Hom has given the his account of Cominatorial Externalism, which emphasizes on the semantic distinction between slurs and their counterparts and the ideological practices of racism as what give slurs' their meaning. Hom believes that slurs is semantically different from its natural counterparts which means that they are filled with different meaningful contents, and referring someone with a slur is different from referring the same person by using a normal word. Also, Hom thinks the negative content of slurs is determined by social institutions, which means application of slurs inherently incorporates negative or racist contents.
Camp attempts to give a perspectival account for the use of slurs. She believes that the negative content
present by slurs is presented from a certain perspective. This means that when using a slur, the speaker has
show the allegiance to a certain perspective. Thus, Camp's account implies that the use of slurs tie to certain
thoughts or stereotypes of people, which cannot really be managed as words can.
I think it is the weakness for both case that they both left rooms for use of non-slur yet language toward
targeted groups. Both account has somewhat hinted that slurs are just a conventional way to blatantly express certain negative content, which gives some space to use of normal words to express same amount of contempt attitude.
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