David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Jack Alan Reynolds
Learn more about PhilPapers
In Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan (eds.), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford University Press 174--221 (2012)
This chapter examines the role played by derogatory terms (e.g., ‘inyenzi’ or cockroach, ‘inzoka’ or snake) in laying the social groundwork for the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. The genocide was preceded by an increase in the use of anti-Tutsi derogatory terms among the Hutu. As these linguistic practices evolved, the terms became more openly and directly aimed at Tutsi. Then, during the 100 days of the genocide, derogatory terms and coded euphemisms were used to direct killers to their victims. Understanding these speech acts helps to illuminate the important ways that power is enacted through discourse, how speech acts can prepare the way for physical and material acts, and how speech generates permissions for actions hitherto uncountenanced. Studying the role of speech acts and linguistic practices in laying the groundwork of the genocide illuminates how patterns of speech acts become linguistic practices that constitute permissibility conditions for non-linguistic behaviors. Further, the analysis presented here helps to make sense of the view that a steady, deep, and widespread derogation of a group can be part and parcel of genocide, not only an antecedent to it.
|Keywords||Genocide Language Speech Acts Inferential Roles Violence Derogatory Terms Epithets Harm Language Games Rwanda|
|Categories||categorize this paper)|
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server
Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy)
|Through your library|
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
No citations found.
Similar books and articles
Lynne Tirrell (1999). Aesthetic Derogation: Hate Speech, Pornography, and Aesthetic Contexts,. In Jerrold Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection. Cambridge University Press
Siobhan Nash-Marshall & Rita Mahdessian (2013). Lies, Damned Lies, and Genocide. Metaphilosophy 44 (1-2):116-144.
Lynne Tirrell (1999). Derogatory Terms: Racism, Sexism and the Inferential Role Theory of Meaning. In Kelly Oliver & Christina Hendricks (eds.), Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy and Language,. SUNY Press
Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.) (2007). Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language. Routledge.
Nicole Wyatt (2009). Failing to Do Things with Words. Southwest Philosophy Review 25 (1):135-142.
Barry Smith (1990). Towards a History of Speech Act Theory. In Armin Burkhardt (ed.), (ed.), Speech Acts, Meanings and Intentions. Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle, 29–61. De Gruyter
Mitchell Green, Speech Acts. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Adam M. Croom (2011). Slurs. Language Sciences 33:343-358.
Nicholas Asher & Alex Lascarides (2001). Indirect Speech Acts. Synthese 128 (1-2):183 - 228.
Robert Mößgen (ed.) (2007). Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language. Routledge.
Nellie Wieland (2007). Linguistic Authority and Convention in a Speech Act Analysis of Pornography. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3):435 – 456.
John R. Searle (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press.
Added to index2012-01-19
Total downloads54 ( #76,615 of 1,793,071 )
Recent downloads (6 months)25 ( #30,536 of 1,793,071 )
How can I increase my downloads?