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Ivan Milić, What Counts as an Insult?, 33 Acta Analytica 539 (2018)

Abstract

In virtue of what does a linguistic act count as an insult? I discuss five main approaches to this question, according to which an insult is determined by (i) the semantic properties of the expression used, (ii) the insulter, her intention or attitudes, (iii) the addressee and her personal standard, (iv) the features of the speech act performed and (v) the standard of the relevant social group. I endorse the last, objectivist account, according to which an act x counts as an insult if and only if x is assessed as demeaning when addressed at A by the standard of the relevant social group at t.

1. Introduction

In the recent literature on pejorative language, there have been several attempts to describe the mechanism by which the use of slurs and other derogatory terms may generate insults (Jeshion 2013; Bolinger 2015; Sennet & Copp 2015). Comparatively little discussion, however, aimed at answering a more fundamental question as to how insults are generated across the board, by any term whatsoever. In virtue of what does a linguistic act count as an insult?

The relevant notion of insult here is qua property of linguistic acts.1 Yet, not every insulting act is philosophically interesting. As it has been pointed out, insults may be generated by any linguistic expression whatsoever (Anderson and Lepore 2013:352; Bolinger: 2015:4): it may suffice to impersonate someone’s voice or repeat what one said in a derogatory way. Such insults are not much of linguistic acts, though: imitating someone’s walk or gesture might be equally offensive. In contrast to such a parasitic use of language, I will focus on insults performed by proper speech acts, as when asserting or making indecent proposals.

To introduce the relevant notion of insult, I will start by distinguishing between the states of feeling insulted and being insulted, or subjective and objective notion of insult, respectively. I will then introduce five candidate explanations of the nature of objective insult: after briefly examining semantic approach and attitudinal view (sections 3 and 4), I elaborate upon subjectivism (section 5) and speech-act-theoretic approach (section 6). Finally, I propose and defend objectivism (section 7), arguing that it fares better than the rival theories.

2. Two Notions of Insult

It is uncontroversial, I believe, to distinguish between the notions of feeling insulted and being insulted in ordinary language.2 In the former case, a salient individual holds the belief she was offended by a given act and responds by taking an insult. Such a state is subjective as it depends by and large on the psychological profile of the addressee.3 In the latter case, by contrast, we talk of insult objectively: it makes sense to ask whether I have objectively insulted someone or have been insulted myself. When judging that an act objectively counts as an insult, thus, one disregards the addressee’s reaction and assumes that the subject may be mistaken. It is the latter, objective aspect of insult that will be the central notion of the paper.

In order to further elucidate the distinction between the subjective and objective notion of “insult”, it may be useful to consider the former as a success verb.4 Namely, in order to insult someone subjectively, one must achieve a certain result, i.e. bring the addressee in a particular psychological state. In contrast, in order to insult someone objectively no similar achievement is needed. We may compare subjective insult with deceiving and objective insult with lying: thus, I may deceive my addressee only if she believes what I said to be true, yet in order for me to count as lying, this condition need not hold.

To illustrate this distinction, consider the following scene from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. On the farewell dinner to Lieutenant Zverkov, as the guests at the table raise a toast, they notice that the main character (henceforth “Underground Man”5) refuses to drink along. During the entire evening, he is either largely ignored or humiliated. Eventually, however, he goes on to raise a toast on his own:

“Mr. Lieutenant Zverkov,” I began, “let me tell you that I hate phrases, phrase mongers and men in corsets” [...] “I hate ribaldry and ribald talkers. Especially ribald talkers.” (Dostoyevsky, 1996:119).

It is evident to everyone at the table that “men in corsets”, “phrase mongers” and “ribald talkers” address the Lieutenant (although not necessarily only him). In reaction to this, one of the guests shouts that Underground Man “wants a punch in the face for that”. As the narrator tells us that, upon hearing these words, Zverkov remained calm, such a reaction doesn’t seem to concern the subjective notion of insult.6 Indeed, an act of calling someone “ribald talker”, followed by an open confession of hatred, is at least prima facie insulting in the objective sense. For what’s worth, Underground Man takes for granted that he insulted Zverkov objectively:

“I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted you, but...” “Insulted? YOU insulted ME? Understand, sir, that you never, under any circumstances, could possibly insult ME.” (Dostoyevski 1996:119-125)

