Reclaiming Slurs through Conceptual Engineering

Introduction

Ideology can leave us “stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts.”^[1] Slurs are linked to an especially harmful kind of concept. Successfully reclaiming slur terms requires understanding and rejecting these concepts. Linguistic reclamation of slur terms, when combined with critique of the underlying concept, can put an oppressive weapon out of action and help liberate us from pernicious conceptual cages.

My analysis will not focus on the semantic theory of slurs or slur reclamation. Constructing a natural language semantics of slurs is primarily a matter for empirical linguistic research, not philosophy. Indeed, Cappelen (2017) argues that semantics should be left to specialists with the expertise to conduct empirical study and formal analysis of linguistic phenomena.^[2] Of course, findings in linguistics will be very relevant for philosophers, and it is certainly within the purview of philosophy to interpret these findings and investigate the theoretical foundations of linguistics. The substantial philosophical literature on the semantics of slurs also demonstrates that philosophers can use interdisciplinary approaches to make meaningful progress in semantics. Developing theoretical semantic accounts of slurs has proven valuable. However, validating these theories will require empirical study of linguistic patterns in natural language use. Then, we can evaluate how operationalized forms of these semantic theories can explain the observed patterns. Ultimately, settling the differences between semantic theories of slurs requires linguistic research.

However, conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics are matters for philosophy. The task of philosophers is not just to describe linguistic tools, but to assess the representational features of these tools and find ways to fix their defective or harmful aspects. Therefore, instead of conducting descriptive semantics, this paper focuses on the concepts underpinning slur terms. Section 1 describes the concepts connected to slurs and explicates their normative flaws. Section 2 argues that fully successful reclamations of slurs must involve conceptual engineering, not just lexical change. Finally, section 3 addresses some important objections to this conceptual view of slurs.

1. Slurring Concepts

Slur lexical items are connected to underlying concepts (representational devices), which we can call slurring concepts. These concepts are defective and harmful in virtue of their key characteristics: they are thick, essentializing, reactive, and subordinating.

First, slurring concepts are thick concepts, with both descriptive and normative features. Slurs make a negative evaluation of some social group.

Second, slurring concepts are essentializing. As Neufeld describes, slurs designate an essence that is causally connected to negative stereotypical features of some social group.^[3] This essence is a failed natural kind. For example, the N-word posits a “blackness essence” that is supposed to be causally responsible for negative features of Black people. The evidence for this semantic view is substantial, as it can explain features of slurs in natural language that other theories do not account for. For instance, it explains a systematic linguistic pattern: slurs are always nouns. This is because nouns are unique lexical devices that predicate things into enduring, essential categories like natural kinds. Neufeld’s theory has many other successful predictions and explanatory benefits. However, our primary concern is not in identifying the correct semantic theory, but in understanding slurring concepts and their defects. It is a sufficient to say that slurs must make use of essentializing concepts to refer to a targeted group in a stable way and to warrant negative inferences about this group.

Essentializing concepts are epistemically flawed ways to describe social groups. Using essentializing concepts for real natural kinds like rock and atom is appropriate. However, social groups like races, religions, and sexual orientations are not immutable essences with strict natural boundaries, and they cannot justify attributing inherent properties to their members. Essentializing social categories produces cognitive mistakes and bad inferences.^[4] Furthermore, essentializing concepts have normative harms, as they encourage dehumanization and harmful stereotypes. Treating members of a targeted group as determined by their group membership, without the autonomy of a person, is clearly dehumanizing. Empirical research shows that essentializing concepts, like a biological conception of race, result in increased stereotyping and discrimination.^[5] For example, people who endorse an essentializing biomedical concept of mental illness distance themselves more from those seen as mentally ill, perceive them as more dangerous, have lower expectations of their recovery, and show more punitive behavior.^[6] Simply making an essentializing concept salient can cause members of the essentialized group to perform worse on various activities, even if the stereotypes associated with the group are neutral or positive.^[7] These defects alone are strong reasons to reject the use of essentializing concepts for social groups.

