The regional variation of slurs - a semantic exploration (2022/2023)

TEACHER

Matthias Hahn (Universität Marburg)

COURSE CONTENTS

The course first gives an overview of the spatial variation of linguistic features. It will be shown that the field of semantics in particular is underrepresented here, since semantic, i.e. contentside variation is more difficult to grasp and map than expressionside variation.

An exciting and hitherto hardly systematically studied area for investigating such variation structures and dynamics is that of the regional use of slurs. The latter are often said to reflect in a special way socio-psychological and cultural differences of regional or national speaker groups. The second part of the course is dedicated to this area and tries, for example, to explore different associative processes in regional insult vocabulary.

TEACHING HOURS/CREDITS: 2h/0.5 credits

WHEN/WHERE

10 October 2022, 10.00-12.00
UniVR - Aula Co-working

READING

• Technau, Björn (2016): "The meaning and use of slurs - An account based on empirical data." In: Finkbeiner, Rita; Meibauer, Jörg; Wiese, Heike (Hg.): Pejoration. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 187- 218.
• Technau, Björn (2018): "Going beyond hate speech: The pragmatics of ethnic slur terms." In: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14 (1), 25–43