Going beyond hate speech: The pragmatics of ethnic slur terms

Abstract Ethnic slur terms (“nigger”, “kike”, “kraut”) and other group-based slurs (“faggot”, “spaz”) must be differentiated from general pejoratives (“asshole”, “idiot”) and pure expressives (“fuck”). As these terms pejoratively refer to certain groups of people, they are a typical feature of hate speech contexts where they serve xenophobic speakers in expressing their hatred for an entire group of people. However, slur terms are actually far more frequently used in other contexts and are more often exchanged among friends than between enemies. Hate speech can be identified as the most central, albeit not the most frequent, mode of use. I broadly distinguish between hate speech (central use), other pejorative uses (mobbing, insulting), parasitic uses (banter, appropriation, comedy, youth language), neutral mentioning (academics, PC), and unaware uses. In this paper, authentic examples of use and frequency estimates from empirical research will help provide accurate definitions and insight into these different modes that purely theoretical approaches cannot achieve.