This passage is helpful insofar as it contrasts the two notions of insult. In saying that he insulted Zverkov, Underground Man presumes that the way he addressed Zverkov counts as a genuine insult in the XIX century Russia’s middle class, regardless of how the addressee responded. In reply, by insisting that Underground Man cannot possibly insult him, Zverkov shifts the focus away from the objective to the psychological dimension: Zverkov cannot mean that Underground Man is unable to address him with words which objectively count as an insult, only that Underground Man cannot bring him into the relevant psychological state. Conversely, an agent may take an insult even though her psychological state was not caused by anything insulting: a hearer may be overly sensitive, mishear what was said, and so on. As the two dimensions are thus logically independent, it follows that we can’t make a direct inference from an addressee’s subjective state to the claim that the objective insult took place and vice versa. In what follows, unless otherwise noted, the terms “insult” and “insulting” will refer to this objective notion.

With this distinction in hand, I proceed to discussing discuss five approaches to the nature of insult:

Semantic approach. Insult is determined by the semantic properties of the expression used (Hornsby 2001; Richard 2008; Hom 2008, 2010);

Attitudinal view. Insult is determined by the insulter, her intention or attitudes (Bolinger 2015, Jeshion 2013; 2016);

Subjectivism. Insult is determined by an addressee and her personal standard of insult (Berkovski 2017);

The speech act theoretic approach. Insult is determined by the features of the speech act performed or is itself a speech act (Meibauer, 2014);

Objectivism. Insult is determined by the standard of the relevant social group (Neu 2008:8).

As some of these views are by and large theories of slurs, I wish to make clear that the taxonomy merely surveys the theoretical logical space of possible approaches to insult, without assuming that each of the works cited was originally intended to apply to a more general question at hand. That being said, in offering an account of linguistic insult, I will not propose an analysis of slurs. In fact, for the most part, I will not use pejoratives as examples.

3. Semantic Approach

Originally, semantic approach is a family of views on slurs (Hornsby 2001; Richard 2008; Hom 2008, 2010; Hom and May 2013). Its main feature is that a sentence with a pejorative (e.g. chink) will have different truth conditions from the corresponding sentence with a neutral counterpart (e.g. Chinese). On one prominent semantic analysis (Hom 2010:180), the semantic value of a slur consists of prescriptions derived from the ideology (e.g. a racist one) surrounding the neutral counterpart. Thus, calling someone a “chink” equals saying that she ought to be subject to discriminatory practices for having stereotypical properties for being Chinese.7 Consequently, the sentence “There are no chinks” is necessarily true as no one ought to be discriminated based on their nationality.

In what follows, I will briefly explore the possibility of adapting Hom’s view to a theory of insult.8 (For criticism of the original view, see Croom 2011, Sennet and Copp 2015, Jeshion 2016, Popa 2016). Hom’s semantic theory (2008) helps itself to a broad notion of social institutions, such as ideologies, norms, or religion. On this view, then, an act deemed offensive is assessed as such against the background of these social institutions. As I will argue in section 7, I find this aspect of Hom’s proposal revealing. In addition, as we have seen, Hom invokes a normative component in his analysis of slurs. As applied to insults in general, the present view may be reconstructed as holding that something counts as an insult only if the addressee (and the group she belongs) ought to be subject to certain discriminatory practices. The reconstructed view, however, doesn’t fare that well when considering insults made in private or targeting one’s momentary, individual feature. For, it is not clear that a deontic prescription would be indeed ascribed in such occasions. For this reason, one may construe a semantic theory which does not postulate the normative component.

In general, one may hold that an act counts as an insult if the truth-conditions of its propositional content differ in the relevant way from those of corresponding sentence with a neutral counterpart, as stated above. The offensive character of a given act would then be explained by its having a distinct meaning (Sennet & Copp, 2015: 1081). However, such corresponding sentences need not always be available. Uttering in a serious tone “You are an alcoholic” during a faculty meeting (Berkovski 2017:665) is insulting even though “alcoholic” does not have its neutral counterpart. Instead, being a medical term, “alcoholic” is actually a neutral counterpart for other terms.

