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Articles 31 - 32 of 32

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Declaration Of Independence And Immigration In The United States Of America, Kenneth M. White Mar 2019

The Declaration Of Independence And Immigration In The United States Of America, Kenneth M. White

Kenneth White

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, and immigration policy has always been controversial. The history of immigration in the United States is contrasted in this article with a normative standard of naturalization (immigration policy) based on the Declaration of Independence. The current immigration debate fits within a historical pattern that pits an unrestricted right of immigration (the left) against exclusive, provincial politics (the right). Both sides are simultaneously correct and incorrect. A moderate policy on immigration is possible if the debate in the United States gets an infusion of what Thomas Paine called "common sense."


Slurs And Register: A Case Study In Meaning Pluralism, Justina Diaz-Legaspe, Chang Liu, Robert J. Stainton Dec 2018

Slurs And Register: A Case Study In Meaning Pluralism, Justina Diaz-Legaspe, Chang Liu, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor …