From impoliteness to linguistic violence: a non-ideal speech-act theoretical perspective
Abstract
This paper explores the complex relationship between violence and language from a non-ideal speech-act theoretical perspective. After highlighting the limited
attention given to conceptualizing linguistic violence within non-ideal philosophy of language, I first examine perspectives that conceive of linguistic violence as arising primarily from either perlocutionary consequences or illocutionary forces, arguing that both have limitations. Building on Marina Sbisà’s work on the ethical basis of (im)politeness, I then establish a connection between violent speech and impoliteness. More specifically, I situate linguistic violence and impoliteness along a continuum defined by the degree to which speech acts disregard layers of others’ subjectivity. Subsequently, I introduce context-dependent criteria, including the persistence of subjectivity denial, the nature of the layers disregarded, the impact of the environment, and the vulnerability of the target. As I argue, these criteria interact with illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, pushing towards the threshold of violence. While the challenges of establishing precise boundaries remain, the proposed non-ideal framework aims to provide a starting point for clarifying when speech might legitimately be classified as violent through the disregard of subjectivity layers.
References
Austin, John L. (1975), How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press.
Beaver, David, Stanley, Jason (2019), «Toward a Non-ideal Philosophy of Language», in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 19: 503-547.
Beaver, David, Stanley, Jason (2023), The Politics of Language, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Bousfield, Derek, Locher, Miriam A. [eds.] (2008), Impoliteness in Language: Studies on Its Interplay With Power in Theory and Practice, Berlin & New York, Mouton de Gruyter.
Brandom, Robert (1994), Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan (2011), Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press.
Delgado, Richard (1982), «Words That Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling», in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 17, Rev.133; reprinted in M. Matsuda et al., Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, Boulder (CO), Westview Press: 89-110
Feldman Barrett, Lisa (2017), «When Is Speech Violence?», in The New York Times, July 14,https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speechviolence.html.
Glover, Angela (2023), «Perlocutionary Frustration: A Speech Act Analysis of Microaggressions», in Philosophia, 51: 1293-1308.
Khoo, Justin, Sterken, Rachel [eds.] (2021), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, Abingdon (UK), Routledge.
Kukla, Rebecca, Lance, Mark (2009), ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’: The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press.
Lukianoff, Greg, Haidt, Jonathan (2018), The Coddling of the American Mind, New York, Penguin Books.
McClure, Emma (2020), «Escalating Linguistic Violence: From Microaggressions to Hate Speech», in Lauren Freeman and Jeanine W. Schroer, edited by, Microaggressions and Philosophy, New York, Routeledge: 121-145.
McGowan, Mary Kate (2019), Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Mühlebach, Deborah (2022), «Non-ideal Philosophy of Language», in Inquiry. DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2022.2074884.
Sbisà, Marina (2009), «Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution», in Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 5: 33-52; reprinted in Sbisà, Marina (2023), Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 195-218.
Sbisà, Marina (2021), (Im)politeness and the Human Subject, in Chaoqun Xie, edited by, The Philosophy of (Im)politeness, Cham, Springer: 157-177.
Tirrell, Lynne (2012), Genocidal Language Games, in Ishani Maitra, Mary Kate McGowan, edited by, Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 174-221.
Xie, Chaoqun (2023), edited by, «Impoliteness Studies: Cultural, Digital and Emotional Aspects», Cham, Springer.
Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
