Álvaro Domínguez Armas

En este artículo estudio los efectos del discurso odioso en la deliberación pública. Para ello tomo como referencia el debate sobre el turismo de masas en las Islas Canarias. En la primera parte del artículo reconstruyo el debate e identifico los diferentes participantes y sus posiciones respecto a la regularización del turismo. Luego me centro en las acusaciones de “turismofobia” dirigidas contra uno de los participantes: el movimiento social Canarias Se Agota. Argumento que las acusaciones de turismofobia promueven una descripción sesgada y manipuladora de las acciones de los residentes para participar en el debate público como una reacción xenófoba contra los turistas. Después, propongo formalizar estas acusaciones como ‘discurso odioso’ porque transmite un mensaje detestable sobre la víctima, pero sin centrarse en una de sus características protegidas por la ley (sexo, raza, religión, etnia, etc.). Finalmente considero tres efectos que estas acusaciones producen en el debate público: la distorsión del mensaje que Canarias Se Agota pretende transmitir, la eliminación del tópico bajo discusión y la distorsión de la posición del acusador en el debate.

In this paper, I offer an analysis of protests in terms of speech acts. I consider two slogans featured in protest signs carried in feminist rallies that occurred on the 8th March in Lisbon (2020) as a case in point to examine what protests communicate. I survey different approaches to speech act theory to identify which acts constitute protests. I argue that these approaches have overlooked the collective dimension of protests. In the latter part of the paper, I propose that protests are group speech acts constituted by expressions of disapproval and connected prescriptions for change. I argue that protests are speech acts that protesters perform on behalf of social movements to communicate their demands in the public sphere.

Sometimes we are faced with discussions in which we might think that one or more of our interlocutors should not be partaking in the argument. Sometimes we are faced with discussions where we are unfairly denied participation, or we recognise that some arguers are denied participation. This paper develops an account and typology of ‘argumentative exclusion’. We understand ‘argumentative exclusion’ as the denial of participation in a discussion because of different phenomena. In this paper, we distinguish between argumentative exclusions that are unwarranted and argumentative exclusions that are in service of justice and resistance to social oppression. Online argumentation and online hate speech form the core examples of this work.

In this paper, I examine argumentative strategies that social movements can follow to counter hate speech. I begin by reconstructing the disagreement space of the abortion debate in Argentina as a polylogue, identifying the protests of the social movement Pañuelos verdes as argumentative contributions. I then describe two different forms of hate speech used in response to the movement’s protests. I argue that hate speech discredits the position of Pañuelos verdes in the abortion debate and depicts their protests as social threats. Subsequently, I discuss three argumentative strategies that social movements can implement to address hate speech: arguing with hate speakers; advocating for a dialogue with restrictions; and opting for argumentative disobedience. Arguing with hate speakers aims to make hate speakers retract hate speech by exposing the undesirability of using hateful messages in argumentative exchanges. Advocating for a dialogue with restrictions aims to impose limited bans on public speech in order to ensure equal participation of arguers in argumentation. Finally, I propose the notion of argumentative disobedience to describe communicative responses to hate speech that aim to bring bystanders in line with the position of social movements in public debates.

In this paper we analyse utterances that, without explicitly constituting hate speech, nevertheless convey a hateful message. For example, in the headline “Iraqi Refugee is convicted in Germany of raping and murdering teenage girl”, the presence of “Iraqi refugee” does not seem arbitrary. To the contrary, it is responsible for inviting a racist inference against Iraqi refugees. We defend that these inferences cannot be described as slurs, ethnic or social terms used as insults, dogwhistles or conversational implicatures. Rather, we propose that these inferences are insinuations, specifically provocative insinuations, as no conversational response seems effective at blocking them.

La exclusión argumentativa ocurre cuando se le niega la participación a un agente en un intercambio argumentativo. En la primera parte del artículo planteamos una taxonomía de exclusiones argumentativas basada en tres ejes: estructural, causal y consecuencial. En la segunda parte del artículo analizamos el discurso de odio como un medio para la exclusión argumentativa. El discurso de odio refiere a las expresiones públicas que discriminan y subordinan a sus víctimas por su pertenencia a (o representación de) un grupo vulnerable. Argumentamos que las formas de discurso de odio explícitas contribuyen a la exclusión activa y completa de las víctimas. Después observamos que el discurso de odio implícito puede excluir a sus víctimas por medio de su inclusión en debates donde no quieren participar. Para ello, estudiamos un intercambio comunicativo en Twitter donde se utiliza el discurso de odio. Lo que nos llevará a plantear el concepto de “inclusión argumentativa forzada” como forma de exclusión argumentativa

We explore a particular type of propagandistic message, which we call “provocative insinuation”. For example: ‘Iraqi refugee is convicted in Germany of raping and murdering teenage girl’. Although this sentence seems to merely report a fact, it also conveys a potentially hateful message about Iraqi refugees. We look at the argumentative roles that these utterances play in public discourse. Specifically, we argue that they implicitly address the question of the integration of refugees and migrants, and in fact aim to tilt the audience against these groups by strongly inviting hearers to make generalisations based on “striking” properties. We examine different strategies to counteract the conveyed hateful message.