Actions, Slurs, and Pernicious Ideologies

This chapter offers an account of how slurs, understood as speech acts, help reinforce and strengthen pernicious ideologies. The act of using a slur, I propose, strengthens the pernicious ideology cued in virtue of the act’s status as a well-constituted move relative to the norms of that ideology. In developing this view, I start with the observation that actions are evaluable relative to norms. Call an action that accords with or is consistent with the prescriptive content of a norm well-constituted relative to that norm. Drawing on work from the philosophy of action, I suggest that performing well-constituted actions helps to uphold the norms relative to which they are well-constituted—and, insofar as these norms are constitutive of a larger practice, the actions also help uphold that larger practice. The act of slurring, then, strengthens the pernicious ideology cued in virtue of the act’s status as a well-constituted move relative to that ideology’s norms. My proposal has the virtue of being non-psychologistic—it explains how slurs can strengthen ideologies without producing particular psychological effects in either the speaker or the addressee. Furthermore, it does justice to the intuition that how we respond to slurs matters and offers a general framework for examining how any kind of action can contribute to reinforcing harmful ideologies.