McGowan argues that everyday verbal bigotry makes a key contribution to the harms of discriminatory inequality, via a mechanism that she calls sneaky norm enactment. Part of her account involves showing that the characteristic of conversational interaction that facilitates sneaky norm enactment is in fact a generic one, which obtains in a wide range of activities, namely, the property of having conventions of appropriateness. I argue that her account will be better-able to show that everyday verbal bigotry is a key (...) factor in social inequality if it tries to isolate a more specific property of conversation as the thing that facilitates sneaky norm enactment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper argues for a hidden way in which speech constitutes harm by enacting harmful norms. The paper then explores the potential legal consequences of uncovering such instances of harm constitution. In particular, the paper argues that some public racist speech constitutes harm and is thus harmful enough to warrant legal remedy. Such utterances are actionable, it is contended, because they enact discriminatory norms in public spaces.