Third, slurring concepts are reactive, as described by Braddon-Mitchell: a reactive concept automatically tokens a reactive representation, which is a representation that shortcuts the belief-desire system and includes a motivation for action.^[8] For instance, the reactive concept kike can trigger a representation of Jews that encourages prejudicial actions against them, and includes a negative view of Jews that justifies these actions. Indeed, one study demonstrated that “category representations immediately and automatically activate representations of the related stereotype features.”^[9] This makes slurs uniquely dangerous forms of linguistic propaganda, as they can bypass conscious processing to produce discriminatory representations and behaviors.

Finally, slurring concepts are subordinating. They are thick concepts with a specific kind of normative component: a negative evaluation that ranks the targeted group as inferior and legitimates discriminatory behavior toward the group.^[10] This represents members of the target group in ways that justify derogating, intimidating, abusing, or oppressing them. Due to their specific features, slurring concepts do not just cause subordination, they constitute subordination. This constitutive claim is surprising: if a representation is just held mentally and does not manifest in any harmful actions, how can it be subordinating?

The act of conceptualizing a social group in an essentializing, negative way creates reactive representations that result in subordinating stereotypes and inferences. Because our social reality is shaped by the way others see us, being surrounded by people who represent you as inferior or subhuman is a kind of subordination itself, even if their representations do not lead to tangible actions. Furthermore, slurring concepts are so closely tied to subordinating effects that it is not sensible to separate this kind of representation from its consequences. Holding a slurring concept leads to unconscious, automatic discriminatory behaviors, and even members of the targeted group experience inhibitions and impaired performance when a slurring concept is salient.^[11] Ultimately, whether slurring concepts are constitutive of subordination or only cause subordination, they vital point is that they are subordinating.

2. Slur Reclamation as Conceptual Engineering

Reclaiming slurs is often an intentional project carried out by oppressed groups to resist their oppression and to co-opt a tool of subordination for purposes of liberation. Taking ownership of a slur and imbuing it with positive associations is an act of “weapons control” that diminishes the word’s subordinating power, effectively putting the slur out of action.^[12] For example, in the 1980s, LGBT activists applied the slur “queer” to themselves in positive and pride-evoking ways, and they were largely successful in changing the word’s connotation.^[13] However, I argue that changing a lexical item’s meaning is insufficient for slur reclamation. Lexical change is not an effective form of weapons control because it fails to challenge the most dangerous weapon: the slurring concept remains intact. Fully successful slur reclamation requires conceptual change, and not just linguistic change. The slurring concept connected to the lexical item must be critiqued and dismantled.

2.1 Partial vs. Full Slur Reclamations

How can we explain slur reclamation? Under semantic theories of slurs like Croom’s,^[14] one might describe reclamation as the process of adding positive properties to a term that become more salient than any negative properties. This explanation cannot account for slur reclamations that do not change the valence of a term but instead detach it from an essentializing social kind. For example, the term “gypsy” as it is used in the U.S. is disconnected from the Roma social group, but the term is still attached to negative properties and used as a pejorative. At least in the American cultural context, this slur has been neutralized – it no longer is linked to an essentializing concept. However, because it still has derogating force, “gypsy” has not been reclaimed.

In contrast, Camp’s perspectival theory holds that regardless of what perspective an individual holds when using a slur, the slur is still connected to a slurring perspective.^[15] However, it is empirically clear that slurs can be detached from derogating perspectives through individual and collective linguistic actions. Camp’s theory cannot explain this reclamation without substantial revisions. Regardless, her perspectival approach is insightful in emphasizing that slurs are linked to a near-automatic, integrated way of thinking about a targeted group. Rather than interpreting signaling allegiance to a somewhat vague ‘perspective,’ we interpret slurs as uses of slurring concepts. As a result of the specific features of slurring concepts, their properties are similar to Camp’s perspectives.

Finally, under Neufeld’s account, just as a slur is created when a failed natural kind is causally connected to negative properties, a slur can be unmade when the kind is disconnected from these negative properties. For instance, the reclaimed slur “queer” is still used to refer to roughly the same social kind (people with non-conforming sexual and gender identities), but it is disconnected from negative properties, and instead is even attached to positive properties. In this case, the social kind connected to the term remained the same, but the valence associated with it was neutralized or reversed. In the “gypsy” case discussed above, the opposite occurred in the US – the negative properties of the word remained, while it was disconnected from the essentializing concept (of the Roma as a social kind). Neufeld’s explanation of derogatory variation can explain both kinds of slur reclamation: holding the level of essentialization fixed, more negative slurs are more derogating, while holding the negativity fixed, more essentializing slurs are more derogating. Disconnecting slurs from essentializing concepts and reducing their pejorative force are therefore two ways to carry out reclamation projects.

