The argument is that the concept of "generic slur" is so meaningless
in music that that phrase will be *inherently* interpreted in the same
sense as "ethnic slur." This is a little bit beyond "factually
accurate," well into the realms of the unprovable, and Mr Chan should
be admonished (preferably *before* he begins his full-text searching)
that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
It is true that my argument relies on an absence of evidence
and therefore is philosophically unsound, but as you said it is
``into the realms of the unprovable'', so our best bet is to
prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Google and Music Index
Online together have provided me with enough grounds to believe
that the probability is practically zero (considering the size
and coverage of the archives, zero hits do mean something).
In short: the fact that "generic slur" is not a commonly-used term of
art does not mean that the concept of a generic slur has no relevance
to music theory or performance.
Your phrase, ``/the/ concept of a generic slur'' [emphasis
mine], implies that there exists one unambiguous definition of
the said concept. Can you provide such a definition, in a way
that is acceptable to all your fellow theorists?
Secondly, the adjective ``generic'' before ``slur'' implies
that there exists a group or class of specialised slurs from
which you can blend their main characteristics together and call
it a ``generic slur''. I am not aware of the existence of such.
A possible counterargument is to cite Grove, which says that
there exists tie slurs, phrasing slurs, glissando slurs, vertical
slurs, etc. But this glosses over the fact that such slurs do
not belong to the same ``group or class'', as you cannot put a
tie in the place of a chord slur and hope that it would still
work, for example. If generic slur indeed exists, I would expect
it to be ``write once use everywhere''. So, I am not convinced
that generic slurs are possible in a musical context.
Tak-Shing