## 1. Critical work on language and philosophy of language


### 1.1 False gender-neutrality



There has been a great deal of feminist concern over the supposedly
gender-neutral use of terms like 'he' and
'man'. It is commonly said that these terms have both
gender-specific meanings, as in sentences (1) and (2), and
gender-neutral ones, as in sentences (3) and (4).


1. He drank the wine.
2. A man went into a bar.
3. When a student comes into the room, he should pick up a
handout.
4. Man is a primate.



Feminists, however, have pointed out that even the supposed
gender-neutral meanings of these terms are not really gender-neutral.
Janice Moulton (1981a) and Adele Mercier (1995) provide examples in
which there is no doubt that a gender-neutral meaning is intended, but
this meaning seems unavailable. As a result, the sentences seem
ill-formed:


5. Man has two sexes; some men are female.
6. Man breastfeeds his young.



We are, then, making a classificatory error if we claim that
'man' and 'he' are gender-neutral terms. In
order to avoid such a classificatory error, we need to do more careful
work on what the meanings of these terms actually are. Perhaps the
meaning of 'he' that has been called
'gender-neutral' is not really gender-neutral, but
something much more complex. Mercier suggests, for example, that we
should understand the 'gender-neutral' use of
'man' as referring to either (a) a person or persons of
unknown sex; or (b) males or a combination of males and females. This
explains why 'men' in (5) and 'man' in (6) are
anomalous: these terms are being used to refer exclusively to persons
known to be female.



The supposed 'gender-neutral' meaning of these terms,
then, is not truly gender neutral. But, on its own, this does not show
that there is a problem with those uses that have traditionally been
classified as gender-neutral, as in sentences (3) and (4).
(Discovering that we have misclassified an adjective as an adverb
would not show anything wrong with actual uses of the term in
question.) Further reasons are needed in order to object to the use
that is made of these terms.


### 1.2 Invisibility of women



Feminist concerns, however, go beyond mere classificatory ones.
Feminists have also argued that terms like 'he' and
'man' contribute to making women invisible--that is,
to obscuring women's importance, and distracting attention from
their existence. Fighting the invisibility of women is an important
feminist project in many
 areas,[1]
 and language that makes one less likely to think of women clearly
contributes to this invisibility. There is good psycholinguistic
evidence that those who encounter sentences (like
 (3)
 and
 (4))
 using the terms 'he' and 'man' think more
readily of males than of
 females.[2]
 If this is right, then the use of these words can be seen as
contributing to the invisibility of women. This gives feminists a good
reason to object to the 'gender-neutral' use of these
terms.


### 1.3 Maleness as norm



If one's only worry concerned the obscuring of women's
presence, however, it would be difficult to object to certain other
terms to which feminists do commonly object: gender-specific
occupational terms like 'manageress' (still common in the
UK, though not in the US) or 'lady doctor'. These terms
certainly do not contribute to the invisibility of women. Instead,
they call attention to the presence of women. Moreover, they call
attention to women's presence in positions of
authority--doctor and manager. Nonetheless, most feminists who
think about language find these terms objectionable.



The clearest reason for objecting to 'manageress' and
'lady doctor' is that the use of these terms seems
premised on the idea that maleness is the norm, and that women filling
these jobs are somehow deviant versions of doctors and managers. This
is also a key objection to the use of 'he' and
'man'. Moulton (1981a) understands these terms on the
model of brand names, like 'Hoover' or 'Scotch
tape' that become generic terms for a product type. The message
of such terms, she suggests, is that the brand in question is the
best, or at least the norm. According to Moulton, terms like
'he' and 'man' work in the same manner: they
are gender-specific terms for men whose use has been extended to cover
both men and women. This, Moulton argues, carries the message that
maleness is the norm. As a result, the use of these terms as if they
were gender neutral constitutes a sort of symbolic insult to women.
Laurence Horn and Steven R. Kleinedler (2000) have disputed the
details of this, noting that 'man' did not begin its life
as gender-specific and then get extended to cover both women and men.
Rather, 'man' actually began its life as
'mann', a gender-neutral term, which only later acquired a
gender-specific meaning. The temporal sequence, then, cannot support
the claim that a gender-specific term has been extended to cover both
genders. Nonetheless, Horn and Kleinedler agree that the use of terms
like 'he' and 'man' as if they were
gender-neutral perpetuates the objectionable idea that men are the
norm for humanity.


### 1.4 Sex-marking



English, like most--but not all--languages, requires a great
deal of what Marilyn Frye calls 'sex marking' (Frye 1983).
For example, one cannot use pronouns to refer to a particular
individual without knowing their sex. (Frye, in common with most
feminists of the early 1980s, does not consider trans issues. She
also does not consider the possibility that pronouns like
'he' and 'she' might be a matter of gender,
not sex.) Frye notes the absurdity of this.



> 
> 
> If I am writing a book review, the use of personal pronouns to refer
> to the author creates the need to know whether that person's
> reproductive cells are the sort which produce ova or the sort which
> produce sperm. (Frye 1983: 22)
> 
> 
> 



Singular personal pronoun usage, Frye argues, is impossible without
knowing the sex of the person one is discussing, and in many cases sex
would otherwise be utterly irrelevant. Frye takes this to be an
instance of a general tendency to make sex relevant where it need not
be, which she takes to be a key feature of sexism. In addition, she
suggests, the constant need to know and indicate sex helps to
perpetuate the conviction that sex is a tremendously important matter
in all areas. For Frye, this is a key factor in perpetuating male
dominance: male dominance requires the belief that men and women are
importantly different from each other, so anything that contributes to
the impression that sex differences are important is therefore a
contributor to male dominance.


### 1.5 Encoding of male worldview



The idea that some terms encode a male worldview is initially a
puzzling one. One thing that is meant by it is, roughly, that the
meanings of certain terms seem to divide the world up in a way that is
more natural for men than for women. Good examples of this come from
the terms 'foreplay' and 'sex'.
'Sex' is generally taken to refer to an act that is
defined in terms of male orgasm, while the sexual activities during
which many women have their orgasms are relegated to secondary status,
referred to by terms like 'foreplay'. These terms, then,
can be seen as based in a male perspective on sex. (It is worth noting
that the 'male perspective' claim need not rest on the
(implausible) idea that this perspective is shared by all men. Rather,
it can rest on claims about what is typical for men, or on the claim
that the only perspective from which certain understandings make sense
is a male one.) As a result, these terms may serve as a barrier to
accurate communication or even thought about women's experiences
of sex (Cameron 1985; Moulton 1981b; Spender 1980 [1985]). Catharine
MacKinnon and Sally Haslanger also discuss legal definitions of
'rape' as (among other things) involving more than
'the normal level of force', an understanding that seems
committed to the idea that some level of force is acceptable in sexual
relations (Haslanger 1995: 109; MacKinnon 1989: 173).



Languages may also lack words for things that matter a great deal to
women. This sort of gap is another way that a language can be seen as
encoding a male worldview. The term 'sexual harassment',
for example, is a recent feminist innovation. Women's discussion
of their experiences led them to see a certain common element to many
of their problems, and as a result they invented the term
'sexual harassment'. Once the problem was named, it became
much easier to fight sexual harassment, both legally and by educating
people about it (Farley 1978; Spender 1985).



Miranda Fricker (2007) calls gaps such as that before the invention of
the term 'sexual harassment' a form of hermeneutical
injustice. Roughly speaking, this is what occurs when "some
significant area of one's social experience [is] obscured from
collective understanding owing to" (2007: 155) a gap in communal
linguistic/conceptual resources that is more damaging to those from a
socially disadvantaged group (to which one belongs). In her
*Epistemic Injustice*, Fricker connects this up with issues in
both ethics and epistemology, especially epistemology of
testimony. We discuss this more fully in 2.4, below. 


### 1.6 Reform efforts: successes and limitations



Problems like those we have seen so far are relatively easy to
discern. Moreover, it may seem that they would be relatively easy to
correct--new terms can be invented, or alternative words can be
used. Much feminist effort has been devoted to this endeavour, and a
huge variety of reforms have been proposed (see, for example, Miller
and Swift 1976, 1980, and the papers in part two of Cameron
1998a).



One especially successful reform effort has been the increasingly
accepted singular use of the third-person gender-neutral pronoun
'they' (in place of 'he') as in the sentence
below:



Somebody left their sweater behind.



A key reason for the success of this reform is perhaps the history of
the singular 'they'. As Ann Bodine has noted (1975 [1998]), the
singular use of 'they' has a long history. It did not
begin to be criticized until the 19th century, and despite
all the efforts of prescriptive grammarians it has remained very
popular in speech. Due to feminist work on the effects of
'gender-neutral' use of 'he', even
prescriptive grammarians are now becoming more accepting of
'they'. In very recent years, it is also becoming
increasingly widespread to use 'they' as one's
chosen personal pronoun, or, less frequently, to use another
gender-neutral option such as 'ze' (Bennett 2016; Dembroff and Wodak 2017).



Other reform efforts have met with greater difficulties. Even some
that have caught on seem to have backfired. Susan Erlich and Ruth King
(1992 [1998]), for example, discuss the case of 'chairperson',
intended to serve as a gender-neutral replacement for
'chairman'. Instead, in many places it is often used to
indicate women who fill the post of chair, while men are referred to
as 'chairman'. They take this to show that reforms cannot
succeed unless attitudes change as well.



Moreover, feminist work on language has also indicated that there may
be problems which are simply not amenable to piecemeal linguistic
reforms. Some difficulties that have been raised go well beyond a
handful of problematic terms or gaps. Deborah Cameron offers striking
examples of writing that take males as the norm without using any
particular terms to which one might object, such as the following,
from *The Sunday Times*:



> 
> 
> The lack of vitality is aggravated by the fact that there are so few
> able-bodied young adults about. They have all gone off to work or look
> for work, leaving behind the old, the disabled, the women and the
> children. (Cameron 1985: 85)
> 
> 
> 



Clearly, in the above example, 'able-bodied young adult'
is being used in such a way as to exclude women. Moreover, examples
like this (and others Cameron provides) pass unnoticed by newspaper
editors and many readers. There is clearly a problem, but it is not a
problem that can be pinpointed by picking out some particular term as
objectionable and in need of reform. Eliminating language use that
takes males as the norm, then, must involve more than changing a few
terms or usage rules.


### 1.7 Maleness of language



Some feminists (e.g., Penelope 1990; Spender 1985) argue that English
is, in some quite general sense, male. (Corresponding arguments are
also put forward about other languages.) One thing that is meant by
this is that English can be said to be male in a manner similar to
that in which particular terms can be said to be male--by
encoding a male worldview, by helping to subordinate women or to
render them invisible, or by taking males as the norm. One sort of
argument for this begins from the examination of large quantities of
specific terms, and the identification of patterns of male bias, and
proceeds from this to the conclusion that the male bias of English is
so widespread that it is a mistake to locate the problem in a
collection of words, rather than in the language as a whole. The first
stage of this sort of argument is, obviously, a lengthy and complex
one. The sorts of claims (in addition to those we have already seen)
cited include (a) that there are more words for males than for females
in English, and that more of these words are positive (Spender 1985:
15, citing Julia Stanley 1977); (b) that a "word for women
assume[s] negative connotations even where it designated the same
state or condition as it did for men" (Spender 1985: 17), as
with 'spinster' and 'bachelor'; (c) that words
for women are far more frequently sexualized than words for men, and
that this holds true even for neutral words, when they are applied to
women. Dale Spender, citing Lakoff (1975), discusses the example of
'professional', comparing 'he's a
professional' and 'she's a professional', and
noting that the latter is far more likely than the former to be taken
to mean that the person in question is a prostitute. The sexualisation
of words for women is considered especially significant by the many
feminists who take sexual objectification to be a crucial element, if
not the root, of inequalities between women and men. (For more on such
examples, see also Baker 1992.)



This widespread encoding of male bias in language is, according to
theorists like Spender, just what we should expect. Males (though not,
as she notes, all of them) have had far more power in society, and
this, she claims has included the power to enforce, through language,
their view of the world. Moreover, she argues, this has served to
enhance their power.



> 
> 
> There *is* sexism in language, it *does* enhance the
> position of males, and males *have* had control over the
> production of cultural forms. (Spender 1985: 144)
> 
> 
> 



This, Spender claims, provides circumstantial evidence that
"males have encoded sexism into language to consolidate their
claims of male supremacy" (Spender 1985: 144). Spender takes the
evidence for this claim to be far more than circumstantial, however,
and to support it she discusses the efforts of prescriptive
grammarians. These include, for example, the claim that males should
be listed before females because "the male gender was the
*worthier* gender" (Spender 1985: 147, emphasis hers),
and the efforts (noted earlier) to establish 'he' as the
gender-neutral third-person English pronoun.



According to theorists like Spender, men's ability to control
language gives them great power indeed. We have already seen ways in
which what one might call the maleness of language contributes to the
invisibility of women (with respect to words like 'he' and
'man'). If one takes the maleness of language to go beyond
a few specific terms, one will take language's power to make
women invisible to be even stronger. We have also seen ways that what
might be called maleness can make it more difficult for women to
express themselves. Where we lack words for important female
experiences, like sexual harassment, women will find it more difficult
to describe key elements of their existence. Similarly, where the
words we have--like 'foreplay'--systematically
distort women's experiences, women will have a difficult time
accurately conveying the realities of their lives. If one takes such
problems to go beyond selected particular terms, and to infect
language as a whole, it is natural to suppose that women are to a
large degree *silenced*--unable to accurately articulate
key elements of their lives, and unable to communicate important
aspects of their thoughts. Spender and others also suggest that the
maleness of language constrains *thought*, imposing a male
worldview on all of us, and making alternative visions of reality
impossible, or at least very difficult to articulate. These arguments
often draw upon the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1956). 
It is generally formulated very vaguely, but seems to amount to roughly the hypothesis that "our
worldview is determined by the structures of the particular language
that we happen to speak" (Cameron 1998b: 150).

 (There is substantial controversy about what this means, and about the accuracy of attributing it to either Sapir or Whorf, but this controversy is not very relevant to the present entry.)


Some suggest that male power over language allows men to shape not
just thought, but also reality. For example, Spender claims that men
"created language, thought, and reality" (1985: 143). This
is a very strong version of what Haslanger has called *discursive
 constructivism*.[3]
 She defines this view as follows:



> 
> 
> Something is discursively constructed just in case it is the way it
> is, to some substantial extent, because of what is attributed (and/or
> self-attributed) to it. (Haslanger 1995: 99)
> 
> 
> 



Feminists like Spender and Catherine MacKinnon (1989) argue that male
power over language has allowed them to create reality. This is partly
due to the fact that our categorizations of reality inevitably depend
on our social perspective: "there is no ungendered reality or
ungendered perspective" (MacKinnon 1989: 114). Haslanger (1995)
discusses this argument in detail.



In general, the solution suggested is not to attempt to create a
neutral language that can accurately capture reality in itself, a goal
they would take to be nonsense. Instead, we must aim to create a new
reality more congenial to women. Some feminists have argued that the
only way to achieve this is for women to create their own language,
either by redefining terms already in use, or by inventing a new
language, with new words and new rules. Only in this way, they
suggest, will women be able to break free from the constraints of male
language and male thought, to articulate a competing vision for the
world, and to work toward it (Daly and Caputi 1987; Elgin 1985;
MacKinnon 1989; Penelope 1990; Spender 1985). Lynne Tirrell (1993)
offers an especially sophisticated and complex discussion of this
idea.



The claims discussed above concerning the maleness of
English, its causes, and its effects, are far from uncontentious.
First, the extent of male bias in language is debatable. Although it
is right that there is much to worry feminists about a wide variety of
specific terms and usages, it is far from clear that it is appropriate
to claim that English is male-biased in some sweeping sense. It is
also unclear exactly what the claim being made is. If this claim is
taken to be that every term is male-biased, then it is highly implausible: it is very unlikely that there is a male bias present in
'piano' or 'isotope'. If the claim is simply
that there is much for feminists to object to, then it is almost
certainly right--but it is far from obvious that it is useful to
focus on such a general claim rather than on specific problems, their
complexities and their possible solutions (Cameron 1998b).



Next, the power that men have undeniably exercised in society (though, importantly, some groups of men have been vastly less powerful than others) by no
means translates to a general power over language. Language is a
difficult thing to control, as those who have attempted to create
languages have learned. The main power men have had has concerned
dictionaries, usage guides, and laws. While these are enormously
important in shaping reality, and in shaping our thoughts, it is quite
a leap to move from this power to the claim that men 'created
language, thought, and reality'.



The claimed effects of the maleness of language are also problematic.
We have already seen problems for the idea that men control language.
The idea that men also control or create thought and reality faces
further problems. The ability of feminists to successfully point out
ways in which elements of language have obscured women's
experiences counts strongly against the claim that men control thought
(Cameron 1998b); and, as Haslanger (1995) has argued in detail,
discursive constructivism about reality is unsustainable. Nonetheless,
it does seem right to notice that problems with specific terms can
render it more difficult for women to communicate about important
elements of their lives, and probably also more difficult to reflect
upon these elements (Hornsby 1995). These difficulties could perhaps
be described as partial silencing, partial constraint of thought, or
hermeneutical injustice (Fricker 2007), which we discuss more fully in
2.4.



