In recent work Mary Kate McGowan presents an account of oppressive speech inspired by David Lewis's analysis of conversational kinematics. Speech can effect identity-based oppression, she argues, by altering 'the conversational score', which is to say, roughly, that it can introduce presuppositions and expectations into a conversation, and thus determine what sort of subsequent conversational 'moves' are apt, correct, felicitous, etc., in a manner that oppresses members of a certain group (e.g. because the suppositions and expectations derogate or demean members (...) of that group). In keeping with the Lewisian picture, McGowan stresses the asymmetric pliability of conversational scores. She argues that it is easier to introduce (for example) sexist presuppositions and expectations into a conversation than it is to remove them. Responding to a sexist remark, she thus suggests, is like trying to "unring a bell". I begin by situating McGowan's work in the wider literature on speech and social hierarchy, and explaining how her account of oppressive speech improves upon the work of others in its explication of the relationship between individuals' verbal conduct and structurally oppressive social arrangements. I then propose an explanation and supportive elaboration of McGowan's claims about the asymmetric pliability of conversations involving identity-oppressive speech. Rather than regarding such asymmetry as a sui generis phenomenon, I show how we can understand it as a consequence of a more general asymmetry between making things salient and un-salient in speech, and I show how this asymmetry also operates in various cases that interested Lewis. (shrink)

I here present two different models of oppressive speech. My interest is not in how speech can cause oppression, but in how speech can actually be an act of oppression. As we shall see, a particular type of speech act, the exercitive, enacts permissibility facts. Since oppressive speech enacts permissibility facts that oppress, speech must be exercitive in order for it to be an act of oppression. In what follows, I distinguish between two sorts of exercitive speech acts (the standard (...) exercitive and the covert exercitive) and I argue that each such exercitive affords a distinct model of oppressive speech. (shrink)

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)

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 essay considers Mary Kate McGowan's contention that no account of hate speech is adequate if it does not explain how such speech constitutes harm to those targeted by it. ‘Constitutes’ is suppose dot mean something different than ‘causes.’ McGowan's suggestion that the speech enacts a norm offers an interesting dimension to our understanding of the harm of hate speech. But I argue that it is important to distinguish carefully between ‘norm-enactment’ and ‘norm-application’ in this model. Failure to attend (...) to that distinction blunts the force of the normative account. (shrink)

In Jeremy Waldron’s book, The Harm in Hate Speech, it is not always clear whether he argues that hate speech causes harm or whether it constitutes harm. This article considers this uncertainty, concluding that the best understanding of Waldron’s argument is that hate speech tends to cause harm - a weak form of the consequentialist case for its proscription. His argument is not advanced by his apparent reliance on speech-act theory.

This article is the author's response to critical essays by Luvell Anderson, Claire Horisk, and Lori Watson. The legal concept of discrimination, the sneaky communicative functioning of joke-telling, and the phenomenon of hepeating are each discussed.

In this paper, I present a new (i.e., previously overlooked) breed of exercitive speech act (the conversational exercitive). I establish that any conversational contribution that invokes a rule of accommodation changes the bounds of conversational permissibility and is therefore an (indirect) exercitive speech act. Such utterances enact permissibility facts without expressing the content of such facts, without the speaker intending to be enacting such facts and without the hearer recognizing that it is so. Because of the peculiar nature ofthe rules (...) of accommodation that generate them, conversational exercitives have importantly different felicity conditions and therefore constitute a new breed ofexercitive speech act. (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.

ABSTRACT In this commentary I evaluate what McGowan’s project would conclude with respect to the treatment of professional Australian Football League player Adam Goodes, who was incessantly ‘booed’ by crowds for the final two years of his career. Analysing Goodes’ case in light of McGowan’s argument leads me to two observations. First, McGowan’s norm-enactment approach is incredibly useful because it explains how words like ‘boo’ (with unstable meaning) can constitute actionable discrimination. Second, however, I wonder if a narrow focus on (...) whether such speech is legally actionable might encourage an overestimation of the power of laws to shepherd new g-norms into social practices. (shrink)

This paper examines Mary Kate McGowan’s account of oppressive speech. McGowan argues that ordinary hateful speech can oppress by enacting discriminatory norms, and further, that this enactment sometimes renders the speech regulable under current United States law. In response, the paper raises two sets of questions. First, it asks about the contents of the norms enacted by a given hateful utterance, and specifically, about what determines those contents. Second, the paper also questions McGowan’s emphasis on the distinction between causing harm (...) and enacting (or constituting) harm. It argues that, contra that emphasis, this distinction doesn’t matter for the regulability of speech in McGowan’s central cases. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application’, Mary Kate McGowan argues that some racist speech in public places should be made unlawful in the United States for the same reason that sexist behaviour in the workplace is already legally actionable—namely, to protect individuals from a hostile discriminatory environment. While McGowan may be correct that some public racist speech may constitute an act of discrimination in some morally significant sense, I present several reasons for (...) doubting that such speech constitutes a hostile discriminatory environment in the relevant legal sense. (shrink)

ABSTRACT McGowan’s notion of norm ‘enactment’ is the linchpin of her practical project, designed to provide an objective standard that circumvents the need to assess actual subjective uptake of discriminatory norms proposed by racist utterances in public spaces. However, the essential role of uptake to potential norm-imposing utterances—and responses like dismissing, countermanding, and ignoring—cannot be waved away. Contributions to conversations, and even more so to other social interactions, do not exert the normative compulsion upon participants that McGowan’s theory needs. People’s (...) words, even their ugly words, are not invariably norm ‘enactments’ that ‘constitute harm’—sometimes they are just words. (shrink)