Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Donald A. Saucier / The current research examined whether participants’ levels of racial prejudice impact their perceptions of a Black racial slur (“nigga”) used by a Black individual toward a White individual. The “racism justification hypothesis” predicts racial prejudice will be negatively related to perceptions of offensiveness due to motivations to trivialize racial slurs which allows for increased use of the slur by individuals higher in prejudice. The “hierarchy defense hypothesis” predicts racial prejudice will be positively related to more negative perceptions of the slur due to White individuals seeking to resist affiliation with Black individuals and perceiving affiliative attempts as threatening. Consistent with the hierarchy defense hypothesis, the results showed racial prejudice predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions, and lower positively expressive perceptions following “nigga” being used by a Black individual toward a White individual (Study 1). In Study 2, the current research examined whether motivations to trivialize racial slurs (i.e., racism justification) versus participants’ experiences of threat (i.e., hierarchy defense) mediated the relationships between racial prejudice and perceptions of “nigga” used by a Black individual toward a White individual. Consistent with the hierarchy defense hypothesis, racial prejudice, through status hierarchy threat, predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions, and lower positively expressive perceptions. The racism justification hypothesis was also supported. Participants’ levels of racial prejudice, through racism trivialization, were generally related to lower perceptions of the slur as offensive and greater perceptions of the slur as positively expressive. The current research then examined participants’ perceptions of “nigga” reciprocated by the White individual toward the Black individual. Interestingly, racial prejudice, through status hierarchy threat, predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions and lower positively expressive perceptions. Racial prejudice, through racism trivialization, predicted generally lower offensive perceptions and greater positively expressive perceptions. Thus, participants may have used their experiences of threat as justification for explicit prejudice toward the Black individual (i.e., perceiving the slur as more offensive and negative), while individuals who experienced trivialization motivations attempted to decrease their experiences of suppression factors by perceiving the slur as less offensive, allowing for increased use of the slur. Implications for these findings are discussed.

Cette thèse s'intéresse à la structure, aux fonctions, et aux bases cognitives des termes d'offense (tels que le terme "boche"). Les termes d'offense, ainsi que leurs équivalents psychologiques, posent des problèmes intéressants et possiblement fondationnels à propos de la nature de la signification, de l'expressivité dans les langues naturelles, du rôle des émotions dans la catégorisation. Ce travail discute de ces questions - ainsi que de nombreuses autres - en s'intéressant à différentes théories existantes ou originalesdu phénomène. De nouvelles données linguistiques sont mises en avant qui remettent en cause des théories linguistiques telles que les visions vériconditionnelles ou présuppositionnelles du phénomène, et de nouvelles théories non-linguistiques du phénomène sont développées, invoquant les concepts de qualité seconde ou la notion d'essence. Les propriétés linguistiques particulières des termes d'offense, telles que la projection ou l'expressivité, apparaissent dans ce travail être des conséquences linguistiques d'un phénomène essentiellement psychologique : la possibilité d'une composante émotionnelle ou évaluative dans la structure même des concepts. / The present work investigates the structure, function and cognitive underpinnings of slurring terms (such as "boche"). Slurring terms, and the mental correlates that I posit they have, raise interesting and possibly foundational issues about the nature of meaning, about expressivity in natural language, about the role of emotions in categorization. I discuss these questions - among many others - by studying different existing or original accounts of the phenomenon. I present novel linguistic evidence against linguistic views such as truth-conditional or presuppositional accounts, and develop new psychological (i.e. non-linguistic) theories of the phenomenon based on a connection with responsedependent concepts, or with essentialist concepts. The interesting linguistic properties of slurs, such as projection and expressivity, appear to be the linguistic consequences of the essentially mental fact that concepts may be loaded with emotional or evaluative content.