If the criticisms above are right, then women certainly do not need to
create their own language. Many welcome this conclusion, worried that
a women's language would doom women's thoughts to
marginality and impede feminist progress. Moreover, the idea that
women could craft a common language that allowed the articulation of
all their experiences seems to ignore the fact that women differ
enormously from one another (Crenshaw 1991; Lugones and Spelman 1983; Spelman 1988;
see the section on
 feminism and the diversity of women
 in the entry on
 feminist philosophy).
 If women cannot use the same language as men, why should we suppose
that women can successfully share a language?


### 1.8 Metaphor



Feminists have also devoted attention to another aspect of
language--the use of metaphor (see the section Feminist Critiques
and Conceptions of Objectivity in the entry on
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science;
 and the entry on
 feminist approaches to the intersection of pragmatism and continental philosophy).
 In particular, feminists have discussed the use of gendered metaphors
in philosophy and in
 science.[4]
 Emily Martin (1991 [1996]) offers particularly vivid examples in her
discussion of the use of gendered metaphors in discussions of human
reproduction.



> 
> 
> At its extreme, the age-old relationship of the egg and the sperm
> takes on a royal or religious patina. The egg coat, its protective
> barrier, is sometimes called its 'vestments', a term
> usually reserved for sacred, religious dress. The egg is said to have
> a 'corona', a crown, and to be accompanied by
> 'attendant cells'. It is holy, set apart and above, the
> queen to the sperm's king. The egg is also passive, which means
> it must depend on the sperm for rescue. Gerald Schatten and Helen
> Schatten liken the egg's role to that of Sleeping Beauty:
> 'a dormant bride awaiting her mate's magic kiss, which
> instills the spirit that brings her to life'. Sperm, by
> contrast, have a 'mission' which is to 'move through
> the female genital tract in quest of the ovum'. One popular
> account has it that the sperm carry out a 'perilous
> journey' into the 'warm darkness', where some fall
> away 'exhausted'. 'Survivors'
> 'assault' the egg, the successful candidates
> 'surrounding the prize'... (Martin 1996: 106)
> 
> 
> 



The vision of reproduction suggested above is an inaccurate one. The
sperm fails to behave in the single-minded manner suggested. Instead,
the 



> 
> 
> sideways motion of the sperm's tail makes the head move sideways
> with a force that is ten times stronger than its forward
> movement...in fact, its strongest tendency, by tenfold, is to
> escape by attempting to pry itself off the egg. (Martin 1996: 108)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Nor is the egg passive: adhesive molecules on its surface play a
crucial role in overcoming the sperm's tendency to pry itself
away (Martin 1996: 108). Martin argues that scientists have been slow
to discover these facts, partly due to the metaphors they employed;
and that even as they have learned these facts they have been slow to
update their metaphors. Gendered stereotypes, Martin suggests, can
impair our understanding of reproduction--by leading scientists
to employ misleading metaphors that conceal the truth. The use of
gendered stereotypes in scientific imagery can also help to perpetuate
damaging stereotypes, for example by reinforcing the tendency to see
females as passive. Martin's account has, however, been
challenged by Paul Gross (1998), who argues that scientists were not
nearly so slow to these discoveries as Martin claimed. If Gross is
right, then the problematic metaphors did not affect scientists'
work in the ways suggested by Martin (though they do seem to have
affected popular writing on the subject.)



Gendered metaphors have been used at many levels of discussion,
including the most general. An important topic of feminist concern has
been the historical tendency to conceive of the scientific endeavour
in gendered ways. A particularly clear example comes from Francis
Bacon, discussed by both Evelyn Fox Keller and Genevieve Lloyd:



> 
> 
> For Bacon, the promise of science is expressed as 'leading you
> to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make
> her your slave'. (Keller 1996: 36.)
> 
> 
> 



The tendency to describe nature in feminine terms is a long-standing
and widespread one, well-documented in Lloyd (1984). Lloyd links this
to a tendency to describe reason and the mind as male, and to contrast
these with supposedly feminine emotions and bodies. She argues that
these metaphors play a powerful role in the history of philosophy,
shaping and often distorting our views both of reason, mind, emotion,
and body and of men and women. Other important discussions of gendered
metaphors in philosophy include Irigaray (1974 [1985a], 1977 [1985b]),
Le Doeuff (1980 [1990]), and Nye (1990, 1992).


### 1.9 Philosophy of Language



In the early days of feminist philosophy of language, much attention
was devoted to ways that philosophy of language was problematic from a
feminist point of view. One sort of criticism was that philosophy of
language, like English, displays a male bias. Another was simply that
philosophy of language is ill-equipped to further feminist aims. Those
making these criticisms did not suggest that philosophy of language be
abandoned, but rather that it should be reformed--purged of male
bias and turned into a discipline that can help in the attainment of
feminist ends.



What reasons were given for supposing that philosophy of language is
ill suited to achieving feminist ends? There were a variety of reasons
(Hintikka and Hintikka 1983; Hornsby 2000; Nye 1996, 1998), but one
common thread involves the idea that philosophy of language is
excessively individualistic. Criticism of individualism in philosophy
is widespread in many areas of feminism. Exactly what
'individualism' comes to varies depending upon the area of
philosophy under discussion, and depending also on the concerns of the
particular critic. (For more on what feminists mean by
'individualism', see Antony 1995.) Because of this, we
will not attempt a general definition of 'individualism',
as used by those raising these concerns. However, we will sketch what
seems to be at issue in concerns over philosophy of language. Some
claim that philosophy of language focuses excessively on the states of
mind of individual speakers--in particular on their intentions
(Hornsby 2000). Jennifer Hornsby's central example of this
tendency is the work of H. P. Grice, which does indeed analyse speaker
meaning in terms of speaker intentions. (Although it is worth noting
that that Grice's analysis of sentence meaning incorporates
social elements, and that both speaker and audience are essential to
his notion of conversational implicature. For more on this, see Saul
2002.) Others suggest that semantics assigns too important a role to
the notion of reference to discrete individuals (Hintikka and Hintikka
1983). Their focus is on Alfred Tarski's truth definitions
(Tarski 1956; see also entry on
 Tarski's truth definitions)
 and Richard Montague's work (Thomason 1974).



