Slurs denigrate individuals qua members of certain groups, such as race or sexual orientation. Most theorists hold that each slur has a neutral counterpart, i.e., a term that references the slur's target group without denigrating them. According to a widely accepted view, which I call ‘Neutral Counterpart Theory’, the truth‐conditional content of a slur is identical to the truth‐conditional content of its neutral counterpart (so, e.g., ‘Jew’ and ‘kike’ are truth‐conditionally the same, yet the latter is an objectionable or derogatory way of referring to a person's ethnic background). My aim is to challenge this view. I argue that the view fails with respect to slurs that encode truth‐conditional content which does more than merely classify someone as a member of the target group (such as ‘slanty‐eyed’, ‘curry muncher’, ‘camel jockey’, and ‘Jewish American Princess’), as well as slurs that denigrate by virtue of their iconicity (‘ching chong’).

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Intuitively, a speaker who uses slurs to refer to people is doing something morally objectionable even if no one is measurably affected by their speech. Perhaps they are only talking to themselves, or they are speaking with bigots who are already as vicious as they can be. This paper distinguishes between slurring as an expressive act and slurring as the act of causing a psychological effect. It then develops an expression-focused ethical account in order to explain the intuition that slurring involves an effect-independent moral wrong. The core idea is that the act of expressing a morally defective attitude is itself pro tanto morally objectionable. Unlike theories that focus only on problematic effects, this view is able to shift the moral burden of proof away from victims of slurring acts and onto speakers. It also offers moral guidance with respect to metalinguistic and pedagogical utterances of slurs.

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