Giving Generic Language Another Thought

Abstract

According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition, such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence and to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this paper is to bring these results together in a comprehensive narrative and systematically evaluate their impact on the hypothesis that generics have a uniquely problematic effect on our social and cognitive capacities.