Individualism of this sort is said to be problematic for several
reasons. One common claim is that this sort of individualism is
characteristic of male thinking. Men tend, according to this line of
thought, to be interested in separate, discrete individuals; while
women are interested in connections and relationships. Thus, it is
suggested, an individualistic philosophy of language is one that
represents a male way of thinking about the world. For philosophy of
language to be true to the experiences and language use of both men
and women, then, the individualistic philosophy of language which is
characteristic of male thinking will need to be supplemented or
replaced by a version more suited to female thinking (Hintikka and
Hintikka 1983; Hornsby 2000). As Haslanger (2000a) and others have
noted, however, the claims regarding male and female thinking on which
this line of thought depends are not well supported. Moreover,
differences among women give us reason to doubt the prospects for any
supportable generalizations about 'women's' thinking
(Ang 1995, Lorde 1983, Lugones and Spelman 1983; Moody-Adams 1991).



Other objections to individualism do not depend upon contentious
psychological claims about differences between women and men. Instead,
they suggest that the real problem with individualism is its failure
to appreciate the importance of the social. The social world is,
naturally, an important area of concern when discussing politics and
power relations. Understanding how people come to dominate one
another, and exactly how this domination functions, are important
projects for feminists. Language is an important part of the social
world, and understanding the roles that language plays in
communicating, manipulating, and controlling (to cite just a few
examples) is surely vital to understanding the workings of power (see,
for example, MacKinnon's views on speech in MacKinnon 1993). So,
many feminists suggest, a philosophy of language that is appropriate
to understanding communicative interactions in the social world could
be a valuable tool for feminists. However, they insist that the
individualism of philosophy of language (as it is now) prevents it
from serving this function (Hornsby 2000).



The general charge that philosophy of language pays little attention
to the social world is not one that all feminists would agree with.
Indeed, it is a difficult one to sustain in light of the prominence
of--to give a few examples--Saul Kripke's causal
theory of reference (1972; see also Section 2 of the entry on
 reference),
 Hilary Putnam's arguments for a social element (the division of
linguistic labor) in the working of kind terms (1975; see also Section
3 of the entry on
 reference),
 H.P. Grice's theory of conversation (1975 [1989]), David
Lewis's work on convention (1969), and J.L. Austin's
speech act theory (1962 [1975]). Nonetheless, one might well suggest
that philosophers of language have generally attended only to aspects
of the social world that are not of particular interest to feminists.
While causal theories of reference undeniably involve social elements,
these social elements don't seem to be of the sort that concern
feminists; while Putnam's division of linguistic labour arguably
involves some power relations (experts have a special sort of
linguistic power that non-experts lack), the political aspects of
these power relations--if any--have been ignored. Andrea Nye
criticizes mainstream philosophy of language on roughly these grounds,
arguing that work on radical translation has not been sufficiently
sensitive to political concerns (for the notion of radical
translation, see the section on Meaning and Truth in the entry on
 Donald Davidson).



> 
> 
> ...a highly technical and professionalized English-speaking
> philosophy of language was addressing problems of the possibility of
> 'radical' translation from one language community to
> another, of alternate and incommensurable conceptual schemes, of the
> difficulty of establishing singular reference across 'different
> worlds', but with virtually no reference to actual failures of
> communication or problems of gender. (Nye 1998: 266)
> 
> 
> 



More recently, Louise Antony has argued that it is a mistake to
suppose that there is any particular approach to philosophy of
language that is distinctly feminist or anti-feminist, taking as her
particular target Hornsby's work--but her arguments apply
more broadly. She argues that such strategies are "disrespectful
to and exclusionary of feminists who support alternative views"
(2012: 277).


## 2. Positive research programmes in philosophy of language



Things have changed a great deal in recent years, and it is now widely
accepted that philosophy of language has something to offer feminists,
and even (though less widely) that feminists have something to offer
philosophy of language. Feminist philosophy of language is now
becoming a well-established area of the larger field, with several
substantial positive research programmes.


### 2.1 Feminism and Speech Act Theory



The first substantial analytic research programme in feminist
philosophy of language began with Rae Langton's and
Hornsby's use of speech act theory to make sense of Catharine
MacKinnon's suggestion that pornography silences and
subordinates women. It has now, however, evolved well beyond those
beginnings. To give some flavour of this initial work, we
briefly summarise Langton's discussion of silencing.



According to Langton (1993), pornography helps to bring about rape by
perlocutionarily and illocutionarily silencing women. Following
Austin, Langton distinguishes between locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts. A locutionary act is, roughly, the act of
uttering words that have particular meanings; a perlocutionary act is,
roughly, the act of uttering words that have a particular effect; and
an illocutionary act is the act done in uttering the words. Consider,
for example, Jennifer Saul's utterance one day of the sentence
'I pledge my allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen and all her
heirs'. The locutionary act she performed was simply the
utterance of a sentence with a particular meaning. This act had many
perlocutionary effects: it made it possible for her to get a British
passport, it made her feel slightly disturbed at having expressed such
monarchist sentiments, and it made her wonder whether a republic,
should it succeed the Queen, would count as an heir. The illocutionary
act she performed was that of becoming a British citizen.



Langton proposes that there are forms of silencing corresponding to
each of these sorts of speech act. A person is locutionarily silenced
if she is prevented from speaking, or intimidated into not speaking. A
person is illocutionarily silenced if she is unable to carry out the
acts that she intends to carry out in speaking. A person is
perlocutionarily silenced when her speech cannot have its intended
effects. Langton is particularly concerned with the role that
perlocutionary and illocutionary silencing may play in rape. A
woman's refusal to have sex is perlocutionarily silenced
if--even though she is recognized as refusing--she is forced
to have sex. Her (attempted) refusal to have sex is illocutionarily
silenced if it is not even recognized as a refusal. (For an
exploration of the role of conventions in this illocutionary
silencing, see Wyatt 2009.) In such a case, according to Langton, it
*isn't* a refusal. She suggests that pornography plays a
key role in making men less able to recognise women's refusals
as refusals and more willing to rape women even when they recognise
women's refusals. This means, she argues, that pornography
illocutionarily and perlocutionarily silences women. And this
silencing is an important one, as it results in rape.



