'Acts of speech' and how people recieve them

UCL Uncovering Politics

Today we are examining speech acts and uptake. A central contribution from J. L. Austin has been the idea that our speech sometimes doesn’t only say things – sometimes it does things. When we speak, we don’t only convey content or information. We sometimes also - for instance - promise, name, refuse, or order: in short, our speech sometimes acts.

And that has prompted a great deal of philosophical debate over when speech acts are successfully performed, and whether that depends on the effects on the audience. This might sound like an esoteric matter, but philosophers think that thinking about how – and when- speech does things has implications for what we should think of pornography, and for when people really consent to sex.

Our guest today is Dr Sarah Fisher, a Research Fellow here in the department of political science on a cross-disciplinary project on the ethics of content moderation on social media and the future of free speech online, funded by UKRI.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Sarah A. Fisher, Kathryn B. Francis & Leo Townsend (2023) An empirical investigation of intuitions about uptake, Inquiry, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2023.2220359
• Langton, Rae. “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 22, no. 4, 1993, pp. 293–330. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265469

Some references suggested by Sarah for further reading:

• Townsend, L. and Townsend, D.L. (2020). Consultation, Consent, and the Silencing of Indigenous Communities. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 37: 781-798. DOI: 10.1111/japp.12438
• Townsend, L. and Lupin, D. (2021). Representation and Epistemic Violence. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 29(4): 577-594. DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2021.1997398
• Francis, K. B., Beaman, P., & Hansen, N. (2019). Stakes, scales, and skepticism. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy. DOI: 10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.016

UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.