Diachronic variations of slurs and levels of derogation: on some regional, ethnic and racial slurs in Croatian

•Discusses recent views on slurs and possibilities of their application in Croatian.•Discusses relationship among slurs, stereotypes and idioms.•Discusses subtypes of slurs according to racial, ethnic and regional properties.•Provides analysis of diachronic changes of slurs and of levels of derogation.•Suggests that semantic changes of slurs are historically and socially motivated.

This paper analyses individual Croatian slurs by which a negative attitude is expressed towards the identities of ethnic and other social groups. The theoretical framework is provided by several theoretical postulates which take slurs into consideration as words with full meaning, whose meaning is paradigmatically offensive despite their actual context, and thus place them in a separate category besides expressive and descriptive words rather them among expressive words alone (Croom), while stressing the importance of the role of the stereotype (Miščević) and considering contexts as aggregates of the ideologies and practices on which negative stereotypes are based (Hom). Taking into consideration the groups who are the target of these slurs and the speakers who use them, the slurs are classified into the following subtypes: racial, ethnic and regional. The negative and stereotypical characteristics which are, by means of idiomatic expressions, attributed to certain groups are divided as follows: speech, appearance, character, occupation, place and religion. The examples reveal that lexemes, when viewed diachronically, can change their semantic features (slurs can originate from either descriptive or expressive words, but can also become general offenses and are as such close to expressive words; on the other hand they can lose their negative characteristics). The analysis of the slurs shows how a model for the typology of slurs should necessarily include not only stereotypical categories and specific features but also the context, regardless of the paradigmatic full meaning of the slurs themselves.