Although we have discussed only a rough sketch of the proposal, it may be argued that its core tenets can be easily challenged when adapted to a theory of insult. The semantic theorist should propose further resources to deal with the problems outlined as well as other difficulties, such as explaining insults made by using irony where the propositional content of the act is that of a compliment. Given the limited space, I will move on to discussing alternative views.

4. Attitudinal view

I now move on to pragmatic solutions. On the first non-semantic view to be discussed, insult is determined by the insulter. The speaker-oriented view can be developed along several lines. On a naive formulation, whether an act is an insult will depend on the speaker’s intentions. On a more refined view, the criterion is centered on the attitudes the speaker expresses when making an utterance.

Regarding the former account, notice that one’s intention to insult is neither sufficient nor necessary for an act to be genuinely insulting. Many share the intuition that not just everything can go through as an insult: some conditions need to take place and, whichever these are, they do not seem to be exhausted in speaker’s intention to insult. If they were, uttering “I hereby insult you” would suffice to insult the addressee. A Chinese tourist might exclaim “250!” visiting Europe in a contemptuous tone: although it would typically be considered as an insult in their country, our intuitions are that it would not count as such in its present context of use. This much suggests that one’s attempt to insult may misfire and the insult need not take place despite speaker’s intentions.

One’s intention to insult is not necessary, either (Culpeper 2011:69, Bolinger 2015:1). A European tourist may be ignorant of the fact that a phrase “250” is considered insulting in China, yet it would not make sense if she maintained that she did not insult anyone: it’s just not up to her. Although the speaker is clearly blameless, as she lacks both the intention to insult as well as the knowledge that what she says is considered to be insulting,9 her words still count as an insult in the relevant context. In sum, the speaker’s intentions are not likely considered when determining what counts as an insult.

Bolinger’s contrastive choice account (2015) and Jeshion’s expressivist account (2013, 2016) partially endorse the claim that insult should be understood in terms of the attitudes that the speaker thereby expresses. Bolinger names them “offensive attitudes” and includes, among others, bare contempt, disrespect, and aggressiveness in the list. On this view, by choosing to use a slur (rather than its neutral counterpart), one signals endorsing one of derogatory attitudes of the target group. It is such an endorsement that counts as an insult (2015:12).

Slurring and other offensive speech acts are argued to have parallel explanation (Bolinger 2015:2). Yet, one may doubt Bolinger’s account generalizes. Consider, for instance, a case where a person asks me to guess her age. In replying, I may make an honest but gross mistake. Although our intuitions may diverge as to how big a mistake would count as an objective insult, we can agree that such a case is clearly possible. Notice, however, that in so doing I did not endorse even the mildest negative attitude considered, arguably that of “simple insensitivity” (2015:14). Furthermore, I didn’t appear to have a contrastive choice, either:10 there is no neutral co-referential expression for a number I used. Finally, I didn’t violate any social norm as I was asked to guess her age. What explains the fact my act was offensive, in sum, cannot be explained solely by citing a fact about my attitude.

5. Subjectivism

Subjectivism relies on the addressee’s experience of an insult as the main criterion. On this approach, broadly construed, for each utterance x there is a contextually provided, personal standard11 relative to which x can be assessed as insulting or not. The subjectivist treats “insulting” as a predicate of personal taste, evaluated relative to the standard of a salient individual. In this sense, subjectivism about insults bears a striking resemblance to relativism about taste predicates (Lasersohn 2005, Stephenson 2007). Just as “x is tasty” is assessed relative to one’s standard of taste, “x is insulting” is similarly evaluated against one’s standard of insults.12

The standard of insult, like the standard of taste, should arguably be construed in terms of personal experience. For our purposes, we may adopt Berkovski’s (2016) proposal offering humiliation as central to understanding of such a standard. This gives us only a rough sketch of subjectivism, as we still need to determine who is the salient individual with the privileged standard of insult. On a simplistic version of subjectivism, the relevant standard is that of the addressee. The motivation for this view stems from the fact that our emotional response to insults vary across individuals, and so it may seem natural to think that the individual standards for insult vary, too. In consequence, the subjectivist notion of insult just is the objectivist one: as long as the addressee feels insulted, we have infallible grounds to claim she was insulted.

