On Pragmatics, Exercitive Speech Acts and Pornography

Abstract

Suppose that a suspect being questioned by the police says, "I think I'd better talk to a lawyer." Whether that suspect has invoked her right to an attorney depends on which particular speech act(s) her utterance is. If she is merely thinking aloud about what she ought to do, then she has not invoked that right. If, on the other hand, she has thereby requested a lawyer, she has. Similarly, suppose that an unhappily married man says "I want my wife dead." Whether he has thereby solicited his wife's murder depends on which particular speech act(s) his utterance is. If he is merely describing his desires, he has committed no crime. If, by contrast, he has thereby hired an assassin, he has. As one can see, experts on speech acts (e.g. philosophers, linguists, psychologists and sociologists) have a lot to say about various issues in the law. I believe that expertise in speech act theory also illuminates various issues regarding free speech. In what follows, we consider how speech act theory may apply to certain arguments regarding the free speech status of pornography. In particular, we consider several speech act accounts of MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates women, but, before turning to such accounts, some background is offered.

Sign-like Pragmatic Devices: pro et contra

“…Based on this, this stage consists of identification of the markers of non-preferentiality and their explanation in the framework of negative politeness strategies, cooperative maxims flouting, conversational implicatures, and illocution of indirect inferential speech acts. Consequently, at this stage of analysis, the paper employs a set of explanatory tools provided by the face and politeness theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987;Johnson et al, 2004;Leech, 2014), speech acts theory (Austin, 1962;McGowan, 2009), as well as Grice's and neo-Gricean inferential pragmatics (Bach, 2010; Braun, 2011; Grice, 1975).…”

Illocution and accommodation in the functioning of presumptions

“…Context-repairing or context-adjusting processes of accommodation underlie the functioning of what Langton (2018) calls back-door speech acts, one example of which are conversational exercitives in McGowan's (2004McGowan's ( , 2009 sense; i.e., implicit acts of norm-enacting. Among the speech acts that make use of similar mechanisms are back-door verdictives: e.g., implicit rankings and implicit testimonies (Langton 2018).…”

A recognition-sensitive phenomenology of hate speech

“…Beyond the discriminatory and statusaffecting impact of hate speech, such abuse also often has long-term consequences relating to a victim's positive sense of self (Adelman, Helmers, McGowan, & Stolzenberg, 2011;Matsuda, 1989). Continued exposure to such derogatory and subordinating speech-acts has the potential to permanently alter the self-respect, self-esteem, and sense of self-determination of targeted individuals, as seen when individuals from such affected groups ultimately 'internalize' feelings of inferiority, thus affecting their capacity to participate in public life on an equal footing with the rest of society (Delgado, 1982, Delgado & Lederer, 1995Langton, 1998Langton, , 2012MacKinnon, 1993;Maitra, 2012;McGowan, 2005McGowan, , 2009aMcGowan, , 2009bMcGowan, , 2012.…”

“…As we see from the debate above, there is considerable disagreement over the type of harm suffered when an individual is at the receiving end of a verbal assault. On the critical race/feminist view, the illocutionary force of a targeted hate-speech-act automatically places the victim within a diminutive social status, with the perlocutionary effects of this ordering ranging from psychological trauma and physiological expressions of distress, towards causing victims to fear for their safety within society and, as a result, choosing not to participate within certain areas of public life, based on a belief that the views of the hate-speaker are in some way representative of wider society (Delgado, 1982;Matsuda et al, 1993, MacKinnon, 1993Langton, 1998Langton, , 2012Adelman et al, 2011;Maitra, 2012;and McGowan, 2005and McGowan, , 2009aand McGowan, , 2009band McGowan, , 2012. We can easily translate this language into recognition terms, with the impact of such an act representative of an explicit act of misrecognition.…”

“…One of the ways in which hate speech theorists have attempted to conceptualize the harm of one-onone, verbally abusive forms of hate speech is by employing J. L. Austin's (1962) speech-act framework. By considering individual instances of hate speech as illocutionary performatives, such theorists, (feminists such as Rae Langton (1993Langton ( , 1998Langton ( , 1999, Catherine MacKinnon (1991,1993,2000)) and Mary Kate McGowan (2005McGowan ( , 2007McGowan ( , 2009aMcGowan ( , 2009bMcGowan ( , 2012 and critical race scholars such as Mari Matsuda (1989Matsuda ( , 1993, Richard Delgado (1982, Delgado & Lederer (1995), 1996, 2009 and Lawrence (1990) reject the classical liberal belief that speech cannot correctly be categorized as a form of conduct. The liberal conception itself has often been criticized for failing to account for the devastating effects hate speech can have on its victims, and so the proposed conceptualization of hate speech as an illocutionary act aims to highlight the immediate status-ordering impact of an act of hate speech.…”