Hornsby with Derogatory Terms [Danielle Trzil]

I agree with Hornsby that under her specified conditions (the word is used to express hatred or contempt, and can be replaced with a neutral word) that derogatory terms are basically useless. when one utters a derogatory term it is harder to accept their opinion without in turn accepting something deeper and more controversial rather than if the speaker just used a neutral descriptive word. Although some derogatory words started off as neutral words, I do not see the benefit to having connotations of hatred and hostile undertones directed at larger groups of people than if you were just to be more specific in your language in the first place.

I disagree with Hornsby that if a word is found to be derogatory in terms of racism that there is no choice but to find another word. Although I do agree that certain people (namely, those who are not the race in question here) should definitely not use the derogatory term, her reference to Hare was on the right track when he said that if we are "confined to it we cannot break free from the standards". I think we have seen this happen in common media with a certain word I personally will not say, and that to a degree the meaning of words can change over time and we don't have to altogether replace the word (there is no way to eliminate the word completely once it has been made derogatory, so wouldn't opting to change it's meaning be a better alternative?)

I object her theory that using a derogatory term in practice inherently implies the hostile attitudes of the user. One of her conditions is that the term has to be used to express hatred, but the same word that others use for hatred may be a term of endearment to others (I call my siblings a lot of nasty things - but out of love!). There's more of a gray area than what she addresses in this paper.