In addition to denying the distinction between the two notions of insult outlined above, naive subjectivism faces another difficulty. Namely, when an individual judges an act to be insulting, she does not normally intend to convey that the given act is insulting only to her; two parties discussing whether an act is offensive cannot simply downplay their original assertions into “x is insulting to/for me”, hoping to settle the dispute. Unlike disagreements over what is tasty, where interlocutors can agree to disagree in the like manner, the ordinary language testifies that judgments about insults often have a much wider scope. Subjectivism, thus conceived, gives false predictions about our linguistic behavior: disputes about what is genuinely insulting cannot be resolved by appealing to personal standards.

In reply to these charges, the subjectivist can opt for a more nuanced view. She can hold that x counts as an insult relative to the standards of an average or ideal addressee.13 Such a modified view meets the challenge, and correctly predicts that an individual could take an insult and yet be wrong in claiming that she was insulted. Namely, the strategy presupposes that x can be correctly assessed as an insult only relative to the standards of certain individuals, but not relative to others. One can voice the following complaints, though. First, there is an epistemological problem: how are we to know which subjects are the average ones? Without a clear answer to this question, the subjectivist cannot settle the debate over whether an insult took place. Secondly, if we assume for the sake of argument that we could identify the privileged individuals, their manner of reaching the verdict would still be rather unorthodox: unlike the common practice of arguing whether an insult took place or not, the idealized addressee would only need to introspect into her psychological state to yield a solution. The subjectivist thus owes us an account of how to treat these cases.

Recently, an alternative subjectivist proposal was offered by Berkovski (2017). On his broadly evolutionary picture,14 insults signal to a pertinent audience that the target should be deemed unsuitable and even shunned from the social group. If so, the fact that we feel strongly when we realize we’ve been treated in the said way can be seen as an “evolutionary advantage”: being hurt or shocked can inform both ourselves and others to avoid similar situations (2017:670). Consequently, on this proposal, x will count as an insult “when the target has a regular emotional response to its utterance”.

The central role in Berkovski’s analysis is given to the “emotional response”, further clarified by his analogy between insult and pain. If we evolved to quickly and accurately recognize and react to the outside painful stimuli, this seems to presuppose that human reactions were initially slower, more scarce or even altogether absent. The painful stimuli, then, must have had existed before our reactions developed to their present state. Extending the analogy, it would seem that our emotional response to insults likewise evolved to adapt to certain external stimuli, rather than the other way around.

The subjectivist may adopt different strategies in reply. Perhaps our reactions to pain and to insults are importantly different: after all, the latter is only a social construct. As such, it might so happen that the reactions to insults have developed simultaneously with the phenomenon of insult, unlike it is the case with pain. Again, due to the lack of space, I will not be exploring these matters here.

6. The Speech Act Theoretic Approach

We can divide speech-act-theoretic approaches in three strands, classifying insult as (i) a perlocutionary effect, (ii) an illocutionary act, and (iii) a style in which an illocutionary act has been performed, respectively.

The first view, on which insulting is thought of as a perlocutionary effect on a par with “inspiring” or “irritating” (Lycan 2000:181) is a non-starter. Quite simply, it is arbitrary whether a perlocutionary effect will take place or not, as it depends on the psychological set-up of the addressee. And although there is no sense to talk about what is objectively inspiring or objectively irritating, we can distinguish between subjective and objective insult. If anything, this account is correct for the subjective sense of insult but it would not work for the objective notion.

On another approach, we may conceive of insulting as an illocutionary act in its own right, in line with assertion, question or command. Sennet (2016) seems to recognize insulting as a speech act whereas Meibauer (2014) goes on to offer its constitutive rule: insulting counts as an undertaking to the effect that the hearer feels insulted (2014:144). The rule seems both speaker and hearer oriented; for, the condition “that the hearer feels insulted” is markedly subjectivist, whereas the rule’s reference to performing an act to the effect that hearer feels insulted seems to presuppose the intention on the speaker’s part. Indeed, Meibauer is explicit that “we assume that the speaker intends to insult the hearer” (2014:145). Accordingly, the objections laid out against both subjectivism and the speaker-centered view would reapply. However, independently of Meibauer’s proposal, there is a general qualm with this approach. Although I do not wish to deny that certain speech acts can be performed indirectly, whenever one makes an insult one inevitably uses some further speech act in doing so. The insulting acts would thus always occur within double speech acts. For this reason, it is safe to assume that an acts of insult are not illocutionary acts per se15 but rather a phenomenon which results from performing illocutionary acts.

