Recent pragmatic accounts of slurs argue that the offensiveness of slurs is generated by a speaker's free choice to use a slur opposed to a more appropriate and semantically equivalent neutral counterpart. I argue that the theoretical role of neutral counterparts on such views is overstated. I consider two recent pragmatic analyses, Bolinger (Noûs, 51, 2017, 439) and Nunberg (New work on speech acts, Oxford University Press, 2018), which rely heavily upon the optionality of slurs, namely, that a speaker exercises a deliberate lexical choice to use a slur when they could have easily used a neutral counterpart instead. Against such views, I argue that across a range of different offensive uses of slurs, a speaker's choice to use a slur opposed to a neutral counterpart plays little to no role in accounting for why the slur generates offence. Such cases cast serious doubt upon the explanatory depth of these pragmatic analyses, and raise more general concerns for views which draw upon the relationship between a slur and its neutral counterpart. The main upshot is this: theorists should exercise caution in assuming that neutral counterparts play any fundamental or systemic role in explaining why slurs are offensive.

中文翻译：

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诽谤，中立的同行，以及你可以说的话

最近对诽谤的语用解释认为，诽谤的冒犯性是由说话者自由选择使用与更合适和语义上等价的中性对应物相对的诽谤而产生的。我认为，中立的同行对这些观点的理论作用被夸大了。我考虑了最近的两个实用分析，Bolinger ( Noûs , 51 , 2017, 439) 和 Nunberg ( New work on speech act , Oxford University Press, 2018)，它们在很大程度上依赖于可选性诽谤，也就是说，说话者在可以很容易地使用中性对应物的情况下，会故意选择使用诽谤。反对这种观点，我认为，在一系列不同的攻击性使用诽谤中，说话者选择使用与中立对应者相对的诽谤在解释为什么诽谤会产生冒犯方面几乎没有作用。这些案例对这些务实分析的解释深度提出了严重质疑，并引发了对利用诽谤与其中立对应物之间关系的观点的更普遍关注。主要结果是这样的：理论家在假设中立的同行在解释为什么诽谤具有攻击性方面发挥任何基本或系统性作用时应谨慎行事。