Course Overview
Words, it might seem, are for saying things, communicating bits of information. And, of course, they are for that. However, there all sorts of things that we can do with the use of language that go beyond simply saying things. We can, for instance, make a promise, forbid someone from doing something, or exclude someone from our community. These are all different kinds of “speech acts” we might perform, and they form the topic of speech act theory. This class, a venture into speech act theory, will look at these di erent types of speech acts while seeking to develop a unified framework for thinking about them based on the thought, variously spelled out by the theorists we’ll read, that speech acts work by shifting the norms to which speakers take themselves to be bound. We will start with the philosophical foundations of speech act theory, starting with the pioneering work of Ludwig Wittgenstein before turning to J.L. Austin’s
seminal How to Do Things with Words. We will then turn to contemporary developments of speech act theory, focusing on one area where it has been most fruitfully applied and developed in recent years: social, and especially feminist, philosophy. Specific topics in this part of the course will include subordination, silencing and other forms of discursive injustice, discriminatory speech, and gender identification. We will finally turn back to think about the speech act of simply saying something with the conceptual tools we’ve developed in thinking about the various other things we do with words. Beyond Wittgenstein and Austin, readings will be from contemporary sources with work from Rae Langton, Jennifer Hornsby, Cassie Herbert, Quill Kukla, Mary Kate McGowan, Mark Lance, and Robert Brandom among others. pdf of syllabus

Class 1: Introduction
No assigned reading.  

• Class 1 Handout

​Class 2: Frege and Wittgenstein on the Uses of Language. 

• Main Readings:
  • Frege, “The Thought,” excerpt
  • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §1-27, 89-124 
• Class 2 Handout

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Class 3: Wittgenstein's Expressivism

• Main Readings:
  • Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, pages 65-70
  • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §243-304
• Secondary Readings:
  • Finkelstein - “Expression and Avowal”
• Class 3 Handout

Class 4: How to Do Things with Words: The Basic Phenomenon and Initial Characterization

• Main Reading:
  • Austin – How to Do Things with Words, Lectures 1-3 (3 can be skimmed)
• Class 4 Handout

Class 5: How to Do Things with Words, continued: Difficulties in Characterizing the Performative

• Main Reading: 
  • ​J.L. Austin - How to Do Things with Words, Lectures 4-6 (6 can be skimmed)
• Supplementary/Background Reading:
  • ​Grice - “Logic and Conversation”
• ​Class 5 Handout

Class 6: How to Do Things with Words, continued: Starting Fresh: Locution, Illocution, and Perlocution

• Main Readings:
  • J.L. Austin - How to Do Things with Words, Lectures 7-9
• Class 6 Handout

Class 7: How to Do Things with Words, continued: Pinning Down the Details

• Main Readings: 
  • J.L. Austin - How to Do Things with Words, Lectures 10-12
• Class 7 Handout

Class 8: Pornography and Subordination

• Main Reading: 
  • ​Langton – “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” Part I
• Background Readings: 
  • ​Mackinnon – Only Words, Part III: “Equality and Speech”
  • Dworkin – Women and Pornography (review of Mackinnon’s Only  Words) 
• Secondary/Supplementary Reading:
  • ​Bauer – “How to Do Things with Pornography”
• Interview with Langton (up to 19:05)
• News Clip from 1984 on the Pornography Ordinance
• Class 8 Handout

Class 9: Pornography, Silencing, and the Restoration of Voice

• Main Readings:
  • Langton – “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” Part II
  • Herbert – “The Speech Acts of ‘Me Too”’
• Supplementary Reading:
  • Hornsby and Langton – “Free Speech and Illocution”
• Interview with Langton (from 19:05 on)
• Class 9 Handout

Class 10: Discursive Injustice

• Main Reading:
  • Kukla – “Force, Convention, and Discursive Injustice”
• Supplementary/Background Readings:
  • Fricker – Epistemic Injustice, Chapter One: “Testimonial Injustice”
  • Kukla and Lance – ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’ Chapter One, especially Section 1.2
• Class 10 Handout

Class 11: Discriminatory Speech

• Main Reading:
  • McGowan – On “White’s Only Signs and Racist Hate Speech”
• Supplementary Readings:
  • Saul – “Racial Figleaves, the Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald Trump”
  • Herbert – Exclusionary Speech and the Constructions of Community, Chapter 3
• Class 11 Handout

Class 12: Gender Ascriptions and Identifications

• Main Reading:
  • Kukla and Lance – “Telling Gender”
• Supplementary/Background Reading:
  • Judith Butler – “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”
• Kukla and Lance’s Presentation of the Paper (Q&A session starts at 47:08)
• Class 12 Handout

Class 13: Critique of "Malestream" Philosophy of Language

• Main Reading:
  • Hornsby – “Feminism and Philosophy of Language: Communicative Speech Acts”
• Supplementary Readings:
  • ​Dever – “Formal Semantics” An example of the way of thinking about meaning Hornsby is criticizing. No need to work through in detail – just skim to get the gist.
  • MacKinnon – “Desire and Power,” excerpt
• Background Reading:
  • Grice – “Meaning”
• Class 13 Handout

Class 14: A “Speech-Act Only” Approach in Philosophy of Language

• Main Readings:
  • Brandom – “Asserting”
• Supplementary/Secondary Readings: Same content, but the second (the secondary source) is both shorter and easier to read than the first (the primary source):
  • Brandom – Making It Explicit, Chapter 3
  • Wanderer – Robert Brandom, Chapter 2
• Interview with Brandom: 
• Class 14 Handout

Class 15: The Declarative Fallacy (again)

• Main Readings:
  • Lance and Kukla – “Perception, Language, and the First- Person”
  • Brandom – “Reply to Lance and Kukla”
• Supplementary Reading:
  • Kukla and Lance – ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’, Chapter 1
• Class 15 Handout