Suzanne Whitten

Feminist philosophers of language have, in the last several decades, demonstrated the usefulness of employing a speech-act theoretical lens to understand how expression works to enact and reinforce oppression. Despite the growing in uence of these approaches in the philosophy and political theory literature, however, their use in other disciplines remains severely limited. This is surprising, especially given the real potential of the speech-act approach to illuminate the mechanisms by which everyday acts contribute to large-scale oppressions. This paper takes up this call for interdisciplinarity, utilising a speech-act theory of oppression to better understand the real-life experiences of the under-researched Czech and Slovak communities of Northern Ireland. Using semi-structured interviews followed by thematic analysis, our study expands our understanding of oppressive speech by revealing a complex relationship between victims’ experiences and their understanding of wider societal oppression, exposing a channel via which victims can exercise agency by contesting attempts to reinforce their oppression. In so doing, the study also draws attention to a novel theoretical lens with which to understand experiences of harmful speech, one which is currently under-utilised by those outside of the philosophy/political theory disciplines.

A growing body of literature in feminist philosophy exposes the way in which occupying a particular group identity inhibits an affected agent’s ability to engage in communicative exchange effectively. These accounts reveal a fault in standard liberal defences of free speech, showing how, if free speech is a goal worth pursuing, then it must involve both a concern about the legitimate limits of state interference and of the effect of social norms on an agent’s communicative capacities. Building on the emergence of a ‘critical’ branch of neo-republicanism, this article argues that such speech-related injustices are best understood as a feature of structural domination that threatens the agency of those affected. Recalibrating our understanding of free speech along critical republican lines thus secures discursive agency in our communicative exchanges in a way that both ensures democratic legitimacy and realises equal status for all.

This article explores the outcome of a Philosophy with Children (PwC)-focused pilot citizenship programme (The Critical Civility Project) on children in post-conflict Northern Ireland. A six-week study was conducted with 10 primary-level classes of children aged 8 to 11. The programme delivered to children combined PwC pedagogy with themes drawn from recent work on civility from political philosophy, where civility here is understood as a set of norms and dispositions that allow individuals (as citizens) to communicate respect for one another, particularly when engaging collaboratively and critically on matters of local and global democratic importance. Post-pilot questionnaire results from children reveal self-reported positive changes in attitudes and behaviours towards others, particularly in contexts of disagreement. While further, more rigorous testing of the benefits of the programme is needed, the study points to the potential for philosophy as an underpinning component of democratic citizenship education in the region.

According to defenders of no-platforming, the removal of a platform from those who employ harmful speech delegitimises their views by preventing the continued enactment of oppressive norms and/or by undermining speaker authority. Missing from these discussions, however, is an account of how the wider social context informs the success of the no-platform event itself. With this gap in mind, this chapter makes two main claims. First, I suggest that the central harm from platforming speakers comes not from the causal effects of what they might say but from the constitutive harm of their invitation. In response, I suggest that no-platformers, rather than censoring the invited speaker, are themselves making a positive discursive contribution to the surrounding environment by engaging in a form of counterspeech. Those concerned with contesting the speech of the invitation, however, must take account of key features of the surrounding context when working out whether no-platforming is appropriate. In conditions where there exists significant community divergence on core social norms, then no-platformers may fail to satisfy the conditions required for their contestation to have successful uptake. Consideration of the broader discursive dynamics at play is thus necessary when working out how best to deal with controversial speakers.

One particularly prominent strand of hate speech theory conceptualizes the harm in hate speech by considering the immediate illocutionary force of a hate speech ‘act’. What appears to be missing from such a conception, however, is how recognition relations and normative expectations present in a speech situation influence the harm such speech causes to its victims. Utilizing a particular real-world example, this paper illustrates how these defining background conditions and intersubjective relations influence the harm of hate speech as it is experienced from the first-person perspective. This, more nuanced conception of harm, takes note of the effects such speech inflicts on an individual’s recognitive status, and can provide a clearer understanding of the conditions necessary for an act of hate speech to cause the speaker’s desired effect on their targets.

