Valutazione, Polarità ed Eco

In this paper I consider two kinds of evaluative terms – slurs and thick terms – and I focus on the cases of polarity inversion: we usually talk about the reclamation of slurs and the variability of thick terms. What these uses of evaluatives have in common is that, in both cases, the polarity of the evaluative content of the term is subverted in particular contexts. In section 0, I present the two classes of evaluatives at stake: slurs and thick terms. In section 1, I describe the phenomenon I want to account for, namely the inversion of the polarity of the evaluative content of these terms. In doing so, I dwell on the most interesting features of reclamation and variability: on the one hand, I present the most debated cases in the Anglo-American literature and on the other, I observe some uses of evaluatives with inverted polarity in Italian (mostly from social networks). In section 2, I discuss the echoic proposal put forward by Bianchi (2014) to account for reclamation and extended to the variability of thick terms in Cepollaro (2017a). In section 3, I consider the main problems that the echoic account meets, in order to sketch possible solutions