Freedom of Speech Acts? A Response to Langton

How to Screw Things with Words

“…Seeking to turn the Austinian machinery back against Langton, proponents of these two objections target one or other aspect of the double sense (identified in section I) in which pornography's silencing of women is held to be “illocutionary.” The first version denies that pornographic expression is an illocutionary act of subordination or silencing: at most, it has these as “perlocutionary effects.” We must therefore examine the evidence; and the evidence, many believe, is inconclusive. Proponents of the second version of this strategy hold—with apparently straight faces—that what women allegedly suffer from as a result of porn is not “illocutionary disablement,” but merely a case of “perlocutionary frustration” (Jacobson , 72): they perform acts such as refusal, all right; they just can't rely on their refusals being respected…”

“…Leslie Green, for example, notes that this is “almost certainly the least likely form of date rape,” with the distinct air of someone who thinks he is saying something relevant (Green , 298) . Daniel Jacobson, meanwhile, obligingly goes through the motions of supposing “that exposure to pornography has, as Langton imagines, brought some man sincerely to think that a woman's saying ‘no’ to sex is just another way of consenting,” in order to consider how we should judge such a case, but “confesses” to finding it “unlikely” (Jacobson , 77). The gentle, headmasterly condescension of Green and Jacobson is almost ulcer‐inducing, and Langton herself is sometimes guilty of encouraging their mistake.…”

On Silencing and Systematicity: The Challenge of the Drowning Case

“… Initially, H&L focused on illocutionary failure (and were committed to the claim that a silenced speaker fails to refuse), but subsequent focus is on communicative failure. Criticism of the former claim includes Jacobson ; Bird . Defenses of H&L include Hornsby and Langton ; McGowan et al.…”

A Partial Defense of Illocutionary Silencing

“…In what follows, we focus on the speech act account of silencing put forward by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton (henceforth the H&L account), and we defend that account against two important objections. The first objection contends that the H&L account makes a crucial but false assumption about the necessary role of hearer recognition in successful speech acts (Jacobson 1995; Bird 2002). In response, we argue that, as they are primarily concerned with communication, they are perfectly correct to treat hearer recognition as they do.…”