Social and Political Issues in Philosophy of Language

Room – Roscoe 4.4

Jesper Olsson (University of Graz); Tim Grasshöfer (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) 

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the philosophical debate on language and its political relevance. Emerging from what can be called the socio-political turn, these discussions range from descriptive analyses of different phenomena (such as dogwhistles, figleaves, code words, slurs, propaganda, hate speech, silencing and more) to normative works on possible solutions of how to manage the harmfulness of such phenomena (e.g., see Anderson and Lepore 2013a; 2013b; Saul 2018; Khoo 2017; Langton 1993; Kukla 2014; Anderson and Barnes 2023; Stanley 2015). Importantly, this also includes foundational methodological questions about how to best do social and political, or non-ideal, philosophy of language, raising questions about how well the so-called normative and descriptive dimensions can be kept apart (Beaver and Stanley 2018; 2023; Keiser 2022; Mühlebach 2022).

Central to the field is the concept of social meaning, which concerns how language constructs and reinforces social identities and carves out our social world. For instance, it has become a key concept to understand linguistic phenomena such as dogwhistles and code words, analyzed by scholars like Stanley (2015), Khoo (2017, 2021), Henderson and McCready (2018, 2019, 2024), and Saul (2018, 2023). The methodological questions raised in this regard include a critique of how standard theories in linguistics and philosophy of language, which are primarily centered on information exchange, rely on idealizations that leave out socially and politically significant aspects of language. In response, Beaver and Stanley (2023) pursue a non-idealized philosophy of language to better account for the social dimensions of linguistic practice. Nowak (forthcoming) also criticizes standard conceptions of language in these fields. He argues that social meaning is a pervasive feature of linguistic activities deserving of philosophers’ attention, advocating a pluralistic explanation of this kind of meaning. In a similar vein, Keiser (2022) develops a metalinguistic framework that accommodates non-standard linguistic phenomena not primarily aimed at exchanging information.

On the more explicitly normative side, philosophers such as Wyatt and Popa-Wyatt (2024) explain how social and political speech may lead to social norm changes, consequently leading to the undermining of norms governing, for instance, hateful and oppressive speech, and that a combination of established theories is needed to understand such changes. Relatedly, the debate on linguistic (in)justice explores how social identities can promote linguistic violence (Baker-Bell, 2020) and how individuals’ language-related actions may cause serious and collective harms (Song, 2023). Pertinent to the overall discussion are also questions of whether, and if so, how to impose constraints on language to limit (hate-)speech (Yong, 2011).

As laid out above, socio-political aspects shape and are shaped by language in the way that they can cause social norm-shifts, injustices and harms. This, in turn, can facilitate further downstream effects on democratic processes and decision-making, by influencing public discourse. The aim of this panel is to promote discussions investigating these issues, thereby bridging the gap between political theory and philosophy of language. By bringing together contributions discussing the descriptive, normative and methodological issues (including on the question of whether descriptive-normative distinctions can be drawn so easily) of the socio-political aspects of language, it will stimulate discussions on this newer social and political direction in philosophy of language. As such, we endorse inter- and intradisciplinary submissions from philosophers of language, political theory, and related fields.