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    'inner-city' is not genuinely ambiguous between a racial ... — Carmelics
    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    'inner-city' is not genuinely ambiguous between a racial meaning and a geographic meaning

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If 'inner-city' were genuinely ambiguous between 'African American' and a geographic meaning, substituting it for 'funny' in sentence (3.7) should yield a coherent reading
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    • 2.Sentence (3.7) sounds odd or contradictory even when 'inner-city' is used in the purportedly racial sense
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    • 3.Genuine lexical ambiguity allows a term to be used in either sense without contradiction, as demonstrated by 'funny' in sentence (3.6)
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Slurs and dog-whistles exhibit a distinct semantic profile from standard ambiguity, functioning as what Nunberg calls 'deferred reference' rather than lexical ambiguity.
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    • 2.A term can encode racial meaning through pragmatic enrichment rather than lexical ambiguity, meaning substitution tests designed for standard ambiguity are inapplicable.
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    • 3.The oddness of 'inner-city' in sentence (3.7) may reflect the covert, deniable nature of dog-whistle content rather than the absence of a racial meaning.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Lexical ambiguity is not the only mechanism by which a term can bear two distinct meanings; Recanati's work on 'meaning underdetermination' shows semantic content varies contextually without classical ambiguity.
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    • 2.If 'inner-city' conveys racial content through social-indexical meaning rather than dictionary senses, the substitution test presupposes a false model of how the racial meaning is encoded.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    A term can encode racial meaning through pragmatic enrichment rather than lexica...Genuine lexical ambiguity allows a term to be used in either sense without contr...If 'inner-city' conveys racial content through social-indexical meaning rather t...If 'inner-city' were genuinely ambiguous between 'African American' and a geogra...
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    Lexical ambiguity is not the only mechanism by which a term can bear two distinc...Sentence (3.7) sounds odd or contradictory even when 'inner-city' is used in the...Slurs and dog-whistles exhibit a distinct semantic profile from standard ambigui...The oddness of 'inner-city' in sentence (3.7) may reflect the covert, deniable n...

    Similar

    Sentence (3.7) sounds odd or contradictory even when 'inner-city' is u...93%If 'inner-city' were genuinely ambiguous between 'African American' an...80%'The second-largest city in the United States' is not a rigid designat...68%The phrase 'the second-largest city in the United States' does not var...66%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: hate-speech
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    A reading of (3.6) is supposed to sound coherent given that ‘funny’ can mean ‘humorous’ or ‘strange’ whereas (3.7) is supposed to sound odd, even contradictory. If ‘inner-city’ were genuinely ambiguous in the way described above, we should be able to use it to mean ‘African American’ and get a coherent reading of (3.7).
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit