Bad Words

Know about the book -

Bad Words is written by David Sosa and published by Oxford University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0191076368 (ISBN 10) and 9780191076367 (ISBN 13).

What makes a word bad? Bad Words is a philosophical examination of slurs and other derogatory and problematic language, by some of the leading contributors to the field. Slurs are an interesting case for the philosophy of language. On the one hand, they seem to be meaningful in something like the way many other expressions are meaningful - different slurs might seem in some way to refer to different groups, for example. But on the other hand, it's clear that slurs also have distinctive practical effects and roles: they can seem to be just an arbitrary tool for insulting or enabling harm. How are those aspects related? Just how the use of words is related to their significance is of course one of the deepest issues in philosophy of language: slurs not only refine that issue, by presenting a kind of use that presents novel challenges, but also give the issue a compelling practical relevance. The Engaging Philosophy series is a new forum for collective philosophical engagement with controversial issues in contemporary society.