Language Loss and Illocutionary Silencing

Mind 129 (515):831-865 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The twenty-first century will witness an unprecedented decline in the diversity of the world’s languages. While most philosophers will likely agree that this decline is lamentable, the question of what exactly is lost with a language has not been systematically explored in the philosophical literature. In this paper, I address this lacuna by arguing that language loss constitutes a problematic form of illocutionary silencing. When a language disappears, past and present speakers lose the ability to realize a range of speech acts that can only be realized in that language. With that ability, speakers lose something in which they have a fundamental interest: their standing as fully empowered members of a linguistic community.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Failing to do things with words.Nicole Wyatt - 2009 - Southwest Philosophy Review 25 (1):135-142.
Saying and Doing: Speech Actions, Speech Acts and Related Events.Gruenberg Angela - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 22 (2):173-199.
Multiculturalism, Autonomy, and Language Preservation.Ethan Nowak - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.
Illocutionary harm.Henry Ian Schiller - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (5):1631-1646.
Illocutionary silencing.Alexander Bird - 2002 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (1):1–15.
Illocutionary rules.Robert M. Harnish & Christian Plunze - 2006 - Pragmatics and Cognition 14 (1):37-52.
A Theory of Non-illocutionary Use.Thomas G. Larson - 1984 - Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Speech Acts and Pragmatics.Kent Bach - 2006 - In Michael Devitt & Richard Hanley (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 147–167.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-09-25

Downloads
894 (#25,312)

6 months
167 (#23,308)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Ethan Nowak
Stanford University

References found in this work

How to do things with words.John L. Austin - 1962 - Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press. Edited by Marina Sbisá & J. O. Urmson.
Meaning.Herbert Paul Grice - 1957 - Philosophical Review 66 (3):377-388.
The thought: A logical inquiry.Gottlob Frege - 1956 - Mind 65 (259):289-311.
Speech acts and unspeakable acts.Rae Langton - 1993 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (4):293-330.

View all 43 references / Add more references