Insult can be also analyzed as a “style or manner” in which a “large range of types can be performed”16 (Searle, 1979; cf. Neu 2008:13). Unlike the previous view discussed, insults are here considered to be a way of performing a certain speech act, rather than a speech act itself. We can unpack Searle’s “style or manner” of performing an act insultingly as referring to some outward features, such as using a negative tone or putting the emphasis on locution. In addition, “style or manner” may refer to the content, too. Presumably, all there is to greeting someone insultingly is one’s choice of the expression used. However, this doesn’t generalize to all the content. I will return to this point shortly.

I will call this view “adverbialism”, as it counts something to be an insult insofar as it is said insultingly. The proposal is neutral between subjectivism and objectivism (to be introduced shortly): we may hold that an act is performed insultingly as judged by a salient individual or by the standards of the relevant social group. Either way, adverbialism captures certain data fine; against Meibauer’s view, it holds that insulting is performed by means of speech acts, rather than being a speech act on its own; against the semantic approach, it denies that insult is encoded semantically, and so on.

Performing an act in an insulting style or manner may be seen either as the sufficient or the necessary condition for an act to count as an insult. The former thesis is rather plausible. As mentioned in the opening section, uttering any word derogatively may be rendered insulting. The latter thesis, however, is vulnerable to some obvious counter-examples. Going back to one of the examples, one may grossly mistake when judging one’s age, even though no insulting manner need to be present. For one thing, the outward features such as the tone, gesture or emphasis may be just ordinary. For another, unlike with the greeting scenario, there is no sense of considering the choice of the content to be insulting: as said, no clear alternative exists to picking a number. Thus, although the insulting manner might be a key component to the correct analysis of insults, it is difficult to accept that the manner is all there is to it. Adverbialism, thus conceived, lacks resources to explain the nature of insult.

7. Objectivism

The last view under consideration, objectivism, posits a contextually provided standard relative to which an act x is assessed as insulting. In so doing, the objectivist chooses the standard for insult which is independent of both the insulter and the insultee. This sets it apart from subjectivism which introduced the addressee’s standard of insult as the salient one. Arguably, the objectivist program can be implemented by several strategies. The present account takes a lead from Neu’s contention that being insulted “may be due to social conventions that operate and establish standards independent of one’s subjective response” (2008:6). On my proposal, each linguistic act is evaluated relative to the following triple: the standard S of the relevant social group, the time of the utterance t, and the addressee A. On this picture, a linguistic act x counts as an insult if and only if (i) x is recognized as demeaning by the standard of the relevant social group at t and (ii) x is demeaning when addressed at A. In what follows, I spell out the concepts of “relevant social group”, “demeaning” and “demeaning to the addressee”.

“Relevant social group”. A “relevant social group” is assigned the role of the judge parameter. For each utterance U at t, such a group will either assign the property of being insulting or not.17 We have seen that the naive subjectivist allows that different addressees can have distinct standards for what is insulting. Consequently, an act can be both insulting and non-insulting within the same context of utterance. On idealized addressee approach, in turn, such a relativization was abandoned, as the view departed from the original subjectivist motivations. It is this strategy that the objectivist effectively mirrors, by assigning only one judge parameter for each context of utterance.

Of course, this doesn’t prevent an act from being ruled insulting and non-insulting across two separate contexts: the contextual parameter of the relevant social group’s standard may shift. For instance, using a certain pejorative may be derogatory for a wide population but at the same it may have an appropriated use in a smaller group among its members. The notion of “social group” should be thus construed in a rather flexible way. Roughly, for the purpose of defining what an insult is, let us say that two social groups are identical if and only if their members share attitudes and values about what is virtuous, demeaning or accepted. As such, a social group may be conceived in numerous ways: a group of friends or the whole Western civilization can fit the bill. Different social groups will have different amounts of the attitudes they mutually adopt. For our purposes, the relevant group’s beliefs need not coincide with the actual beliefs held by its members. It suffices, instead, that they are available for the group to jointly accept them.18

