because of what they communicate but rather because of interpretive effects their uses might exact. In what follows, we intend to argue just that, namely, that confrontations with slurs can set in motion a kind of imaginative engagement that rouses objectionable psychological states. We believe this view has precedence in Frege’s account of tone.
Professor Eva Picardi made invaluable contributions to the discussion of tone ; in particular, we have been greatly influenced by her (2007). We are indebted to her for these contributions and in the case of one of us (EL) for her friendship dating back to May, 1985, including quite often a rich exchange of philosophical ideas. She was a joy to be with, as well as to talk philosophy with. Her untimely death is a great loss for all philosophers and even more so for her many devoted friends. Obviously, our contribution to this volume, based on, and partly extracted from (Lepore and Stone 2017), is dedicated to her.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier and extended version of this paper was presented at the Philosophy Department, Peking University. Thanks to Elisabeth Camp, Bob Carpenter, Sam Carter, Doug DeCarlo and Mitzi Morris for comments and discussion on its topics. Preparation of this research was supported in part by NSF grant IIS 1526723 and a sabbatical leave from Rutgers to Stone.
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Lepore, E., Stone, M. (2018). Slurs and Tone. In: Coliva, A., Leonardi, P., Moruzzi, S. (eds) Eva Picardi on Language, Analysis and History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95777-7_9
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