A metapragmatic, stereotype-based account of reclamation

Abstract

Group-based slurs are words that express derogatory attitudes towards some group demarcated by a property that has historically caused social antagonism, e.g. gender or ethnicity, among others. Reclamation, in turn, is the process whereby a slur starts being used non-derogatorily by members of the target group in order to express a positive attitude. Some content-based theories of slurs (which pin the derogatory force of such terms on their conventional meaning) account for reclamation by arguing that it involves a change in meaning, so that reclaimed slurs are ambiguous. But these theories face a challenge, namely to account for the difference between reclaimed slurs and run-of-the-mill ambiguous terms, whose felicitous uses do not seem to be restricted to in-group speakers. In this article, we argue that the Reclamation Worry is not a problem for content-based theories of slurs by advancing an account of reclamation that is compatible with such views. As we shall argue, such theory must rely on the sociolinguistic dimension of such terms.