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On Silencing and Systematicity: The Challenge of the Drowning Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Mary Kate McGowan ,
Ilana Walder‐Biesanz ,
Morvareed Rezaian  and
Chloe Emerson
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Abstract

Silencing is a speech‐related harm. We here focus on one particular account of silencing offered by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton. According to this account, silencing is systematically generated, illocutionary‐communicative failure (of a very specific sort). We here raise an apparent challenge to that account. In particular, we offer an example—the drowning case—that meets these conditions of silencing but does not intuitively seem to be an instance of it. First, we explore several conditions one might add to the Hornsby‐Langton account, but we argue that none are satisfactory. Then, we further explore the systematicity condition, which is insufficiently characterized in the current literature. Although we explore several promising ways to further characterize this condition, we ultimately conclude that more work needs to be done. Consequently, because this systematicity condition is under‐specified, the Hornsby‐Langton account of silencing is incomplete.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Winter 2016 , pp. 74 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Hypatia, Inc.

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