Contextual determinants on the meaning of the N word

Keith Allan

Use of the word nigger is very often castigated as slurring the referent, but this ignores the context of use. For many people the word itself is a slur no matter what the context, and such people argue for its eradication from the English language. Eradicationists confuse the form of the word with its frequent use as a slur that discredits, slights, smears, stains, besmirches people of black African descent. In this paper I discuss several occurrences of the N word in Quentin Tarantino's film 'Pulp Fiction'. At least one is a slur. As with many slurs, in-group usage by people who might themselves have been slurred with the term by out-groupers, nigger is used among African Americans to express camaraderie. Three instances of this are examined. Another instance is where black gangster millionaire Marcellus Wallace, after handing white boxer Butch Coolidge money to go down in the fifth round, tells him 'You're my nigger' to which Butch replies 'Certainly appears so'. Lastly I consider the tricky situation where a white uses the term nigger to a black friend, not as a term of address and not as a slur either, I argue. I discuss the composition of context and the semantics and connotations of nigger. I examine the place and function of the uses of nigger within the context of the film, 'Pulp Fiction', to demonstrate that the affective quality of a linguistic expression should never be judged without taking account of its intended perlocutionary effect within the context in which it is uttered. We see that the basic semantic content invariably contributes to the functional (compositional) meaning, but that pragmatic input from connotations is essential in determining the truth value of the utterance in which nigger appears.