Call me by my name: Hate speech and identity

The aim of this chapter is to examine social labels not only as tools of description of social identity but also as means of construction of our and other people’s identities. I will endorse an Austinian, performative perspective on social labels, and focus on a particularly hateful kind of labels, namely slurs. Rather than analysing what slurs mean or say, I will devote my attention to what speakers do with slurs—and to the different kinds of speech acts that they allow speakers to perform. Firstly, I will characterise how standard, derogatory uses of slurs contribute to shaping toxic and harmful identities for both their targets and their speakers, as well as their non-targeted addressees. Secondly, I will show how appropriated, non-derogatory uses of slurs can help to constitute positive identities for targets, setting the boundaries of groups and communities. While slurs reinforce oppressive social norms and hierarchies, and may even legitimate discriminatory actions against targets, appropriation is a way to disrupt such unfair norms and hierarchies, to subvert the subordinate position imposed on targets, and to reclaim strong, positive, proud identities. From this perspective, language is a powerful tool of exclusion, oppression, and discrimination—but, hopefully, also of inclusion, emancipation, and self-determination.