Cepollaro Bianca Professore AssociatoPhilosophyPHIL-04/B - Filosofia e teoria dei linguaggi

Since 2025, Bianca Cepollaro has been Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Language at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (PHIL-04/B, formerly M-FIL/05).

She obtained a joint PhD in Philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure, Paris (Institut Jean Nicod), and in Linguistics from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, in 2017. Her doctoral research focused on hate speech and thick terms. She held postdoctoral research positions at IFILNOVA (Lisbon), Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, and the University of Milan, before becoming Assistant Professor at UniSR.

Her research focuses on social philosophy of language, on theoretical and experimental grounds, with a particular focus on discriminatory language and strategies for countering harmful speech. She was awarded the FIS3 project ACTION – Advancing Counterspeech against Toxic Interactions ONline (FIS-2024-03845; CUP D53C25002600001), funded with €1,298,500.

 

Recent Publications by Research Topic:

1) Toxic Speech and Counterspeech
Qualitative and quantitative study of toxic speech and counterspeech moves

Cepollaro, Bianca, Lepoutre, Maxime, and Simpson, Robert (2023), Counterspeech, Philosophy Compass, 18 (1), e12890. 10.1111/phc3.12890.

Caponetto, Laura, and Cepollaro, Bianca (2022), Bending as Counterspeech, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. 10.1007/s10677-022-10334-4.

Cepollaro, Bianca, (2020) Slurs and Thick Terms: When language encodes values, Series Philosophy of Language: Connections and Perspectives, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

2) The Experimental Investigation of Evaluatives and Expressives

Cepollaro, Bianca, Sulpizio, Simone, Bianchi, Claudia, and Stojanovic, Isidora (2023), Slurs in Quarantine, Mind and Language, 39 (3), 1381-396. 0.1111/mila.12492.
Cepollaro, Bianca, Domaneschi, Filippo and Stojanovic, Isidora, (2021), When is it ok to call someone a jerk? An experimental investigation of expressives, Synthese, 198, 9273-9292. 10.1007/s11229-020-02633-z

3) The Reclamation of Slurs - the linguistic mechanisms and the political significance of repurposing oppressive language.

Cepollaro, Bianca, Jorba, Marta, and Petrolini, Valentina (2026), The Case of ‘Autistic’: Pejorative Uses and Reclamation, Ergo, 10.3998/ergo.7173

Cepollaro, Bianca and López de Sa, Dan (2023), The Successes of Reclamation, Synthese, 202 (205) 10.1007/s11229-023-04393-y.

Cepollaro, Bianca and López de Sa, Dan (2022), Who Reclaims Slurs, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. 10.1111/papq.12403