Bad manners: Against a conversational implicature theory of slurs

Abstract Some authors have observed that the derogatory content conveyed by slurs exhibits features that are shared by conventionally implicated content and have thus inferred that derogation of slurs is conventionally implicated. However, Nunberg (Oxford University Press 273–295, 2018) has argued that there are special manner implicatures that exhibit the same features as conventional implicatures and that slurs give rise to such manner implicatures. The present paper closely examines manner implicatures and argues that (i) Nunberg’s claim is correct that manner implicatures behave similarly to conventional implicatures but that (ii) the view that slurs invoke such an implicature gives rise to a major difficulty. Hence, the paper concludes, a conventional implicature view of slurs is superior to a manner implicature view.