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In:Language and Violence: Pragmatic perspectives
Edited by Daniel N. Silva
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 279] 2017
► pp. 125–140

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Chapter 5
Racist speech as a linguistic discriminatory practice in Brazil

Between the speech act’s reference and effects

Published online: 9 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.279.06san
Abstract
Brazilian law establishes a difference between the aggravated verbal injury, which is a type of insult that makes use of words or phrases pertaining to race, color, ethnicity, religion, origin or to the condition of the elderly or disabled person, and the crime of prejudice or discrimination, which consists in practicing, inducing or inciting discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, ethnicity, religion or national origin. In this paper I intend to investigate the linguistic criteria used by the judicial system to distinguish the two crimes. Based on a survey of data on legal cases of verbal injury and on interviews with two black Brazilian activists, I also intend to demonstrate the limitation of these criteria.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Criteria employed in the differentiation of the verbal injury and the crime of prejudice and discrimination
    • The reference of the utterance
    • The situation in which the utterance is spoken
    • The effect aimed by the speaker
  • 3.Limitations of the criteria and concepts employed by the judicial system
  • 4.The aggravated verbal injury as biased or discriminatory insult
  • Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (18)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Silva, Daniel N.
2025. Conflict and violence. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
French, Brigittine M.
2020. Maledictive Language: Arguments and Conflict. In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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