All of these theories fail to directly account for the importance of confronting the underlying concept in slur reclamation. If a mental representation like a slurring perspective or concept is critical to the meaning and force of a slur, then it follows that complete slur reclamation must fix these mental representations and not merely the lexical item. Indeed, Neufeld holds a meta-semantic view where terms inherit their linguistic meaning from the mental concepts we associate with them.^[16] Partial reclamations can occur when a positive or neutral version of the slur term achieves linguistic uptake, or when the lexical item is no longer associated with an essentialized social group. However, this kind of reclamation is limited and insufficient. It only decouples a lexical item from a slurring concept and does not subvert the slurring concept itself. The most dangerous weapon, the slurring concept, remains at large, and will continue to manifest in other lexical items.

Partial reclamations can thereby constitute illusions of change. They play ‘whack-a-mole’ with lexical items while failing to address the root cause. Full reclamation involves not just lexical change, but a successful dismantling of the slurring concept. The importance of the underlying concept means that “ameliorative attempts that focus exclusively on the language used are unlikely to have much success in the long run.”^[17] For example, the descriptive term for intellectually deficient individuals has been changed many times, from “moron” to “idiot” to “mentally retarded.” When they were initially introduced, these were non-pejorative descriptive terms, but all were rapidly adopted as slurs for people with intellectual disablements. This shows the insufficiency of merely changing language without critique and rejection of the slurring concept.

2.2 Conceptually Engineering Slurs

Reclaiming slurs therefore requires addressing the slurring concept. One fruitful method for carrying out full reclamation is conceptual engineering: the process of assessing our representational devices, reflecting on how to improve them, and implementing these improvements. As we have already diagnosed the flaws of slurring concepts, how can we go about fixing these representations? One obvious approach is to eliminate the slurring concept entirely. However, this is just elimination, not reclamation. It is also not clear how to eliminate a slurring concept. The characteristic features of slurring features give us a few lines of attack. For instance, we can reject the negative normative component of the thick concept and encourage adoption of either a pure descriptive concept (e.g. person of color) or a thick concept with a positive normative component (e.g. queer). However, this approach risks “reinforcing an essentialist construction of the group identity,”^[18] as it maintains an essentializing concept of the targeted group. The slur can easily be reactivated and weaponized against its targets by reversing its valence, making this type of reclamation very precarious.

Another possible approach is to reduce the reactivity of slurring concepts. For example, perhaps training people to consciously recognize how slurs prompt automatic reactive representations of the targeted group can curb the impact of reactive concepts. Indeed, there is some evidence that implicit bias training can work to a limited degree.^[19] However, this only mitigates the slurring concept’s effects. Additionally, slurring concepts are reactive because they are essentializing. Essentialism about social kinds is what leads to automatic, reactive processing about the groups targeted by slurs.^[20] Likewise, attempting to undermine the subordinating force of slurring concepts starts at the end of the process, as it fails to address the features that make these concepts subordinating. Conclusively, all approaches to engineering slurring concepts lead us back to the same source: essentialism.

Disarming and rehabilitating a slurring concept therefore must start by rejecting essentialism. Failing to critique the essentializing concept leaves the conceptual foundations of the slur intact. In this sense, concepts like woman, race, mental illness, and homosexual are proto-slurring concepts. By essentializing a social category, these concepts function to lay the groundwork for slurs, making the essentialized group a target for oppression and subordination. Successful critiques of essentializing concepts can remove the ground that slurs stand upon. For example, Haslanger argues that woman is a failed natural kind used to mark an individual as someone who should occupy a subordinate social position based on purported biological features.^[21] Shifting the meaning of “woman” to be more in line with its real social function can unmask this underlying ideology. Instead of conceptualizing womanhood as an essential biological category, we should treat woman as a folk social concept used to subordinate. In the same vein, Appiah critiques the essentializing concept of race, arguing that there is no biological or naturalistic basis for treating races as real categories.^[22] Finally, many thinkers including Szasz and Foucault argue that mental illness is a failed natural kind used to justify social exclusion practices.^[23] Conceptual engineering projects like these can undermine the essentialist foundations of slurs.