The objectivist proposal can be motivated in several ways. First, it is a common knowledge that the standards for what counts as an insult vary across cultures: what is insulting in one society need not be insulting in another; as mentioned, uttering “250” in Europe would normally fail if its intent was to generate an insult, unlike in China, where it is considered to be rather offensive, insofar as it relates to the stupidity. Secondly, there is a common practice of resolving disagreements over whether an insult took place through a rational discussion. It makes sense to argue that the addressee should not get offended, that she was in fact not insulted, or that one’s emotional response is unwarranted. This suggests, initially, that there is a standard relative to which acts are evaluated as insulting or not. On a closer look, these considerations favor precisely such a social account. For, we are in a position to judge whether an act is an insult or not with regard to a given social community, and due to being its members; if we happen to be in some distant culture, we might find it proportionally more difficult both to make an insult as well as to refrain from making one than we would do so in our own culture. In addition, we wouldn’t be confident in arguing that we did not insult someone who claims to the contrary; at best, we could insist that the given act would not count as an insulting in our society. A phenomenon of insult is, thus, by and large culture-dependent.

“Demeaning”. Having argued that a linguistic act counts as an insult relative to the standard of the pertinent social group, what are the criteria that an act must satisfy in order for that group to evaluate it as such? On the proposal I favor, the central notion is the property of being demeaning or derogatory. We can say that being demeaning is a quality of the act by which a target has been addressed. Generally speaking, something is demeaning if it hurts our honor and self-respect (Neu 2008:3). As such, the notion is multifaceted: it may relate to anything from one’s physical appearance and social standing to religion or psychological traits. The demeaning acts, referring to these traits, may vary to a large extent; uttering slurs, for instance, is considered to be demeaning in most cases;19 this is because slurs are by definition socially recognized as derogatory; comparisons are often thought as a convenient means of demeaning, too: when Churchill addressed Attlee as a “sheep in sheep’s clothing”, he said something derogatory about Attlee in virtue of England’s societal standards of that time. It may be likewise demeaning to imply something, to make a certain bet, or even to acknowledge a certain fact. The latter case will normally depend on the context in which an acknowledgment takes place. To revisit Berkovski’s (2017:665) example, asserting “You are an alcoholic” would normally not be demeaning when mentioned in a rehab, although it would be if said out loud on a faculty meeting. The reason is that an act is considered to be demeaning in relation to the social group which forms part of the context in which the linguistic act has been made. Since the value system of a social group of recovering alcoholics doesn’t recognize being alcoholic as derogatory — after all, this is what self-defines their group — the former act is not viewed as offensive. Yet, this is not shared by the faculty meeting. This much shows that truth can be insulting.20

It may be objected that the analysis is threatened by circularity insofar as the notion of “demeaning” could be understood in terms of the notion of “insult”. The two concepts don’t over- lap, however. The key difference is that the standards of “demeaning” may be subjective, unlike the standards for “insulting”. For instance, I may consider it demeaning that people obey a certain law even though this doesn’t entail that I regard it insulting that these people actually obey it. As I already stressed, the present analysis never fixes the argument place for “insulting” on a single individual, but rather on a social group. Accordingly, it is only if my standards of demeaning match with that of other group members that certain acts can be deemed insulting in our community when addressing a particular target. Thus, insults are always objective in this sense, insofar as they depend on broader, social criteria, which don’t necessarily hold for the notion of demeaning. Having said that, I don’t wish to deny that “demeaning” here is introduced as a mere approximation to the meaning of insulting. The key point is that, as members of a social community, we share certain values and thus recognize acts which are demeaning, and in virtue of this, insulting.

“Demeaning to the addressee”. Like subjectivism, the present view considers the insultee as all-important in the analysis. According the the objectivist’s double relativization, an act is insulting not merely relative to the standard of the given social group but also depending on whether it is socially considered to be demeaning to the addressee.21 This assumes that one and the same utterance, with all the same contextual parameters except for the addressee, may turn out to be insulting in one but not insulting in another occasion.

