The Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences kindly invites you to the upcoming talk of its seminar series:

Nenad Miscevic

"The Semantics of Pejoratives"

Date and Venue of the lecture: 10th February 2015, 4.00 pm, Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 30. Országház Street, 2. floor, "Pepita" room.

A core theory of offensive communication should deal with semantics and pragmatics of offensive language and discourse, defining the notion of offense and offending, placing it within (a view of) pragmatics. This talk addresses the topic of pejoratives or slurs, and builds (a sketch of) a unitary semantic theory. It discusses issues of reference, neutral sense, evaluative aspects of pejoratives, their possible prescriptive nature, and the expressive component linked to them.