3. The Importance of Social Practice in Slur Reclamation

One objection to anti-essentialist conceptual engineering projects is that partial slur reclamations are successful precisely because they enable positive identification and solidarity within an essentialized group. For example, the N-word is a way for Black people to express solidarity and camaraderie as members of an essentialized and oppressed social category.^[24] Rejecting the essentializing race concept could have at least two harmful consequences: (1) it precludes organizing and expressing solidarity along racial lines, (2) it can lead to false consciousness, pretending that the essentialized categories do not have continue to have real social effects simply because we have rejected the essentializing concept. However, solidarity does not require essentialism. Instead of treating race as an essential category, one can treat race as a social construction used to target groups for subordination. People within the targeted groups can then express solidarity not as common members of a real natural kind, but as fellow targets of arbitrary social oppression. Indeed, the liberatory, reclaimed form of the N-word does not require treating Blackness as an essential category. The reclamation can reject the essentializing concept while emphasizing the way this concept is still used to oppress and conveying solidarity and resistance amongst members the targeted group.

However, why try to reclaim slurs at all? Why not introduce a new lexical item to communicate a new, liberating, non-essentializing concept, instead of using a term tainted by being a former slur? It seems paradoxical to intentionally choose a lexical item that one considers deeply flawed. Slur terms might also have direct lexical effects, where the word itself produces negative cognitive reactions even if its meaning is changed.^[25] (For example, the word “Hitler” has negative lexical effects regardless of its conceptual content or usage). This gives a prima facie reason to avoid the lexical item. However, there are important reasons why conceptually engineering projects should reclaim the slur word by associating it with a new concept, rather than abandoning it entirely. First, maintaining the original lexical item allows us to put an oppressive weapon out of action, and to actually turn it against the oppressors. Once reclaimed, the word no longer has its subordinating power. Instead, it can be used as a vehicle to for liberatory, non-essentializing concepts that replace the slurring concept. Second, language has an important role in shaping social reality. Reclaiming terms with preexisting impacts can allow us to ameliorate or even reverse these impacts on social reality, while introducing a new term will require building its social impact from the ground up.^[26] The benefits of co-opting slur terms are sufficient to outweigh the costs of lexical effects.

Finally, one especially potent objection to concept-focused slur reclamation projects is that they prioritize changing representations over changing practices. As Táíwò emphasizes, our analysis of propaganda should focus not just on mental representations, but how these representations influence practice and action.^[27] Even if a person does not hold a slurring concept, they can still act upon a public practical premise, treating members of the targeted group in essentializing and subordinating ways. The important feature of slurs is not the concept, but the way these slurs feature in oppressive social structures and license harmful actions. Therefore, it is misguided to emphasize mental representations, and our primary concern in reclamation projects should not be changing concepts. Rather, we should focus on the social structures and practices that give slurring concepts their power. Conceptual engineering is far too abstract and ideal, placing our priorities in the wrong places and failing to recognize the importance of practice. We need reality engineering, not conceptual engineering.

This objection is well-received, and I agree with Táíwò’s practice-first approach. Any attempt to fully reclaim a slur must coincide with material changes to prevent oppressive practices. However, harmful representations can be oppressive in themselves. Slurring concepts represent their targets as essentially subordinate kinds, and result in oppressive and limiting mindsets. Lifting the blinders of a slurring concept can itself be liberatory. Additionally, conceptual engineering is not exclusive with practical reform, and it can help enable and guide material changes. Furthermore, a key feature of slurring concepts is that they are reactive. This makes slurring concepts action-engendering, as they automatically motivate and encourage discriminatory action. Focusing on the harmful actions associated with a slurring concept is a treatment of a symptom, not the underlying conceptual disease. Finally, slurring concepts are integrated within larger oppressive conceptual systems that can be aptly characterized as ideologies. Therefore, reclaiming slurs and critiquing slurring concepts functions as a form of ideology critique. Conceptual engineering can make the essentializing, subordinating ideology more visible, discouraging complacency and false consciousness while promoting actions to resist this ideology.

