36.3746, FYI: MLAG Seminar online: Bianca Cepollaro, "Are Reclaimed Slurs Offensive?"

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3746. Fri Dec 05 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3746, FYI: MLAG Seminar online: Bianca Cepollaro,  "Are Reclaimed Slurs Offensive?"

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Date: 04-Dec-2025
From: MLAG - Mind, Language and Action Group [mlag.porto at gmail.com]
Subject: MLAG Seminar online: Bianca Cepollaro,  "Are Reclaimed Slurs Offensive?"


The Mind, Language and Action Group (MLAG), a research unit of the
Institute of Philosophy at the University of Porto, invites you to the
second event of the new MLAG Seminar Series featuring talks by
international researchers on topics of interest to the group. The
talk, given by Bianca Cepollaro (University Vita-Salute San Raffaele)
and entitled "Are Reclaimed Slurs Offensive?" (joint work with
Alessandra Zappoli, Nicolò D’Agruma, Giulia Giunta, Simone Sulpizio
and Filippo Domaneschi). will take place on December 18, 13:00-14:30
Western European Time (WET). The meeting is online. MS TEAMS details:
Meeting ID: 333 525 999 219 0; Passcode: DG7tU3tX.
The seminar is jointly organized by Sofia Miguens (MLAG-IF), Dan Zeman
(MLAG-IF), James Grayot (MLAG-IF), Rafael Antunes Padilha
(MLAG-IF|IFCH-UNICAMP), Samuel Lima (FLUP) and João Carlos Rocha Lima
(FLUP). Information about MLAG can be found here:
https://ifilosofia.up.pt/research-groups/mlag. To contact the
organisers, please send an email to mlag.porto at gmail.com.
All welcome!
ABSTRACT:
Can reclamation neutralize the sting of slurs? This study provides the
first experimental investigation of the online processing of reclaimed
slurs in Italian, combining offline offensiveness ratings with online
reading-time measures. Following Galinsky et al. (2013), we take
ingroup first-person uses of slurs (“I am an S”) as a proxy for
reclamatory uses, and third-person uses of slurs by someone who is not
characterized as an ingroup as a proxy for standard derogatory uses
(“He is an S”). We thus contrast these first- and third-person uses of
slurs with their non-slurring counterparts. Findings reveal that
third-person uses of slurs are judged most offensive, first-person
uses of non-slurring labels are judged least offensive, and
reclamatory uses of slurs (i.e., first-person ingroup uses) fall in
between. Crucially, reading times mirror this pattern: more offensive
expressions slow down processing, showing that the mitigated
offensiveness of reclamatory uses is reflected in real-time
comprehension, not just reflective evaluation. This study refutes
strong versions of Optimism – holding that reclamation neutralizes
pejorative force –, and Pessimism –maintaining that slurs’ toxicity
remains stable across different uses. Our results align more closely
with Instrumentalists, according to whom for reclamation to work, the
tokened slurs must be associated with both negative and positive
contents; and possibly with Ambiguitists – for whom slurs are
ambiguous between a derogatory and a reclamatory meaning. Both
approaches must explain how exactly reclamatory uses of slurs are
processed. Finally, we found that, as philosophers highlighted,
allegedly “neutral” labels show traces of mild offensiveness in
third-person uses, which disappears in first-person uses.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language




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