To show this, consider two scenarios. In one, a NYC gangster Billy Batts meets his shoe cleaner, according to their previous agreement. It so happens that the shoe cleaner has forgot- ten to bring the shine box. This clearly annoys Batts who commands the shoe cleaner in front of her co-workers to go home and get her shine box. In another scenario, Billy Batts runs into Tommy DeVito, his ex-shoe cleaner who has now become a gangster himself. As in the previous case, Batts shouts the same content “Now go home and get your shine box”, while DeVito is surrounded by friends, most of whom mobsters.22

Arguably, Batts’ utterance would not be viewed as demeaning to the addressee in the former case: Batts’ command is directed at someone who is a shoe-cleaner, who failed to re- spect the agreement, and who is expected to make amends. In the latter case, however, the same words do demean a gangster, as they remind him of his past occupation which is viewed as underprivileged in his circle of friends. Another way of making the same point would be by tweaking the force and content of Batts’ act into a polite request. It should be obvious that Batts’ addressing his shoe cleaner with “Would you be so kind to go home and get your shine box?” in the first scenario would be everything but offensive. Yet, it would still count as an insult in the second scenario. For the sake of comparison, note that the adverbialist manner appears to be the same in both situations, whereas the final verdict differs. A key to explaining this is the fact that only the latter of the two acts is viewed as demeaning to its addressee as DeVito identifies himself as the member of the relevant group.

Strong evidence for objectivism comes from criminalization of insulting speech. Current laws in many countries punish such deeds with fees or imprisonment, especially when insulting the three Rs: rulers, religion, and royals. It appears that objectivism is best positioned to explain the conditions to declare an insulting act as illegal. When a Dutch man called the Queen Beatrix “whore”23 in 2007, he was imprisoned. Yet, the police arguably did not investigate the Queen’s psychological state or analyzed the manner in which the words were uttered. His act was deemed objectively insulting insofar as it was perceived as socially demeaning to the addressee. Note, however, that although in these cases the judge may make an erroneous verdict, she would still be basing her decision on what she believes to be socially perceived as insulting.

In the remainder of the section, I discuss two objections to the view. We have said that for each utterance U at t, the relevant social group will either assign the property of being insulting or not. Consider, thus, a context of utterance where the speaker and the addressee come from two different social groups with incongruent standards for insult. In particular, the speaker’s act is not assessed as offensive in her own social group, but it is deemed insulting in the community of the addressee. Shall we say that the insult took place or not? Given that there is only one context of utterance, the objectivist must favor one of the two social groups, ultimately assessing the act as either insulting or not insulting.

On the version of objectivism I defend, whenever two dictums contradict each other, the “is insulting” verdict should always outweigh the other. Let me point out that this is not because the addressee is in any way more pertinent in the analysis than the speaker is. In fact, in a reversed scenario, where the addressee’s social group does not assess an act as offensive whereas the speaker’s community does, the insult would again take place. The nature of insult is such that, if the act is justifiedly regarded as insulting by a relevant social group (even when there are two or more relevant groups), this cannot be changed by any further considerations. At best, the speaker can show that her act was blameless, and thus excuse herself.

Another worry for the objectivist are the borderline cases. So far, I have insisted on there being a given social group whose standard for insults is a contextual parameter for an act x. Yet, this may overlook two possibilities where it may be unclear whether x should count as an insult or not; first, it might so happen that members of a community disagree as they perceive the same standard differently; secondly, it is possible that the majority of members of the relevant social group don’t consider the relevant expression either demeaning or not demeaning when addressing the given target.

Regarding the first worry, one may object that positing one judge parameter for a whole social group is oversimplifying. Indeed, it is possible for members of the same community to disagree over what values their group actually shares, as these are sometimes tacit. This is not necessarily a problem for the present account. On the account of the group’s belief I mentioned earlier, a group’s belief is not a mere aggregation of the actual individual beliefs: instead, it is a belief which is available for the group to jointly accept it. The group belief may thus be reached by evaluating the argumentative strategies of the group members, leading one party to accept the judgment of the other. Alternatively, a persistent disagreement may be due to the fact that the relevant community is not homogenous after all, but instead harbors two contrasting sets of values. If so, some of its members would actually belong to another community.

As to the second worry, social standards do evolve over time before they come to have more determined values. Still, the cases where it would be vague whether an act is insulting are bound to be scarce. For, when it is unclear whether an expression counts as an insult on a larger scale, in most cases this would imply that smaller social groups already consider such expressions as offensive. What remains unclear, in other words, is whether the standards of a given social group have already been adopted by a larger community. What tips the scale in favor of the affirmative answer here is the fact that these acts would most likely be used by members of a community for which an act has a derogatory meaning. If used by a non-member, the act could also be regarded as offensive, although for a different reason: it is precisely in virtue of using such expressions that putative “outsiders” can intend to express their belonging to a certain group or to its values.

