Research Seminar in Decision and Action Theory: Rae Langton (University of Cambridge)

Title:

Speech acts in social construction

Abstract:

Speech acts are among the primary ways language use is active, changing the world, bringing new things into being, or shaping things that were there already: social norms, social hierarchies, building blocks of the social world. We compare causal with enactive construction, looking at the involvement of speech acts in causal social looping (Hacking, Haslanger, Appiah) and enactive social subordination (MacKinnon). We contrast exercitive and verdictive speech (Austin) and their 'direction of fit'. Exercitives aim to make the world fit the words, altering facts about permissibility, rights, and powers, e.g. a mother setting a bedtime, a judge saying ‘Sentence: twenty years’. Verdictives aim to make the words fit the world, as assertion-like judgements about ‘some matter of fact or value’, e.g. an umpire calling a ball ‘Out’, a jury declaring a defendant ‘Guilty’. Exercitives are evidently involved in social construction, enacting new social facts. Verdictives are involved too, but there is a puzzle how they could be, given their aim to track the world, rather than create it. We resolve this by citing their role, first, in social looping; and second, in enacting what something 'counts as’ being (Searle). The conclusion is significant also as corrective to an over-narrow focus among theorists of social construction, a reminder to attend not just to concepts and effects, but to the speech acts done with words.

The seminar will be held in person, but here is a Zoom link for remote participation:
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/93279453658?pwd=MGRkZ1lOYTVtK2tleWVHbFZ4UFNzZz09