This example can also help us to see that some elements of
individualism may be indispensable to feminism (for more arguments to
this effect, see Antony 1995). Assuming that Langton's arguments
are sound, we can see an important role for individualistic philosophy
of language in feminism. Although it is right that focusing
exclusively on individual speakers' intentions would prevent us
from seeing some important facts (as Hornsby 2000 argues), it also
vital to recognise the importance of paying some attention to an
individual speaker's intentions. In order to understand what has
gone wrong in the illocutionary silencing described above, one needs
to understand that the woman *intended* to be refusing sex. In
order to understand what has gone wrong in the perlocutionary
silencing example, one needs to understand that the woman
*intended* her refusal to bring it about that she did not have
sex. More generally, not being understood properly is an important
element of life in a subordinate position, as many feminists have
noted. In order to make sense of not being understood properly, one
needs to attend to *what the speaker intended* and *how the
audience understood the speaker*, and how these things differ. To
do this, one needs to look at individual states of mind.



These discussions have inspired a now substantial literature. Below, we
give some very non-comprehensive pointers to this literature.


1. Some critics (e.g., Dworkin 1991, 1993; Jacobson 1995) have argued
that any silencing which may result from pornography is not of the
sort that free speech law should attempt to protect. (Responses to
these criticisms can be found in Hornsby and Langton 1998; Langton
2009a; and West 2003.)
2. Others, such as Leslie Green (1998), have argued that pornography
does not have the sort of authority needed to carry out acts of
subordination and silencing. Langton (2009b) has responded to this
criticism; and Mary Kate McGowan (2003) has argued that the sort of
authority needed for the acts in question is really quite a modest and
ordinary sort of conversational authority. Nellie Wieland (2007), like
McGowan, thinks that there is no need for the sort of authority that
worries Green. However, she argues that Langton's account runs
the risk of absolving rapists from culpability for their crimes.
(Jacobson 1995 also raises this culpability worry.) McGowan and Maitra
(2010) have responded to
this, as do McGowan, Adelman, Helmers, and Stolzenberg (2010).
3. Jennifer Saul (2006a) worries about Langton's claim that
pornography itself is a speech act, arguing that only utterances in
contexts can be speech acts. Moreover, she suggests that if
Langton's claim is revised to be one about acts of viewing or
showing pornography it loses its plausibility. Claudia Bianchi (2008)
criticizes this, and Mari Mikkola (2008) responds.
4. A further concern about context comes from Tirrell (1999). Tirrell
argues that MacKinnon assigns pornography an authority so strong that
women would be unable to successfully articulate their own
experiences. She suggests that MacKinnon's picture needs
revising to make room for the successful communication that takes
place between feminists.
5. Alexander Bird (2002), Daniel Jacobson (1995) and Ishani Maitra
(2009) all raise worries about the Austinian distinction between
illocution and perlocution and its role in the silencing argument (in
particular, about the requirement that illocutions must be understood
to be successful). For Bird and Jacobson this leads to a rejection of
the silencing argument, but Maitra instead re-frames it in Gricean
terms. Angela Grunberg (2014) argues that the silencing argument
should be reconceived to focus not on illocutionary silencing, but on
locutionary or rhetic silencing. She suggests that this allows a
satisfying response to criticisms like those from Bird and Jacobson.
Mikkola (2011a) also defends Langton-Hornsby against Bird and
Jacobson.
6. Judith Butler (1997) objects to the silencing argument on several
grounds, chief among them (a) that it assumes an implausible picture
of language use; and (b) that silencing does not matter in the way
that Langton and Hornsby think that it does. Langton (2009c) has
responded to this worry.
7. Alex Davies (2016) argues that pornography may not just alter the
illocutionary force of women's utterances, but also block her
from making utterances with the content that she desires. Davies's
central example is the way that rape myths, perpetuated by
pornography, may make it impossible for women in courtroom cross
examinations to express the truth about their experiences.



This use of speech act theory was one of the first developments of
feminist philosophy of language to gain mainstream currency, and it
has become widely taught and studied. Recently, however, sharply
critical feminist voices have started to emerge. Separately, and for
different reasons, Nancy Bauer (2015) and Lorna Finlayson (2014), have
both argued that the feminist literature on speech acts and
pornography is deeply misguided. Bauer objects on several grounds. She
thinks it is misguided to treat pornography as speech, and she (like
other critics noted above) argues that pornography should not be seen
as authoritative. Her more fundamental critique, though, is that this
literature fails to take seriously the realities of both pornography
and women's subordination--by not engaging sufficiently
with the phenomenology of pornography use; by not attending to all the
ways that the broader culture is involved in subordinating women; and
by focusing on just women's verbal acts of refusal, thereby
failing to appreciate the fuller dehumanization involved in sexual
assault. This is part of a broader critique, for Bauer, of both
analytic philosophy in general, and widespread understandings of
Austin. Finlayson goes even further, arguing not that Austin's
work was misused by feminists but that it never should have been used
at all. She suggests that the feminist foray into speech act theory
was entirely unnecessary, and also that the focus on pornography was
misguided.



