Abstract

ZERBUDIS, Ezequiel. Neutral Terms used as Pejoratives: On a Recent Proposal by Vicente, Fraser and Castroviejo. Anal. filos. [online]. 2024, vol.44, n.1, pp.61-79.  Epub Mar 02, 2023. ISSN 1851-9636.  http://dx.doi.org/10.36446/af.e510.

I consider the recent proposal by Vicente, Fraser and Castroviejo, according to which there are (at least) two different kinds of pejorative expressions in Spanish, one of which (the one that makes use of neutral terms used as insults) has not been, according to them, sufficiently noticed or studied in the literature. Even if I think that the distinction drawn is important, I suggest an alternative explanation of the phenomenon, according to which the use of these terms as insults has to be understood as metaphoric uses of the terms, and the generic pejorative content they convey has to be understood in terms of general phenomena involved in metaphoric interpretation and presupposition accommodation.

Keywords : Pejoratives; Metaphor; Presupposition; Stereotypes.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )