Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bad Words: Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs

Bad Words: Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs

Sosa, David

Hardcover

Series: Engaging Philosophy

PhilosophyLinguistics

ISBN10: 0198758650
ISBN13: 9780198758655
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Sep 26 2018
Pages: 244
Weight: 3.60
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
What makes a word bad? Bad Words is a philosophical examination of slurs and other derogatory and problematic language, by some of the leading contributors to the field. Slurs are an interesting case for the philosophy of language. On the one hand, they seem to be meaningful in something like the way many other expressions are meaningful - different slurs might seem in some way to refer to different groups, for example. But on the other hand, it's clear that slurs also have distinctive practical effects and roles: they can seem to be just an arbitrary tool for insulting or enabling harm. How are those aspects related? Just how the use of words is related to their significance is of course one of the deepest issues in philosophy of language: slurs not only refine that issue, by presenting a kind of use that presents novel challenges, but also give the issue a compelling practical relevance.

The Engaging Philosophy series is a new forum for collective philosophical engagement with controversial issues in contemporary society.

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