McGowan here responds to essays written in critical engagement with her lead essay (Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application). She here responds to Caroline West, Ishani Maitra, Jeremy Waldron, Robert Mark Simpson, Lawrence Lengbeyer, Louise Richardsoon-Self, Laura Caponetto and Bianca Cepollaro.

ABSTRACT A widespread thesis in contemporary philosophy of language is that certain speech constitutes, rather than merely causes, harm. McGowan develops a prescriptive account of harm constitution, according to which harm-constituting speech enacts norms that prescribe harm. Ordinary verbal bigotry, she claims, is harmful in this sense. We submit that the norms enacted by ordinary racist (or otherwise bigoted) utterances are not prescriptive. In our view, ordinary verbal bigotry enacts ‘non-neutrally’ permissive norms rendering harmful behaviours locally permitted—and indeed preferred over (...) non-harmful options. We conclude by arguing that, although ordinary verbal bigotry enacts non-prescriptive norms, it can still constitute harm. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify and examine an overlooked strategy to counter bigoted speech on the spot. Such a strategy we call ‘bending’. To ‘bend’, in our sense, is to deliberately give a distorted response to a speaker’s harmful move – precisely, an ameliorative response, which may turn that move into a different, less harmful, contribution. To substantiate our proposal, we distinguish two ideas of uptake – interpretation and response – and argue for the general claim that a distorted response (...) on the hearer’s part may end up transforming a speaker’s contribution. Patterns of distortion have been analyzed in the literature as unjustly undermining speakers’ agency and exacerbating oppression. Our analysis shows that, under certain circumstances, distortion can be employed to derail bigoted speech and thus serve the purposes of social justice. We close by discussing the virtues and limits of bending vis-à-vis a different, much-discussed, counterspeech strategy, i.e. ‘blocking’ (Langton 2018). (shrink)