STAL organizes a monthly seminar on issues related to the study of slurs, pejoratives, and evaluative and expressive terms in general, from less studied languages.
The titles and abstracts of the talks in the 2024-2025 academic year can be seen here.
The titles and abstracts of the 2023-2024 academic year can be seen here.
In the 2025-2026 academic year, the STAL seminar takes place on
MONDAYS, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time.
The next seminar is
NOVEMBER 17
Claire Horisk (University of Missouri)
"Derogatory Speech: Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners"
Abstract:
In discussions of how to mitigate political and cultural polarization, we are often told that we should listen to our opponents. But should we listen regardless of what they say—even to derogatory speech? From the standpoint of philosophy, the prescription to listen lacks subtlety, and we cannot reach greater subtlety without a philosophical account of listening itself. In my recent work, I distinguish between listening and hearing and argue that listening to derogatory speech in the context of a conversation is sometimes morally wrong. In this talk, I expand my account, particularly with respect to how power dynamics affect who counts as a conversational participant.
The schedule for the 2025-2026 academic year is the following:
OCTOBER 27, 2025
Luvell Anderson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Theories of Reclamation"
NOVEMBER 17, 2025
Claire Horisk (University of Missouri)
"Derogatory Speech: Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners"
DECEMBER 15, 2025
Xavier Villalba (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
"Expressivity Cross-linguistically: A Corpus Study of Expressive and Evaluative Adjectives in Romance and Germanic"
JANUARY 19, 2026
Daisy Dixon (Cardiff University)
TBA
FEBRUARY 9, 2026
Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
TBA
MARCH 9, 2026
Leopold Hess (Jagiellonian University)
TBA
APRIL 20, 2026
Robin Jeshion (University of Southern California)
TBA
MAY, 2026
Yim Binh Felix Sze (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
TBA
JUNE, 2026
Mingya Liu (Humboldt University of Berlin)
TBA