Language and the Human Section 1

Offense by RefutationThe Risk of Invalidating a Slur

(1) “You are a kike and I hate you!”

shouts a ten-year-old boy to his classmate on the playground at recess one day. While the

boy is taken away to the principal’s office for his inappropriate and offensive language, the

target of his offense, a Jewish girl, sits on her swing, unfamiliar with the slur “kike” and

therefore confused. When she arrives home, she asks her Jewish mother:

(2) a. “Mom, what’s a ‘kike’?”

b. “Sweetie, there are no kikes. There are just Jews.”

This exchange raises a significant question: given that the word “kike” is offensive in

sentence (1), is it still offensive when used by the mother in sentence (2b), or does the

context provided by the sentence make using the word acceptable? Using semantic analysis

to consider sentence (2b) indicates that the use of “kike” is unoffensive in this context.

Analyzing sentence (2b) through the perspective of conventional implicature, in contrast,

would seem to indicate that, even in this context, using the word “kike” is inappropriate.

Further consideration, however, reveals that conventional implicature actually confirms the

mother’s usage of “kike” to be unoffensive. In this paper, I will argue that, in the situation

presented by sentence (2b), the semantic approach correctly identifies the lack of offense for

the wrong reason, while conventional implicature, once the mother’s utterance is framed

correctly, offers the right answer through sound reasoning.

Semantic analysis of slurs indicates that slurs often can be negated without offense.

To apply semantic analysis to a slur, Croom explains that we should replace slurs with an

expression which combines descriptive and expressive properties (353). Since this situation

presents a case in which the target is indeed Jewish, “kike” can be replaced with the phrase

“a person who is Jewish and inferior because of it.” Consequently, sentence (1) can be

rewritten as follows:

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(3) “You are a person who is Jewish and inferior because of it and I hate you!”

Then the sentences in (2) can be rewritten as follows:

(4) a. “Mom, what’s a ‘kike’?”

b. “Sweetie, there are no people who are Jewish and inferior because of it. There are

just Jews.”

Sentence (3) clearly communicates the offense of sentence (1), at least from the perspective

of the target, who is still being insulted for the inferiority associated with her religion (even

though such inferiority does not actually stem from her religion). Sentence (4b) is clearly

unoffensive, as it explicitly disconnects Jewishness and inferiority. Consequently, the offense

in (1), revealed through semantic analysis, is not present in sentence (2b), illustrating that,

at least from a semantic perspective, the mother’s utterance in (2b) is unoffensive.

However, a problem with this approach arises if the girl had instead complained

about the boy’s insult. Her mother could have responded:

(5) “You are not a kike.”

Using semantic analysis, this sentence could be transformed into:

(6) “You are not a person who is Jewish and inferior because of it.”

Sentence (6) is unoffensive, simply informing the daughter that her Jewishness does not

make her inferior, which, according to semantic analysis, means that sentence (5) is also

unoffensive. However, the original statement (5) actually is offensive because it

presupposes that such a concept is valid: that is, a person can be inferior simply because

he or she is Jewish. Thus, the semantic analysis approach presents an invalid argument for

the innocence of sentence (2b), given that applying the same reasoning fails to correctly

explain sentence (5), which is semantically similar.

In contrast to semantic analysis, considering sentence (2b) through the lens of

conventional implicature suggests that the mother’s utterance is offensive, even though she

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is denying the existence of “kike” as a valid concept. According to conventional

implicature, certain words and phrases consistently imply the same concept, either related

to the expression itself or the surrounding words (Anderson and Lepore 33). For example,

the conjunction “but” conventionally implies a contrast between the two phrases it

connects, although the seeming incompatibility is never explicitly stated (33). Further,

conventionally implied meanings are detachable, meaning that there exists a way to convey

the explicit meaning of a concept without the implied concept (34): in the case of “kike,”

the alternative would be “Jew.” In contrast to their detachability, conventional

implicatures are not cancellable, meaning that the implied component of an utterance

cannot be removed by saying that the implicature is not intended (34). With regard to

slurs such as “kike,” this means that the boy cannot add “But there is nothing offensive in

saying so” without being hypocritical (34). According to conventional implicature, a slur is

not “calculable,” in that context cannot negate the implied meaning (35). Thus, the

mother’s utterance in (2b) still carries with it the negative associations of the word “kike,”

and is thereby offensive.

Many individuals would argue, however, that, since the mother is Jewish, her

utterance is unoffensive. In general, one expects that a member of a targeted group will not

felicitously insult that person’s own group, and that such an individual consequently would

not intend offense in using such a slur (Anderson and Lepore 41). Consequently, the Jewish

mother, a potential target of the word “kike,” would be permitted to use the word in the

context of sentence (2b). Attempting to reconcile this result with conventional implicature

analysis reveals that implicature is not quite as black-and-white as it appears. In particular,

implicature can be absent in specific, widely-accepted situations where an alternative

definition of the word, free of implicature, is in use. Regarding slurs such as “kike,” such an

alternative definition presents itself when the word is used by a Jew, rendering the

mother’s speech in sentence (2b) unoffensive without invalidating conventional implicature.

An additional consideration arises if the girl’s Christian friend had overheard the

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boy’s insult and asked her Christian mother the same question. Would the Jewish mother’s

response have been equally acceptable for the Christian mother to use? Clearly, reasoning

based on the mother’s Jewishness is no longer applicable. Instead, one must consider the

function of the word “kike” in the mother’s utterance. Essentially, in stating “there are no

kikes,” the mother is not using the word “kike” to mean “a Jew” (dragging with it

additional implied meaning), but rather to mean “the word spelled k-i-k-e,” akin to a

single-word direct quotation. This definition has no conventionally implied meaning, and

thus generally would not be perceived as offensive. Further, this analysis extends to the

Jewish mother’s statement as well, rendering consideration of statement (2b) based on the

speaker’s religion unnecessary, confirming the application of conventional implicature to

both cases.

Ultimately, for analysis of the offense conveyed through slurs, only conventional

implicature, and not semantic analysis, offers an appropriate lens. By considering the

mother’s utterance as a form of indirect quotation, the offense disappears, validating the

conventional implicature analysis. Even for a Christian mother, the offense generated by

conventional implicature disappears, yet some individuals will still be offended by her use

of the word. Standard linguistic analysis techniques, however, fail to effectively explain this

second form of offense. Notably, unlike the offense explained by implicature, this offense is

not universal, in that many other individuals, including Jews such as myself, would find

such usage unoffensive. Thus, slurs appear to convey two different forms of offense:

universal, decided by implicature, and individual, decided through personal experiences

and beliefs.

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Works Cited

Anderson, Luvell and Ernie Lepore. “Slurring Words 1.” Noûs 47.1 (Sept. 2011): 25–48.

Web.

Croom, Adam M. “Slurs.” Language Sciences 33.3 (May 2011): 343–358. Web.