BAEcon Economics

The course examines the ways in which social inequality and oppression of social groups are deliberately or accidentally expressed, instigated and enforced through our linguistic practices. How can words oppress people? Examining the answers to this simple question leads us into core issues in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of race while enabling an appreciation of the diverse range of topics within the philosophy of language. For example, we will evaluate the arguments of feminist philosophers who have analysed pornography as a form of speech act which subordinates women and simultaneously deprives them of the ability to speak out in protest.

We will examine philosophical theories about the nature of slurs: words which directly derogate and harm individuals by reference to race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. How can a philosophical account of language make sense of the notion that a word can have a harmful meaning? Less direct forms of oppression have been argued to be embedded in the way that gender in represented in ordinary language. Many feminist philosophers, for example, have argued that apparently gender-neutral expressions like ‘nurse’, ‘president’, etc., encode gendered information which reinforces and perpetuates gender inequality.

The course will also look at an area of overlap between linguistic and metaphysical issues by addressing the question of what it means to say that categories like race or gender are socially constructed.

The unit aims to:

Equip students with the intellectual, textual, and philosophical resources to formulate, and argue for, views on a range of philosophical issues surrounding the ways in which language derogates, oppresses, and perpetuates social inequality.

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and analyse key contemporary views of the social role of language;
• Clearly articulate philosophical claims about language.

Students should be able to:

• Evaluate claims and arguments in the social philosophy of language;
• Relate the philosophy of language to other areas of philosophical inquiry;
• Apply theoretical frameworks from the philosophy of language to issues of real world significance;
• Interpret and criticise both primary and secondary texts at the interface of the philosophy of language and ethics;
• Develop their own arguments in response to texts.

Students should be able to:

• Undertake independent research on language and oppression and apply theoretical knowledge to complex issues in this area.

Essay 1 (2000 words) 50%

Essay 2 (2000 words) 50%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• Sally McConnell-Ginet, ‘Language, Gender and Sexuality’
• Luvell Anderson, Sally Haslanger and Rae Langton, ‘Language and Race’
• Both in: The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, eds. Russell & Graff Fara, London: Routledge, 2015.
• Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan, 'Introduction and Overview', in Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech, eds. Maitra & McGowan, Oxford: OUP 2012. 
• Robin Jeshion, 'Varieties of Pejoratives', in The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, eds. Khoo & Sterken, New York: Routledge, 2021.