This thesis develops a pragmatic theory of metaphors and slurs. In the pragmatic literature, theorists mostly hold the view that the framework developed by Grice is only applicable to the sentence-level pragmatic phenomena, whereas the subsentential pragmatic phenomena require a different approach. In this thesis, I argue against this view and claim that the Gricean framework, after some plausible revisions, can explain subsentential pragmatic phenomena, such as metaphors and slurs. In the first chapter, I introduce three basic theses I will defend and give an outline of the argument I will develop. The second chapter discusses three claims on metaphor that are widely discussed in the literature. There I state my aim to present a theory of metaphor which can accommodate these three claims. Chapter 3 introduces the notion of "phrasal implicature", which will be used to explain phrase-level pragmatic phenomena with a Gricean approach. In Chapter 4, I present my theory of metaphor, which I call "phrasal implicature theory of metaphor" and discuss certain aspects of the theory. The notion of phrasal implicature enables a new conception of what-is-said and a different approach to the semantics-pragmatics distinction. Chapter 5 looks into these issues. In Chapter 6, I compare my theory of metaphor with three other theories. Finally, in Chapter 7, I develop a phrasal implicature theory of slurs, which I argue outperforms its rivals in explaining various uses of slurs.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka elevers och lärares attityd gentemot svordomar och könsord ur ett genusperspektiv, vilka effekter svordomar innehar i klassrummet samt hur de används av eleverna och lärarna. Intervjuer genomfördes med tre lärare, en kvinnlig respektive två manliga. Lärarna fick besvara frågor som behandlar svordomar och könsord i klassrummet. För att få ett trovärdigt resultat spelades informanterna in med hjälp av ljudinspelning. En enkätundersökning genomfördes med eleverna där de fick besvara 11 frågor, som behandlar deras eget språkbruk i klassrummet och deras åsikter angående lärare som använder svordomar i sin undervisning. Resultatet visar att genus har en stor inverkan på hur vi bedömer och accepterar svordomar och könsord i klassrummet. Lärare och elever av det kvinnliga könet har mindre tolerans i jämförelse med män. Undersökningen visar att de manliga eleverna inte bryr sig om ifall en lärare använder svordomar eller könsord i klassrummet. Samma inställning har de manliga eleverna gentemot vilken effekt svordomar och könsord har i undervisningen. De kvinnliga eleverna tappar däremot respekten för lärare som använder svordomar och könsord samt anser att svordomar och könsord innehar en negativ effekt i klassrummet. / A study has been conducted by investigating teachers' and students' attitudes towards swear words and sexual slurs from a gender perspective. The purpose of the investigation was to study the acceptance of swear words in classroom situations among teachers and students. Therefore, interviews were conducted with three teachers, of whom one was female and two were male. In order to get a correct analysis, the informants were recorded using a dictation machine. Teachers were allowed to answer questions related to their own use of profanities and the students' use of profanities in the classroom. A survey was conducted with the students where they answered eleven questions. Additionally, the students answered questions about their own language use in the classroom and their opinions regarding teachers' usage of swear words. The analysis of the results shows that gender has a great impact on the acceptance of swear words and vulgar words in the classroom. Female students and teachers have less tolerance compared to men, and the majority of both male and female students in the survey do not consider there to be any effect of swear words regarding the quality of teaching.  Finally, the result shows that female students lose respect for teachers who are using swear words.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MMus (Musicology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Music / unrestricted

This study analyses and discusses the evolution of the word bitch in Twitter discourse between the years 2010 and 2020. From its beginnings as a derogatory term used to criticise women’s appearance and behaviour in 2010 to being used as an empowering term for women to find a sense of community in 2020, this study notes the significant meanings identified in a specialised social media corpus.