Conclusion

Dismantling slurring concepts is an essential step in fully successful slur reclamation. This paper emphasizes the critical role of slurring concepts. I began by describing the key features of slurring concepts that enable slurs to serve their harmful function. Then, I argued that full reclamation requires not just lexical change but conceptual engineering, and that rejecting essentializing thinking is the key to disarming slurs. Finally, I addressed some objections and complications in the engineering of slurring concepts. Reclaiming slur terms and critiquing slurring concepts can serve a vital role in critiquing and resisting oppressive ideologies.

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1. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The twilight of the idols. Jovian Press, 2018. Pg. 502. ↑
2. Cappelen, Herman, “Why philosophers shouldn’t do semantics,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8, no. 4 (2017): 743-762. ↑
3. Neufeld, Eleonore, An essentialist theory of the meaning of slurs, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2019. ↑
4. Wodak, Leslie, and Rhodes, “What a loaded generalization: Generics and social cognition,” (2015). ↑
5. Prentice and Miller, “Psychological essentialism of human categories,” (2007). ↑
6. See Haslam (2011), Mehta and Farina (1997), Lam, Salkovskis, and Warwick (2005), Phelan (2005). ↑
7. Nguyen, Hannah-Hanh D., and Ann Marie Ryan, “Does stereotype threat affect test performance of minorities and women? A meta-analysis of experimental evidence,” Journal of applied psychology 93, no. 6 (2008): 1314. ↑
8. Braddon-Mitchell, “Reactive Concepts,” Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics (2020): 79. ↑
9. Neufeld, pg. 21. Quote is from a summary of a study by Carnaghi & Maass (2017). ↑
10. See Maitra “Subordinating speech,” (2012). ↑
11. See empirical evidence in Carnaghi and Maass (2017); Nguyen and Ryan (2008). ↑
12. Jeshion, Robin, “Pride and Prejudiced: on the Reclamation of Slurs,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 97, no. 1 (2020): 106-137. ↑
13. Fawaz, Ramzi, and Shanté Paradigm Smalls, “Queers Read This! LGBTQ Literature Now,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 24, no. 2-3 (2018): 169-187. ↑
14. Croom, Adam M, “Slurs,” Language Sciences 33, no. 3 (2011): 343-358. ↑
15. Camp, Elisabeth, “Slurring perspectives,” Analytic Philosophy 54, no. 3 (2013): 330-349. ↑
16. Neufeld, An essentialist theory of the meaning of slurs, pg. 3 (in footnote 8). ↑
17. Renee Bolinger, “The Language of Mental Illness,” in Justin Khoo & Rachel Katharine Sterken (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language (forthcoming). ↑
18. Herbert, Cassie, “Precarious projects: the performative structure of reclamation,” Language Sciences 52 (2015): 131-138. Pg. 133. ↑
19. Pritlove, Cheryl, Clara Juando-Prats, Kari Ala-Leppilampi, and Janet A. Parson, “The good, the bad, and the ugly of implicit bias,” The Lancet 393, no. 10171 (2019): 502-504. ↑
20. Prentice and Miller (2007). ↑
21. Sally Haslanger, “Going on, not in the same way,” Conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics (2020): 230. ↑
22. Kwame Anthony Appiah, The ethics of identity, Princeton University Press, 2010. ↑
23. See Jeremy Hadfield, “The Conceptual Engineering of Mental Illness,” jeremyhadfield.com (2020) for a review. ↑
24. Robin Jeshion, “Pride and Prejudiced: on the Reclamation of Slurs,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 97, no. 1 (2020): 106-137. ↑
25. See Cappelen, “Fixing Language,” (2018). ↑
26. Herman Cappelen, “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument,” Conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, Oxford University Press (2019). ↑
27. Olúfémi Táíwò, “The Empire Has No Clothes,” Disputatio 1, no. ahead-of-print (2018). ↑