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21Slurs in quarantineMind and Language. forthcoming.We investigate experimentally whether the perceived offensiveness of slurs survives when they are reported, by comparing Italian slurs and insults in base utterances (Y is an S), direct speech (X said: “Y is an S”), mixed quotation (X said that Y is “an S”), and indirect speech (X said that Y is an S). For all strategies, reporting decreases the perceived offensiveness without removing it. For slurs, but not insults, indirect speech is perceived as more offensive than direct speech. Our hypothes…Read more
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14Varieties of UptakeIn Laura Caponetto & Paolo Labinaz (eds.), Sbisà on Speech as Action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 2147483647-2147483647. 2023.The debate about the determination of the illocutionary force of a speech act revolves around the notion of uptake and the role played by the audience: many scholars consider the hearer’s recognition of the force of the locution a necessary condition for the performance of an illocution. A variety of theories has been put forward. According to Langton (Philosophy and Public Affairs 22: 293–330, 1993), the hearer’s uptake determines whether a successful act has been performed. According to Kukla …Read more
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49Generic Language for Social and Animal Kinds: An Examination of the Asymmetry Between Acceptance and InferencesCognitive Science 46 (12). 2022.Generics (e.g., “Ravens are black”) express generalizations about categories or their members. Previous research found that generics about animals are interpreted as broadly true of members of a kind, yet also accepted based on minimal evidence. This asymmetry is important for suggesting a mechanism by which unfounded generalizations may flourish; yet, little is known whether this finding extends to generics about groups of people (heretofore, “social generics”). Accordingly, in four preregister…Read more
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31John Langshaw AustinAphex 7 674-710. 2013.John Austin (1911-1960) è stato uno dei filosofi britannici più influenti del suo tempo, per il rigore del pensiero, la personalità straordinaria e il metodo filosofico innovativo. A parere di John Searle Austin era molto amato e molto odiato dai contemporanei – disorientati da un pensiero che sembrava distruggere più che costruire, sfidare l'ortodossia della filosofia tradizionale ma anche dell'allora imperante empirismo logico, senza sostituirvi nessuna confortante nuova ortodossia. L'opera di…Read more
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91Discursive Injustice: The Role of UptakeTopoi 40 (1): 181-190. 2020.In recent times, phenomena of conversational asymmetry have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers—under various labels: illocutionary disablement and silencing, discursive injustice :440–457, 2014; Lance and Kukla in Ethics 123:456–478, 2013), illocutionary distortion. The common idea is that members of underprivileged groups sometimes have trouble performing particular speech acts that they are entitled to perform: in certain contexts, th…Read more
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Recensioni/Reviews-Le vie dell'interpretazione nella filosofia contemporaneaEpistemologia 28 (2). 2005.
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49Asymmetrical ConversationsGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (3): 401-418. 2019.According to Mitchell Green, speech act theory traditionally idealizes away from crucial aspects of conversational contexts, including those in which the speaker’s social position affects the possibility of her performing certain speech acts. In recent times, asymmetries in communicative situations have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers: several scholars view hate speech itself in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination. The…Read more
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10Parole come pietre: atti linguistici e subordinazioneEsercizi Filosofici 10 (2). 2015.Derogatory epithets are terms such as “nigger” and “faggot” targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. There is no consensus on the best treatment of derogatory epithets. The aim of my paper is to evaluate a proposal recently put forward by Rae Langton, the speech acts account. Assessing SAA is far from an easy task, since the proposal is little more than an outline, deeply intertwined with Langton’s general view on …Read more
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35Linguaggio d’odio, autorità e ingiustizia discorsivaRivista di Estetica 64 18-34. 2017.Drawing on Austin’s speech act theory, many influential scholars view hate speech in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination (MacKinnon 1987; Langton 1993, 2012, 2014; Hornsby and Langton 1998; McGowan 2003, 2004; Kukla and Lance 2009; Langton, Haslanger and Anderson 2012; Maitra 2012; Kukla 2014). Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts offers a way to set apart speech that constitutes subordination, and speech that merely causes subordination. The aim of m…Read more
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Recensioni/Reviews-Unshadowed Thought. Representation in Thought and LanguageEpistemologia 26 (1): 179-181. 2003.