But there have also been very substantial developments broadening and
building upon the feminist use of speech theory--extending it to
issues like racist speech, and hate speech more generally. McGowan
(2009a) argues for the existence of a different sort of silencing due
to pornography; and in her 2009b she argues that speech may be counted
not just as silencing or subordinating, but also as oppressing.
Moreover, she suggests that oppressive speech is likely to be a very
widespread phenomenon. These ideas are developed further in McGowan
(2012), which takes as its focus racist speech, and in Simpson (2013).
Maitra (2012) also applies ideas from feminist work on subordinating
speech to racist speech. Langton also turns her attention to hate
speech more broadly, including in her 2012. This paper is also notable
for its focus on the role of pragmatics in shaping attitudes other
than belief. Rachel McKinney (2016), "Extracted Speech",
builds on this literature by exploring the ways that speech may be
unjustly extracted rather than silenced (as in, for example, the
paradigm case of the Central Park Five's false confessions).
Rebecca Kukla introduces the notion of discursive injustice, in order
to discuss a broader range of ways that "members of a
disadvantaged group face a systematic inability to produce a specific
kind of speech act they are entitled to perform" (2014: 440),
which often takes the form of performing a different speech act from
the one that they intend. Although she draws on Langton and Hornsby,
she abandons their focus on illocution and perlocution, focussing
instead simply on performative force. Also considering the role of
pragmatics in politics (though developed independently from Langton
and Hornsby), Marina Sbisa (1999) explores the role of
presuppositions in political persuasion. Finally, Jason Stanley (2015)
draws heavily on Langton and Hornsby's work in developing his
account of propaganda (focused, but not exclusively, on racist
propaganda).


### 2.2 On the Meaning of 'Woman'



In her ground-breaking paper "Gender and Race: (What) Are They?
(What) Do We Want Them To Be?" (2000b), Haslanger aims to
provide an account of the nature of gender, as well as an account of
the meaning of 'woman'. She assumes the classical
distinction between sex and gender, where *sex* is supposed to
refer to biological or anatomical properties distinguishing males from
females (although as she argues, this distinction is flexible and
permeated by social and political factors too), and *gender* is
supposed to refer to social or cultural factors distinguishing men
from women (see the entry on
 feminist perspectives on sex and gender).
 One of the main virtues of Haslanger's article is that she
makes explicit the methodological approach that she endorses, to wit:
she famously distinguishes between a *descriptive* project,
which aims to reveal the concept that we actually use or the property
that we actually track with our usage of the term, and an
*analytical* project (or an *ameliorative* project, as
she calls it in Haslanger 2006), which aims to reveal the concept that
we should use or the meaning that we should associate to the
corresponding term, given our purposes and aims in that inquiry. As
she makes clear, she is following the analytical or ameliorative
approach, with the explicit aim of providing an account of the meaning
of 'gender' and 'woman' that could be a useful
tool in order to fight sexism and help to achieve social justice. With
this purpose in mind, she comes up with the following definition of
the term 'woman', as one particular type of gender:



> 
> 
> *S* *is a woman* iffdef *S* is
> systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political,
> legal, social, etc.) and *S* is "marked" as a target
> for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to
> be evidence of a female's biological role in reproduction.
> (2000b: 39)
> 
> 
> 



As we can see, the main idea of Haslanger's account is that
gender is a hierarchical social structure, where some members are
situated in a position of privilege and some other members are
situated in a position of subordination along social, economic,
political, legal, or cultural dimensions, in virtue of their real or
imagined biological role in reproduction. And more particularly, being
a woman corresponds to occupying a specific position of subordination
with respect to this social structure, due to one's perceived or
imagined biologically female bodily features. 



Haslanger's proposal gave rise to a rich debate about the
virtues of an ameliorative approach, and the advantages and problems
of this particular account. For instance, Saul (2006b) argued that
this proposed usage of the term 'woman' could have some
problematic consequences, such as feminists having to advocate for the
eradication of women, since feminists advocate for the eradication of
the subordination of people in terms of their biological role in
reproduction. For this reason, Saul argued, this might not be the most
advantageous way of using the term 'woman'. In addition,
Saul argued that the folk or ordinary concept of 'woman'
does not really distinguish between sex as a biological feature and
gender as a social or cultural feature. Following up on this, Mikkola
(2011b) argued that it might be very costly to revise the ordinary
meaning of 'woman' in considerable ways as Haslanger
suggests, since this might jeopardize communication, in addition to
the fact that gender identity and the label 'woman' might
be a source of identity and pride for many women. Therefore, to
characterize being a woman in terms of being subordinated, as
Haslanger does, might not be politically useful for the aims of
feminism. Mikkola (2011b) put forward an alternative account of
'woman' that does not endorse the sex/gender distinction:
rather, she proposed a *trait/norm covariance model*, according
to which there are different traits that are assigned to men or women
(or males or females) at a certain context, and that are expected to
be followed and instantiated. However, the different traits that are
assigned to men or to women are heavily context-dependent and
flexible, and it is possible to revise both the assignment of traits
and the norms and expectations involving them, in virtue of many kinds
of factors, including moral and political considerations.



More recently, several feminists have argued that an account of
'woman' along the lines of Haslanger's proposal
might fail to do justice to the aims of trans women, which should be
central for the purposes of feminism. For example, Saul (2012) argues
that neither standard sex-based accounts nor standard gender-based
accounts are automatically going to be inclusive of trans women, since
(at least some) trans women could arguably turn out to be excluded
from the extension of the term 'woman' when defined in
terms of biological features, or in terms of certain social and
cultural factors that are usually attributed to biologically female
individuals. Saul put forward a possible alternative view, namely, a
*contextualist* view of the meaning of 'woman', as
follows:



> 
> 
> **X* is a woman* is true in a context *C* iff
> *X* is human and relevantly similar (according to the standards
> at work in *C*) to most of those possessing all of the biological
> markers of female sex. (2012: 201)
> 
> 
> 



According to this account, an individual will fall under the extension
of 'woman' in a certain context when she is sufficiently
similar to those who are biologically female, given the standards of
similarity that are relevant in such context, where these standards
can vary from context to context. Saul argues that at first sight,
this view seems to give the right results, since it would classify
trans women as women in most contexts where, say, self-identifying as
a woman is what is deemed relevant, but on further reflection, she
argues, the view can give unwanted results. For example, in a
conservative community where most speakers take for granted that trans
women should not be allowed to use women's toilets, their usage
of 'woman' would be such that trans women would not fall
under the term, since the relevant criterion of similarity in that
context that those conservative speakers have in mind seems to be
something like having certain chromosomes or certain anatomical
features, which some trans women lack. In response to this worry, E.
Diaz-Leon (2016) has argued that we can understand the contextualist
view in a way that avoids this objection. In particular, she argues,
we can understand the relevant standards of similarity at work in each
context as those criteria that are the most politically useful, given
the aims and purposes that are morally salient in that context. For
example, in the context of a conservative community where trans women
are not allowed to use women's toilets, there are moral reasons
for focusing on criteria such as self-identifying as a woman, rather
than having certain biological features, and this is what makes this
criterion the relevant one in that context, and hence what fixes the
extension of 'woman' in that context, as required.



