Dutch slurs and the descriptive-expressive distinction

There is a lot of debate about the meaning of slurs, which are words that refer to a certain group of people in a derogative manner. Many scholars (e.g. McCready 2010; Croom 2011; Gutzmann 2015) consider slurs, unlike their ‘neutral’ counterparts, to have both descriptive and expressive content. In this squib, I discuss initial data on the use of Dutch slurs and related terms on Twitter. The Dutch data show that ‘neutral’ labels sometimes seem to behave like slurs to some degree and that some slurs can be used as swear words without (seemingly) conveying any descriptive property. Based on thes... Mehr ...