Arts & Humanities

A new linguistic study analyzes how technology transforms our communication. The current change is unique in its speed—and may have far-reaching cultural and educational consequences in the long run.

There are some really offensive words stored in our mental lexicon. And regardless of whether we use these terms or not, we know that they have some particular features and effects that ordinary words do not. We know, for instance, that slur terms are offensive, and that some are more offensive than others. I conducted an empirical study with German native speakers to find out more about these terms and the differences in their offensiveness.