36.3473, FYI: MLAG Seminar: Leopold Hess, "Slurs and Neutral Counterparts: An Inferentialist Perspective"

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3473. Thu Nov 13 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3473, FYI: MLAG Seminar: Leopold Hess, "Slurs and Neutral Counterparts: An Inferentialist Perspective"

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Date: 12-Nov-2025
From: MLAG - Mind, Language and Action Group [mlag.porto at gmail.com]
Subject: MLAG Seminar: Leopold Hess, "Slurs and Neutral Counterparts: An Inferentialist Perspective"


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 invited
speakers on topics of interest to the group. The talk, given by
Leopold Hess (Jagiellonian University, Krakow), is titled "Slurs and
neutral counterparts: an inferentialist perspective" (abstract below)
and will take place on 27 November 2025, 14:00-15:30 Western European
Time (WET). The meeting is in hybrid format:
- In-person: Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto, Via
Panorâmica, s/n, 4150-564 Porto, Anfiteatro 2, Portugal
- Online: MS TEAMS: 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:
A major controversy in recent philosophical literature on slurs
concerns the issue of so-called neutral counterparts. It is often
assumed that the reference of a slur is either identical to or
functionally related to the reference of a non-offensive term for the
same group. Important arguments have been levelled against this
assumption by Ashwell, Croom, Falbo and Foster among others. The most
important problem appears to be that slurs are in fact often used with
an extension that does not match the extension of the putative
counterpart. In this talk I will suggest that an inferentialist
semantics of slurs can elegantly account for both the canonical and
non-canonical uses of slurs. What is usually considered a problem of
the inferentialist approach – that it does not attribute determinate
extensions to objectionable expressions – can be turned into an
advantage.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language
                     Pragmatics
                     Semantics




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