The twenty-first century will witness an unprecedented decline in the diversity of the world’s languages. While most philosophers will likely agree that this decline is lamentable, the question of what exactly is lost with a language has not been systematically explored in the philosophical literature. In this paper, I address this lacuna by arguing that language loss constitutes a problematic form of illocutionary silencing. When a language disappears, past and present speakers lose the ability to realize a range of speech (...) acts that can only be realized in that language. With that ability, speakers lose something in which they have a fundamental interest: their standing as fully empowered members of a linguistic community. (shrink)

The controversial French philosopher Jacques Derrida is associated with the claim that, in the West, speech has historically been prioritized over writing. In this paper, I present some obvious counterexamples, though I am an admirer. I also raise a challenge to the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu, though I fear they are not wrong. The paper is written as a pastiche of a notable fiction writer from the Indian subcontinent, but set in the West.

Donald Davidson denies that there are incommensurable scientific languages: languages which cannot be translated into our contemporary language. What about Derrida? What is his perspective on this matter? This paper presents a broadly Derridean objection to Susan Carey’s argument for incommensurability.

This is a one page handout. Jacques Derrida is famous for the claim that speech has been privileged over writing in Western thought. A worry is what about the preference for certain legal documents, such as contracts and constitutions? I present some reactions to this worry.