Dans ma thèse, je développe une analyse uniforme des insultes et des termes épais en termes de présuppositions. Je soutiens que les insultes et les termes épais - même si ils ont été étudiés par différentes disciplines - appartiennent à la même classe de «evaluatives hybrides». Mon travail vise à combler le fossé entre la recherche sur les termes d'épaisseur d'une part et la recherche sur les insultes de l'autre, en montrant que le mécanisme sous-jacents les insultes et les termes d'épaisseur est le même et que les différences phénoménales que on peut observer dépendent des particularités de leur contenu descriptif. / In this thesis I develop a uniform account of slurs and thick terms in terms of presuppositions. I argue that slurs and thick terms – even though they were studied by different disciplines – belong to the same class of ‘hybrid evaluatives’. My work aims to fill the gap between the research on thick terms on the one hand and the research on slurs on the other, by showing that the mechanisms underlying slurs and thick terms is one and the same and that the phenomenal differences that one can observe depend on the peculiarities of their descriptive content.

Many of us have grown up hearing or using words meant as insults or negative adjectives that were in fact names for social groups. Most of them have gone unquestioned in the mainstream consciousness, but the term Gay in the generally negative meaning has in the past years been given attention as offensive and homophobic, with debates emerging in response over whether or not this is true, particularly on the internet. It is the articles and forum threads from these debates that make out the empirical material for a qualitative study as I ask what these people’s thoughts are about this term and how it is perceived. After a qualitative coding and analysis of these texts, and interpretation of the results based on Erving Goffman’s theory of Phantom acceptance and stigma terms, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, Ferdinand de Sassure’s theory of signifier and signified and how it connects to the community and Baudrillards theory of simulacra, this is the principal conclusion that I have drawn: For some of the people in this debate, the term Gay and its use is about homophobia and heterosexism, though mostly it’s not overt but a subconscious part of the continued dehumanization and stigmatization of homo- and bisexual people. This is a position I call The socially focused skepticism. Others distance themselves from this idea, talking about language development, the lack of inherent meaning of words and freedom of expression. Using Baudrillard for guidance, I interpret this as having a different, more abstract view of language than those who connect the term to heterosexism, and with this focus on language I name this position The language centered defense. Yet another group frame their reasoning about the term in compromise, preferring to limit their use of it to certain contexts rather than disposing the habit entirely or risk causing offense. To these people, whether or not the word is homophobic is less relevant to the discussion than showing respect for how it can be perceived, which gives their position the name The compromising position.

Text in English / This qualitative study presents an onomastic perspective on the changing linguistic landscape of Zimbabwe which resulted from the post-2000 land reforms (also known as the Third Chimurenga). When veterans of Zimbabwe’s War of Liberation assumed occupancy of former white-owned farms, they immediately pronounced their take-over of the land through changes in place names. The resultant toponymic landscape is anchored in the discourses of the First and Second Chimurenga. Through recasting the Chimurenga (war of liberation) narrative, the proponents of the post-2000 land reforms endeavoured to create a historical continuum from the colonisation of Zimbabwe in 1890 to the post-2000 reforms, which were perceived as an attempt to redress the historical anomaly of land inequality. The aim of this study is to examine toponymic changes on the geo-linguistic landscape, and establish the extent of the changes and the post-colonial identity portrayed by these place names. Within the case study design, research methods included in-depth interviews, document study and observations as means of data generation. Through the application of critical and sociolinguistic theories in the form of post-colonial theory, complemented by geo-semiotics, political semiotics and language ecology, this study uncovers the richness of toponymy in exposing a cryptic social narrative reflective of, among others, contestations of power. The findings indicate that post-2000 toponymy is a complex mixture of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial place names. These names recast the various narratives in respect of the history of Zimbabwe through the erasure of colonial toponyms and resuscitation older Chimurenga names. The resultant picture portrayed by post-2000 toponymy communicates a complex message of contested land ownership in Zimbabwe. There is a pronounced legacy of colonial toponymy that testifies to the British Imperial occupation of the land and the ideologies behind colonisation. This presence of colonial toponymy many years after independence is an ironic confirmation of the indelible legacy of British colonialism in Zimbabwe. The findings show a clear recasting of the discourses of violence and racial hostility, but also reveal an interesting trend of toponymic syncretism where colonial names are retained and used together with new names. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)