8. Conclusion

In this essay, I formulated and defended objectivism about linguistic insults, arguing that a linguistic act x counts as an insult only if x is recognized as demeaning when addressed at A by the standard of the relevant social group at t. In so doing, I examined what I took to be the main competitors to objectivism: semantic approach, attitudinal view, subjectivism and speech-act-theoretic framework, and offered a set of objections against them. Finally, I argued that objectivism is theoretically well-motivated, and addressed several worries for the account.

Footnotes

Some theorists use “insult” to refer to a property of terms. Thus, Hom (2010), DiFranco (2014), and Bolinger (2015), among others, consider insults to be a subset of pejoratives, reserving “offense” to de- scribe a property of acts. Such a distinction is not always used consistently. As I will focus entirely on the property of act, I will use “insult” and “offense” interchangeably, as well as the related verb phrases and adjectives.

See Neu 2008:6–10. In Bolinger’s terminology (2015:3), the relevant distinction is between the actual and the warranted offense, respectively.

Commonly, the subject expresses when being in such a state, although nothing here hinges on it.

See Ryle 1949:130, 149—53.

The name he is generally referred to by the literary critics.

There is a remaining possibility that Zverkov took an insult but did not express it due to his higher social standing. In order to draw the relevant distinction, I leave this possibility aside.

For Hom, “chink” expresses a complex property, such as “ought to be subject to higher college admissions standards, and ought to be subject to exclusion from advancement to managerial positions, and..., because of being slanty-eyed, and devious, and good-at-laundering, and..., all because of being Chinese” (Hom 2010:180).

Again, I do not assume that Hom or other semantic theorists had this intention. Instead, I discuss Hom’s proposal as a starting point in building an otherwise plausible candidate for a theory of insult.

Arguably, not every ignorance is excusable: one may insists that there are contexts in which the speaker should know that certain act would be deemed insulting (cf. Bolinger 2015:11).

Jeshion (2013:331 n.15) remarks that not even all slurs have neutral counterparts, citing “Gook”, used to refer to Korean and Vietnamese people, as one such example.

This notion of standard does a double duty: it tells us both whether an act x satisfies the sufficient degree to be called insulting in the first place, as well as whether x is more insulting than another act y.

On this analysis, [[insulting]]j,w = (λx . [λx . x appears insulting for the agent j in w). Note, however, that the subjectivist is not committed to the relativist twist concerning changes within intra-personal assessment. For example, if one finds x tasty at t1 but changes her mind at t2, the relativist insist that the relevant assessment is the latter one, obliging the subject to retract her original assertion (MacFarlane, 2014: 108–111, 306). In my opinion, the subjectivist about insults has sufficient argumentative maneuvers to avoid the relativist dictum here.

Thanks to the anonymous referee who suggested this maneuver to me.

For further sources on linking insults to natural selection, see Progovac & Locke.

I leave the possibility that some insulting acts may be considered as speech acts of their own, such as slurring (Anderson and Lepore, 2013:351–2).

Searle (1979, ix) only mentions this in passing, without actually advocating this view. In fact, he speaks of insinuation and hinting, rather than insults. I am here only taking his reference to construct a possible approach. I opted for this name in analogy with a view concerning perceptual content.

I read Anderson and Lepore’s (2013) prohibitionism as advancing an objectivist proposal: since slurs and other pejoratives are prohibited words in a given society, by using them one violates the prohibition and thus generates offense.

For the purposes of the paper, I do not wish to commit myself to any view concerning group beliefs, although the proposal resembles the inflationist view advocated by Schmitt (1994).

Although it is possible to use slurs in a non-demeaning way, I here presuppose a typical case of slurring.

Austin (1970:133) held that “to say that you are a cuckold may be to insult you, but it is also and at the same time to make a statement which is true or false”. See also Neu (2008: 17-8).

Although this might be suggested by the phrase “demeaning to the addressee”, we are not interested in whether the addressee finds herself demeaned by the act. Instead, the stress is on “socially considered”.

The example is adapted from Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

See: https://web.archive.org/web/20110221124434/http://current.com/news-and-politics/88877763_-dutch-man-jailed-for-insulting-the-queen.htm. Accessed on April 5, 2018.

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