A key focus in many debates surrounding the harm in hate speech centres on the subordinating impact hate speech has on its victims. Under such a view, and provided there exists a requisite level of speaker authority a particular speech situation, hate speech can be conceived as something which directly impact’s the victim’s status, and can be contrasted to the view that such speech merely expresses hateful ideas. Missing from these conceptions, however, are the ways in which intersubjective, recognition-sensitive relations influence the kind of harm likely to result from such an act. Understanding the central role of first-person experience is crucial, as, while a victim may have little influence in how their social status is impacted by such an act, the possibility for ‘speaking back’ requires that individuals are equipped with the conditions necessary to reject the authority claims of the speaker. On such a view, this paper aims to use this feature of intersubjectivity to explore the potential ways in which an act of hate speech can be ‘robbed’ of some of its harm by having its authority claims rejected by the victim. Utilizing this enhanced understanding, I reflect upon one particular real-world example of hate speech, in which the target rejects the status-undermining claims made upon her. In the last section, I propose a general institutional outlook aimed towards aiding would-be victims of hate speech to respond to such attempts at normative authority exertion.

Abstract‘Counterspeech’ is often presented as a way in which individual citizens can respond to harmful speech while avoiding the potentially coercive and freedom-damaging effects of formal speech restrictions. But counterspeech itself can also undermine freedom by contributing to forms of social punishment that manipulate a speaker’s choice set in uncontrolled ways. Specifically, and by adopting a republican perspective, this paper argues that certain kinds of counterspeech candominatewhen they contribute to unchecked social norms that enable others to interfere arbitrarily with speakers. The presence of such domination can pose just as much a threat to freedom of speech as unchecked formal restrictions by threatening an individual’s discursive status, revealing a problem for those who defend counterspeech as a freedom-protecting alternative. Rather than rejecting both counterspeech and legislation outright, however, this paper argues that the republican principle ofparsimonyought to be exercised when deciding on appropriate harmful speech response. While the principle of parsimony allows for suitably-checked formal punishment for some of the most egregious forms of harmful speech, citizen-led counterspeech must be guided by a reliable set of norms against the use of social punishment where those who do engage in social punishment face certain costs. The presence of robust, widely-known, and reliable norms thus supports both formal and informal responses to harmful speech while maintaining a secure discursive status for all.

One particularly prominent strand of hate speech theory conceptualizes the harm in hate speech by considering the immediate illocutionary force of a hate speech ‘act’. What appears to be missing from such a conception, however, is how recognition relations and normative expectations present in a speech situation influence the harm such speech causes to its victims. Utilizing a particular real-world example, this paper illustrates how these defining background conditions and intersubjective relations influence the harm of hate speech as it is experienced from the first-person perspective. This, more nuanced conception of harm, takes note of the effects such speech inflicts on an individual’s recognitive status, and can provide a clearer understanding of the conditions necessary for an act of hate speech to cause the speaker’s desired effect on their targets.

Defenders of academic freedom characteristically claim academics ought to be afforded freedoms not afforded those in other roles or occupations on account of the unique, knowledge-generating status of academic activity and its contribution to the public good. Challenging that claim, this paper argues instead that the capacity for all roles and occupations to benefit the public good of knowledge creation provides justification for granting all workers discretion over work performance, meaningful workplace voice, and the freedom to speak publicly, that the rights typically claimed by academics apply more generally. It advances its challenge by targeting the assumption common to many defenders of academic freedom that academic work’s exceptional nature stems from its ultimate “truth-telling function”, namely that only the academic role pursues the kind of rigorous truth-seeking activities for which worker control is necessary. In doing so, the paper aims both to cast critical light on uninterrogated assertions of academic exceptionalism and to bolster the literature on worker freedoms by offering an epistemic and public-good directed defence of worker rights to accompany defences of such rights from the perspective of justice or individual flourishing.