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Recensioni/Reviews-La dipendenza contestuale. Per una teoria pragmatica del significatoEpistemologia 26 (1): 183-185. 2003.
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766Implicating, as it is conceived in recent pragmatics, amounts to conveying a (propositional) content without saying it – a content providing no contribution to the truth-conditions of the proposition expressed by the sentence uttered. In this sense, implicating is a notion closely related to the work of Paul Grice (1913-1988) and of his precursors, followers and critics. Hence, the task of this article is to introduce and critically examine the explicit/implicit distinction, the Gricean notion o…Read more
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1830ContextualismHandbook of Pragmatics Online. 2010.Contextualism is a view about meaning, semantic content and truth-conditions, bearing significant consequences for the characterisation of explicit and implicit content, the decoding/inferring distinction and the semantics/pragmatics interface. According to the traditional perspective in semantics (called "literalism" or "semantic minimalism"), it is possible to attribute truth-conditions to a sentence independently of any context of utterance, i.e. in virtue of its meaning alone. We must then …Read more
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190How to Be a ContextualistFacta Philosophica 7 (2): 261-272. 2005.This paper deals with the semantic issues of epistemological contextualism - the doctrine according to which the truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing sentences vary depending on the context in which they are uttered. According to the contextualist, a sentence of the form "S knows that p" does not express a complete proposition. Different utterances of this same sentence, in different contexts of utterance, can express different propositions: "know" is context-dependent. Little attention has b…Read more
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La dipendenza contestuale. Per una theoria pragmatica del significatoRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 194 (1): 126-126. 2004.
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75Epistemological Contextualism: A Semantic PerspectiveIn R. Turner D. Leake B. Kokinov A. Dey (ed.), Modeling and Using Context, Springer. pp. 41--54. 2005.According to epistemological contextualism, a sentence of the form "S knows that p" doesn't express a complete proposition. Different utterances of the sentence, in different contexts, can express different propositions: "know" is context-dependent. This paper deals with the semantic contextualist thesis grounding epistemological contextualism. We examine various kinds of linguistic context dependence, which could be relevant to epistemological contextualism: ambiguity, ellipsis, indexicality, v…Read more
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1964The paper emphasizes the inadequacy of formal semantics, the classical paradigm in semantics, in treating contextual dependence. Some phenomena of contextual dependence threaten one central assumption of the classical paradigm, namely the idea that linguistic expressions have a fixed meaning, and utterances have truth conditions well defined. It is possible to individuate three forms of contextual dependence: the one affecting pure indexicals, the one affecting demonstratives and "contextual exp…Read more
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36Naturalizing Meaning through Epistemology: Some Critical NotesIn M. Rédei M. Dorato M. Suàrez (ed.), Epsa Epistemology and Methodology of Science, Springer. pp. 311--321. 2010.According to the theory of meaning as justification, semantics is closely entangled with epistemology: knowing the meaning of an utterance amounts to knowing the justification one may offer for it. In this perspective, the theory of meaning is connected with the epistemic theory of justification, namely the theory that undergoes the more explicit attempts of naturalization. Is it possible to extend those attempts to the notion of meaning? There are many ways of naturalizing the notion of meaning…Read more
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13Semantics and pragmatics: distinction reloadedIn The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Publications. 2004.
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40Claudia Bianchi - Review of Martin Gustafsson and Richard Sørli. The Philosophy of J. L. AustinJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (6). 2014.Martin Gustafsson and Richard Sørli. The Philosophy of J. L. Austin. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199219759 Reviewed by Claudia Bianchi.
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99‘Nobody Loves Me’: Quantification and ContextPhilosophical Studies 130 (2). 2006.In my paper, I present two competing perspectives on the foundational problem (as opposed to the descriptive problem) of quantifier domain restriction: the objective perspective on context (OPC) and the intentional perspective on context (IPC). According to OPC, the relevant domain for a quantified sentence is determined by objective facts of the context of utterance. In contrast, according to IPC, we must consider certain features of the speaker’s intention in order to determine the proposition…Read more
Claudia Bianchi
Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (Milan)
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Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (Milan)Professor
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Language |
Pragmatics |
Reference |
Speech Acts |
Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction |
Performatives |