Mary Kate McGowan – författare

Social philosophy of language considers the role language plays in reflecting and enforcing social relations. This fast-growing field combines philosophy of language with ethics, epistemology, and feminist, social, and political philosophy to ask crucial questions about the importance of language in the social world. Words in Action offers an authoritative and accessible introduction to the social philosophy of language, for students at undergraduate and graduate levels. Authors Ishani Maitra and Mary Kate McGowan show how tools from the philosophy of language can help illuminate both how language works socially and how we can challenge the injustices wrought by the use of language. They examine topics like lying and deception, telling and testimony, silencing, jokes, slurs, linguistic manipulation, linguistic oppression, consent, promises, threats, gendered language, and much more. To fruitfully address these topics, the book introduces important tools and concepts from the philosophy of language that are relevant to theorizing these issues, including saying, assertion, conversational and conventional implicature, taxonomies of speech acts, indirect speech acts, common ground, conversational score, semantic and pragmatic presupposition, at-issue and not-at-issue content, and much more.

Social philosophy of language considers the role language plays in reflecting and enforcing social relations. This fast-growing field combines philosophy of language with ethics, epistemology, and feminist, social, and political philosophy to ask crucial questions about the importance of language in the social world. Words in Action offers an authoritative and accessible introduction to the social philosophy of language, for students at undergraduate and graduate levels. Authors Ishani Maitra and Mary Kate McGowan show how tools from the philosophy of language can help illuminate both how language works socially and how we can challenge the injustices wrought by the use of language. They examine topics like lying and deception, telling and testimony, silencing, jokes, slurs, linguistic manipulation, linguistic oppression, consent, promises, threats, gendered language, and much more. To fruitfully address these topics, the book introduces important tools and concepts from the philosophy of language that are relevant to theorizing these issues, including saying, assertion, conversational and conventional implicature, taxonomies of speech acts, indirect speech acts, common ground, conversational score, semantic and pragmatic presupposition, at-issue and not-at-issue content, and much more.

We all know that speech can be harmful. But what are these harms, and how exactly does the speech in question bring them about? Mary Kate McGowan identifies a previously overlooked mechanism by which speech constitutes, rather than merely causes, harm. She argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. McGowan illustrates this theory by considering many categories of speech including sexist remarks, racist hate speech, pornography, verbal triggers for stereotype threat, micro-aggressions, political dog whistles, slam poetry, and even the hanging of posters. Just Words explores a variety of harms--such as oppression, subordination, discrimination, domination, harassment, and marginalization--and ways in which these harms can be remedied.

The phenomenon of silencing has taken on new salience in the wake of #metoo and controversies around free speech. Using tools from the social philosophy of language, Mary Kate McGowan's On Silencing explains, in an accessible way, what silencing is and why it is important. Understanding silencing as a failure of communication, McGowan shows how communication can fail in one of three ways: one can be prevented from speaking, a speaker can be misunderstood, and a speaker can be understood but not affect the world as one should (such as when orders are not followed, refusals are not respected, and assertions are not believed). McGowan also explains how silencing is more likely to happen when we are trying to communicate across difference, and she provides concrete suggestions for what we can do--both as speakers and as hearers--to avoid contributing to harmful forms of silencing. In addition to explaining a pervasive social phenomenon in an accessible way, On Silencing makes novel contributions to current academic debates about silencing.

We all know that speech can be harmful. But what are the harms and how exactly does the speech in question brings those harms about? Mary Kate McGowan identifies a previously overlooked mechanism by which speech constitutes, rather than merely causes, harm. She argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. McGowan illustrates this theory by considering many categories of speech including sexist remarks, racist hate speech, pornography, verbal triggers for stereotype threat, micro-aggressions, political dog whistles, slam poetry, and even the hanging of posters. Just Words explores a variety of harms - such as oppression, subordination, discrimination, domination, harassment, and marginalization - and ways in which these harms can be remedied.

Most liberal societies are deeply committed to a principle of free speech. At the same time, however, there is evidence that some kinds of speech are harmful in ways that are detrimental to important liberal values, such as social equality. Might a genuine commitment to free speech require that we legally permit speech even when it is harmful, and even when doing so is in conflict with our commitment to values like equality? Even if such speech is to be legally permitted, does our commitment to free speech allow us to provide material and institutional support to those who would contest such harmful speech? And finally, and perhaps most importantly, which kinds of speech are harmful in ways that merit response, either in the form of legal regulation or in some other form?This collection explores these and related questions. Drawing on expertise in philosophy, sociology, political science, feminist theory, and legal theory, the contributors to this book investigate these themes and questions. By exploring various categories of speech (including pornography, hate speech, Holocaust denial literature, 'Whites Only' signs), and attending to the precise functioning of speech, the essays contained here shed light on these questions by clarifying the relationship between speech and harm. Understanding how speech functions can help us work out which kinds of speech are harmful, what those harms are, and how the speech in question brings them about. All of these issues are crucially important when it comes to deciding what ought to be done about allegedly harmful speech.