CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This paper is about paradigmatic slurs, i.e. expressions that are prima facie associated with the expression of a contemptuous attitude concerning a group of people identified in terms of its origin or descent (?spic?), race (?nigger?), sexual orientation (?faggot?), ethnia or religion (?kike?), gender (?whore?), etc. Our purpose is twofold: (i) explaining their expressive meaning dimension in terms of a version of stereotype semantics and (ii) analysing their original and most typical uses as insults, which will be called with a neologism ?insultive?, in terms of a speech act theory.