Slurs are words with a well-known tendency to conjure up painful memories and experiences in members of their target communities. Owing to this tendency, it’s widely agreed that one ought to exercise considerable care when even mentioning a slur, so as to avoid needlessly inflicting distressing associations on members of the relevant group. This paper argues that this tendency to evoke distressing associations is precisely what makes slurs impactful verbal weapons. According to the ballistic theory, slurs make such potent insults because they enable their users to maliciously inflict noxious associations on members of their target groups. To motivate this theory, I demonstrate its ability to explain a number of facts about slurs’ offensiveness that pose formidable difficulties for competing theories of slurs. I argue that the ballistic theory not only explains why slurs make such explosively impactful terms of abuse, but also why: (i) uses of slurs can provoke offense even when they aren’t interpreted as expressions of the speaker’s racist (or otherwise bigoted) attitudes; and (ii) why mentions of slurs are inoffensive in some contexts, but in other contexts, warrant a level of offense every bit as severe as that warranted by weaponized uses. I conclude with a brief discussion of a practical application of the ballistic theory. I demonstrate that the theory has an important consequence for legislative efforts to regulate and punish weaponized uses of slurs.

诽谤是一种具有众所周知的倾向的词，可以在目标社区的成员中唤起痛苦的回忆和经历。由于这种趋势，人们普遍认为，即使提到诽谤也应该谨慎行事，以免不必要地给相关团体的成员造成困扰。本文认为，这种令人不安的联想趋势正是使这些诽谤成为具有影响力的口头武器的原因。根据弹道理论诽谤之所以如此有力，是因为它们使用户能够恶意地对其目标群体的成员施加有害的联系。为了激发这一理论，我展示了它有能力解释有关诽谤的攻击性的许多事实，这些事实为诽谤的竞争理论带来了巨大的困难。我认为，弹道理论不仅解释了诽谤为何构成如此具有爆炸性的，有影响力的滥用条款，而且还解释了以下原因：（i）使用诽谤可以引起冒犯，即使这些行为不被解释为演讲者种族主义的表达（或以其他方式被偏执）态度; 和（ii）为什么提及在某些情况下，侮辱性的冒犯性是无礼的，但在其他情况下，则应保证犯有一定程度的罪行，其严重程度与武器使用的罪行所允许的程度相同。最后，我简要讨论了弹道理论的实际应用。我证明，该理论对于规范和惩罚使用武器的诽谤行为的立法工作具有重要意义。