There is a widespread phenomenon that we call linguistic imposters. Linguistic imposters are systematic misuses of expressions that misusers mistake with their conventional usages because of misunderstanding their meaning. Our paper aims to provide an initial framework for theorising about linguistic imposters that will lay the foundation for future philosophical research about them. We focus on the misuses of the expressions ‘grooming’ and ‘critical race theory’ as our central examples of linguistic imposters. We show that linguistic imposters present a distinctive phenomenon by comparing them to some adjacent phenomena, namely conceptual engineering, linguistic hijacking and dogwhistles. We also address four objections about the extensional adequacy of our definition of linguistic imposters. Finally, we argue that, as linguistic imposters spread, they make some inferences featuring misused expressions more cognitively accessible and seemingly socially licensed to misusers and discuss four types of harms that linguistic imposters are conducive to through these effects.

中文翻译：

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语言冒名顶替者

有一种普遍存在的现象，我们称之为语言冒名顶替者。语言冒名顶替者是对表达方式的系统性滥用，滥用者由于误解了其含义而误用了其常规用法。我们的论文旨在为语言冒名顶替者的理论提供一个初步框架，这将为未来关于他们的哲学研究奠定基础。我们重点关注“修饰”和“批判种族理论”等表达方式的误用，作为语言冒名顶替者的中心例子。我们通过将语言冒名顶替者与一些相邻现象（即概念工程、语言劫持和狗哨）进行比较，证明了语言冒名顶替者呈现出一种独特的现象。我们还针对我们对语言冒名顶替者的定义的外延充分性提出了四个反对意见。最后，我们认为，随着语言冒名顶替者的传播，他们做出了一些推论，这些推论的特点是误用的表达方式在认知上更容易理解，并且似乎得到了滥用者的社会许可，并讨论了语言冒名顶替者通过这些影响所带来的四种危害。