CHAPTER 9 Reference, Inference, and the Semantics of Pejoratives

Abstract

Abstract This chapter argues that Dummett's inferentialist account of pejoratives in natural language is quite mistaken, and provides an alternative account within the framework of referentialist semantics. Little is said explicitly about the overall upshot for the inferentialist‐referentialist debate, the terms of which may be too inchoate for fruitful engagement at that level of abstraction. However, an issue will tentatively be raised about the bearing of pejoratives on another vexed and programmatic debate, that over the relative priority of language and thought.