Asian slurs and stereotypes in the USA
A context-sensitive account of derogation and appropriation
Slurs such as chink and gook are linguistic expressions that are primarily used to derogate
certain group members for their descriptive attributes (such as their ethnicity) and are often considered the most offensive of
expressions. Recent work on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has illuminated several important facts regarding their meaning
and use – including that slurs are commonly understood to felicitously apply towards some targets yet not others, that slurs are
among the most potentially offensive expressions afforded by natural language, and that slurs are often flexibly employed and of
potential use, not only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members, but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation
with in-group members or to diminish the derogatory force that the slur is typically understood to carry. Nonetheless, prior
scholarship has unfortunately restricted itself primarily to considerations of slurs that typically target members of other
groups. Since no account of slurs for Asian-Americans has so far been proposed, the aim of this article is therefore to provide
the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of slurs for Asian-Americans that accounts for both their derogatory and
appropriative (non-derogatory) use.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Asian-American slurs
- 3.Face threatening acts and the paradigmatic derogatory use of slurs
- 4.Slurs, typical targets, and stereotypical attributes
- 5.Family resemblance concepts, category membership, and the pragmatics of slur ascription
- 6.Appropriation and the non-derogatory use of Asian slurs
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
-
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