Social rituality and the implicit dimension of language: what the debate on cancel culture often ignores
Abstract
Linguistically, cancel culture is intertwined with politically correct. By opponents, this combination is seen as a “linguistic dictatorship” that produces a suffocating stigmatisation of anyone who does not accept this linguistic vigilance. I will try to show that both supporters and opponents of cancel culture ignore the social dimension of words and the unintentional dimension of speech acts. By isolating the utterance of the individual speakers from the broader linguistic practices and social relations in which they are embedded, both arrive at an equal and opposite error. The opponents underestimate the problem of harmful linguistic uses by disregarding the most implicit cases, while the proponents equate all cases to a single level of blame and exasperate linguistic vigilance to the point of producing forms of self-censorship and ideological polarisation.
References
Austin, John L. (1962), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, Oxford (Come fare cose con le parole, trad. di C. Villata, Marietti, Genova 1987).
Beaver, David, Stanley, Jason (2019), «Toward a Non-Ideal Philosophy of Language», in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 39, n. 2, pp. 501-545.
Beaver, David, Stanley, Jason (2023), The Politics of Language, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Bianchi, Claudia (2021), Hate speech. Il lato oscuro del linguaggio, Laterza, Bari-Roma.
Butler, Judith (1997), Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative, Routledge, New York (Parole che provocano. Per una politica del performativo, trad. di. S. Adamo, Cortina, Milano 2010).
Butler, Judith (2021), Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative, Routledge, New York.
Cannito, Maddalena, Mercuri, Eugenia, Tomatis, Francesca (2023), «La creazione mediatica della paura: lo spettro della censura tra cancel culture e politicamente corretto», in Cambio. Rivista sulle trasformazioni sociali, vol. 13, n. 25, pp. 29-43, doi: 10.36253/cambio-14613.
Fricker, Miranda (2016), «What’s the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation», in Noûs, vol. 50, n. 1, pp. 165-183.
Lewiński, Marcin (2021), «Illocutionary Pluralism», in Synthese, n. 199, pp. 6687-6714.
Lukianoff, Greg, Haidt, Jonathan (2018), The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Penguin, Londra.
Mazzone, Marco (2023), Razionali fino in fondo. Dal pensiero ideologico al pensiero critico, Quodlibet, Macerata.
McGowan, Mary K. (2019), Just Words. On Speech and Hidden Harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Norris, Pippa (2021), «Closed Minds? Is a “Cancel Culture” Stifling Academic Freedom and Intellectual Debate in Political Science?», in Harvard Kennedy University Working Paper, 1, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3671026.
Norris, Pippa (2023), «Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?», in Political Studies, vol. 71, n. 1, pp. 145-174.
O’Neill, Ben (2011), «A Critique of Politically Correct Language», in The Indipendent Review, vol. 16, n. 2, pp. 279-291.
Pierce, Chester (1970), «Offensive Mechanisms», in Barbour, Floyd, a cura di, The Black Seventies, Porter Sargent, Boston, pp. 265-282.
Powers, Elia, Koliska, Michael, Guha, Pallavi (2019), «“Shouting Matches and Echo Chambers”: Perceived Identity Threats and Political Self-Censorship on Social Media», in International Journal of Communication, n. 13, pp. 3630-3649.
Quaranto, Anne (2022), «Dog Whistles, Covertly Coded Speech, and the Practices That Enable Them», in Synthese, n. 200, n. 330.
Rini, Regina (2018), «How to Take Offense: Responding to Microaggression», in Journal of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 4, n. 3, pp. 332-351.
Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio (1968), Il linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato, Bompiani, Milano.
Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio (2005), Ideologia. Per l’interpretazione di un operare sociale e la ricostruzione di un concetto, Meltemi, Roma.
Saul, Jennifer (2018), Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation and Philosophy of Language, in D. Fogal, e M. Ross, a cura di, New Work on Speech Acts, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 360-383.
Stanley, Jason (2015), How Propaganda Works, Princeton University Press, Princeton (La propaganda. Cos’è e come funziona, trad. di T. Piazza, Mondadori Università, Milano 2020).
Tirrell, Lynne (2012), Genocidal Language Games, in I. Maitra e M. K. McGowan, a cura di, Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
