Uma investigação semântica sobre injúrias e ofensas derivadas de nomes de animais

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to investigate the semantics and pragmatics of animal names used as pejorative terms in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In our analysis, we propose that some of these terms be classified as insults, some as slurs, and others as gender slurs, as we argue based on behavioral data and linguistic inferences. Moreover, we also propose a morphosyntactic classification and a classification based on the origin of the offense associated with the pejoratives we studied. Using the tools and methods of formal semantics and pragmatics of natural languages, our analysis proposal will be based on a non-exhaustive inventory of terms commonly used in Brazil.