Lying with slurs and other evaluative terms

Abstract Are slurring statements, when applied to members of the slurred group, true, false, or a little bit of both? Intuitions are mixed. And investigating more truth-value judgements is unlikely to cure the stalemate we find ourselves in. Truth-value judgements are just not up to the task. In their place, I propose we look to judgements of lying instead. This change in focus provides a new and better tool for understanding the complex semantics and pragmatics of slurs. As I argue, it also suggests that slurring statements encode, conventionally implicate and presuppose the same information as statements with the slur’s neutral counterpart. I then briefly apply this style of argument to the semantics and pragmatics of evaluative language more generally.