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Part of
Language and Violence: Pragmatic perspectives
Edited by Daniel N. Silva
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 279] 2017
► pp. 125–140

Chapter 5
Racist speech as a linguistic discriminatory practice in Brazil

Between the speech act’s reference and effects

Brazilian law establishes a difference between the aggravated verbal injury, which is a type of insult that makes use of words or phrases pertaining to race, color, ethnicity, religion, origin or to the condition of the elderly or disabled person, and the crime of prejudice or discrimination, which consists in practicing, inducing or inciting discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, ethnicity, religion or national origin. In this paper I intend to investigate the linguistic criteria used by the judicial system to distinguish the two crimes. Based on a survey of data on legal cases of verbal injury and on interviews with two black Brazilian activists, I also intend to demonstrate the limitation of these criteria.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Criteria employed in the differentiation of the verbal injury and the crime of prejudice and discrimination
    • The reference of the utterance
    • The situation in which the utterance is spoken
    • The effect aimed by the speaker
  • 3.Limitations of the criteria and concepts employed by the judicial system
  • 4.The aggravated verbal injury as biased or discriminatory insult
  • Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.279.06san
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Cited by

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French, Brigittine M.
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