Refusing to Endorse. A must Explanation for Pejoratives.

In her analysis of pejoratives, Eva Picardi rejects a too sharp separation between descriptive and expressive content. I reconstruct some of her arguments, endorsing Eva’s criticism of Williamson’s analysis of Dummett and developing a suggestion by Manuel Garcia Carpintero on a speech act analysis of pejoratives. Eva’s main concern is accounting for our instinctive refusal to endorse an assertion containing pejoratives because it suggests a picture of reality we do not share. Her stance might be further developed claiming that uses of pejoratives not only suggest, but also promote a wrong picture of reality. Our refusal to endorse implies rejecting not only a wrong picture of reality but also a call for participation to what that picture promotes

Speech, Sex, and Social Norms

This thesis contains five essays about speech, sex, and social norms. In each of the first four essays, I analyse a different communicative phenomenon: discriminatory pejoratives (Chapter 1), cat-calling (Chapter 2), shaming (Chapter 3), and flirting (Chapter 4). In Chapter 5 I reflect on how our models of speech bear on issues of autonomy and power, manifested in differing roles assigned to ‘uptake’. Each essay is self-contained, but taken together they present a picture of how speech constructs identities and enforces norms, especially those governing gender and sexuality. The essays face in two directions. They face outwards from philosophy in so far as they use tools from philosophy of language to make sense of under-analysed communicative phenomena, drawing also on moral psychology, linguistics, and sociology. Discriminatory slurs (especially misogynistic ones), cat-calling, shaming, and flirting have all been neglected by philosophers, despite their social significance. Many of them play a key role in sustaining unjust social practices and structures. By illuminating the nature and function of these phenomena, the essays enhance our understanding and provide resources for political activism. The essays face inwards to philosophy in so far as they apply philosophical tools to social phenomena in order to reveal the shortcomings of those tools. None of the phenomena I consider are compatible with the standard, idealised model of communication. The essays demonstrate that communication is not as co-operative, transparent, or socially homogeneous as theorists have had us believe, and they make clear that linguistic theorising cannot be divorced from political considerations. Thus the essays show that just as philosophy of language can help further feminist ends, attention to issues of feminist concern can help refine philosophy of language.Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnershi

Locutionary Disablement and Epistemic Injustice

In this paper, I investigate how the notion of epistemic injustice relates to two distinct, though not incompatible, models of the phenomenon of silencing: epistemic and linguistic. I argue that a linguistic model of silencing can be used to elucidate the nature of hermeneutical injustice—a type of epistemic injustice identified by Miranda Fricker. I put forth my own reformulation of the linguistic model of silencing as locutionary (as opposed to illocutionary) disablement, when it occurs in cases of hermeneutical injustice, and I argue that this reformulation can respond to the criticism that Fricker’s construal of hermeneutical injustice falls prey to charges of epistemic hegemony. I conclude by suggesting that this form of silencing, which has its origins in a history of political domination and dehumanization, is connected to a third, distinctive form of epistemic injustice (beyond testimonial and hermeneutical injustice), which concerns the unfair distribution of the burdens of communication between members of differently situated social groups

Silencing Speech with Pornography

The aim of this paper is to offer a map of the dynamics through which pornography may silence women’s illocutions. Drawing on Searle’s speech act theory, I will take illocutionary forces as sets of conditions for success. The different types of silencing, I claim, originate from the hearer’s missed recognition of a specific component of the force of the speaker’s act. In addition to the varieties already discussed in literature (which I label essential, authority, and sincerity silencing), I shall finally consider another kind of silencing produced by the failure to acknowledge the speaker’s words as serious (seriousness silencing)

Subordinating Speech and the Construction of Social Hierarchies

This dissertation fits within the literature on subordinating speech and aims to demonstrate that how language subordinates is more complex than has been described by most philosophers. I argue that the harms that subordinating speech inflicts on its targets (chapter one), the type of authority that is exercised by subordinating speakers (chapters two and three), and the expansive variety of subordinating speech acts themselves (chapter three) are all under-developed subjects in need of further refinement—and, in some cases, large paradigm shifts. I also examine cases that have yet to be adequately addressed by philosophers working on this topic, like the explosion of abusive speech online (chapter four) or the distinctive speech acts of protest groups (chapter five). I argue that by considering these alongside the ‘paradigm’ cases of subordinating speech that inform most models, we are better able to capture the lived realities of this phenomena, as described by members of groups targeted by such speech. I develop a novel account of speaker authority to explain the variety of pragmatic effects subordinating speech generates. Instead of seeing this authority as reducible to either a formal position or a merely local, linguistic phenomenon, I argue for a conception of speaker authority that is a richly contextual social fact, distributed unevenly among members of different social groups. I also develop an account of collective authority that explains how a group of speakers can join together to subordinate in a way that no individual speaker is capable of doing. This account, I argue, is better able to explain the social reality of subordinating speech than individualist models. Overall, I show how a more fine-grained account of subordinating speaker authority gives us a more accurate picture of the different subordinating speech acts available to different speakers, along with how these may harm their targets

Cultural Standing in Expression of Opinion

This article explores an underappreciated pragmatic constraint on the expression of opinions: When expressing an opinion on a topic that has been previously discussed, a speaker should correctly indicate the cultural standing of that view in the relevant opinion community. This Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis is contrasted with conversation analysis, politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and analysis of epistemic modality. Finally, indicators of four points on the cultural standing continuum (highly controversial, debatable, common opinion, and taken for granted) are illustrated with examples from American English usage

Paul the bigot? Reading the Cretan quotation of Titus 1:12 in light of relevance theory

According to prevalent readings of Titus 1:12, the author sympathizes with the statement, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” Such conventional, prima facie interpretations are unsustainable when examined in light of Relevance Theory (RT). Although its application to Biblical Studies has been limited, the Theory provides crucial insights for both evaluating previous interpretations and for guiding historically and linguistically responsible readings. I argue that key insights of RT illuminate critical evidence for properly interpreting the Cretan quotation of Titus 1:12. I aim to both clear an interpretive impasse regarding this problematic text and demonstrate a relevance-guided biblical hermeneutic. The Introduction discusses representative interpretations and their inadequacies, then it outlines the promise of RT for supporting linguistically sound biblical interpretation. Each subsequent chapter focuses respectively on three pivotal insights: 1) the inferential nature of communication, 2) the role of the hearer in communication, and 3) the non-propositional dimensions of communication. I describe the insight in detail and demonstrate the impact of its application by both evaluating representative interpretations and offering a fresh interpretation of the passage in light of RT. The Conclusion summarizes the main contributions and implications of my thesis. These include a practical application of RT fundamentals to Biblical Studies; a linguistically-grounded examination of Titus and critique of existing secondary literature; a proposal regarding the letter’s historic message—namely, that it exposed rather than endorsed bigotry in the church; and an invitation to reassess the canonical esteem of Titus