Meeting 89 - Swear Words and Profanity - IN-PERSON

What is a slur?

This week PhD candidate Rebecca Keller will lead our discussion on slurs, swear words, profanity, curses, and all of the most contentious kinds of speech-acts. We will investigate a number of questions relating to the issue. Intentional questions: does intention matter for profanity? Functional questions: what is the purpose of slurs and profanity? Moral questions: when are slurs permissible? Political questions: when are slurs allowed in public and who may we use slurs against? Linguistic questions: when does a word become, or cease to be, a slur? Questions of etiquette: when should we swear? Questions of humour: are slurs ethically the same when uttered earnestly as when uttered in jest? Please join us for a respectable discussion on disreputable language.

Find this week's reading from Slurs and Lexical Presumption by William Lycan here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kr3xnvpoi02nd8j/slurs_and_lexical_presumption_revised_april_2015.pdf?dl=0