Talia Bettcher (2013) has also argued that ameliorative accounts of
the meaning of 'woman' should take into account the aims
of trans women. She argues that "single-meaning" views, according to which 'woman' has a unique meaning that is shared by all speakers, cannot do justice to those aims. Instead, she puts forward a "multiple-meaning" account, according to which there are several co-existing meanings of the term 'woman' in our society, but where some of those meanings embed world-views that are not only morally and politically problematic, but also factually misguided, such as using 'woman' in a trans-exclusionary way. Because of this, we have good reasons for using the term 'woman' in our speech with the trans-inclusive meaning that trans-friendly communities already associate with the term. She also argues that although it is methodologically useful to rely on intuitions, "it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis" (2013: 235).



More recently, Katharine
Jenkins (2016) has argued that Haslanger's original proposal
excluded trans women from the extension of the term
'woman', which is morally and politically problematic. As
Jenkins argues, trans women who do not pass as *cis women*
(that is, those women who were assigned female at birth) do not occupy
a position of subordination *in virtue of* their perceived or
imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female
biological role in reproduction, since they are not presumed to have a
female biological role in reproduction (given that they do not pass as
cis women). For this reason, Haslanger's account cannot capture
the self-identity of those trans women as women, and the ways in which
they are subordinated in virtue of their gender identity. In order to
solve this problem, Jenkins proposes an ingenious account of gender in
terms of two elements, namely, gender as a social class, and gender as
social identity, where the former is similar to Haslanger's
notion of gender as social structures, and the latter has to do with
our own perceptions of our own positioning within those social
structures. Following Haslanger's (2005) account of racial
identity, Jenkins suggests an account of gender identity in terms of
mental maps that serve to guide our own behavior, norms and
expectations within the social niches that we live in. (For criticism of Jenkins' account as insufficiently inclusive of trans women, see Andler 2017.)



In this section we have focused on *semantic* accounts of the
meaning of 'woman', although recently there has also been
an explosion of work about the related questions of the
*metaphysics* of gender as a social class, and biological sex
as a contested category. Some of these discussions have implications
for the meanings of the corresponding terms of 'woman' and
'female'. For example, Saray Ayala and Nadya Vasilyeva
(2015) provide an account of biological sex in terms of extended,
flexible biological features, where which features count for being
male or female can change from context to context, depending on our
aims and purposes, and where those extended biological features can be
taken to incorporate features of the environment, artificial bodily
features, and so on. On the other hand, Helen Daly (2015) has argued
that we should favour accounts of 'female' and
'woman' that do not assume a sharp cut-off point between
those who fall under the term and those who do not, since this is
morally and politically problematic. In addition, Jennifer McKitrick
(2015) has argued that an account of gender in terms of dispositions
to behave in certain ways can be politically useful, and can capture
the aims of trans women. Finally, Haslanger (2016) has defended a
context-sensitive account of 'sex', where the term can
have different meanings, depending on the aims and purposes of the
inquiry in that context.


### 2.3. Ameliorative Projects and Conceptual Engineering



As we saw in the previous section, Haslanger (2000b) brought attention
to the need for revisionary or ameliorative approaches in feminist
philosophy, as opposed to purely conceptual or descriptive approaches,
which focus on the concept we have or the objective type that we
actually track. The idea of a revisionary or ameliorative approach to
the analysis of our concepts has been a very influential one in
philosophy, but Haslanger's work has served as a kind of
reminder of the significance of aiming for the concepts that would
best serve our purposes and aims, rather than merely revealing the
ordinary concepts that we happen to have, which is the task that many
projects in recent mainstream analytic philosophy seem to have paid
attention to. Haslanger's work has inspired a lot of interesting
ameliorative projects in philosophy of gender and race and social
philosophy more in general (see for instance Glasgow 2006, 2009 and
Mallon 2006 on 'race', Barnes 2016 on
'disability', Dembroff 2016 on 'sexual
orientation', as well as many of the papers on
'woman', 'sex' and 'gender' cited
in the previous section). As suggested above, the notion of an
ameliorative project in philosophy is not new, but in our view the
impetus that this methodological approach in philosophy has
experienced recently owes much to the centrality that this notion has
played in recent developments in philosophy of gender and race over
the last two decades.



As ameliorative projects are becoming more common in mainstream
analytic philosophy, they have given rise to a careful examination of
the methodological foundations and the metaphysical, semantic and
epistemic aspects of the ameliorative approach, as well as its moral
and political implications. Alexis Burgess and David Plunkett
(2013a,b) have usefully surveyed these and related issues pertaining
to ameliorative projects in philosophy, and have coined a new label:
*conceptual ethics*. They intend this new term to refer to the
philosophical reflection about the terms and concepts that we ought to
use in different areas, given our best normative reasoning, as well as
the methodological and philosophical issues to which these projects
give rise. Examples include the nature of the values and normative
considerations that should guide our choice of terms and concepts, as
well as semantic questions about the nature and possibility of
conceptual change and conceptual revision, among many others. One of
the advantages of having this new label is that discussions on these
normative issues about our talk and thought that were formerly
scattered can now be more unified and more systematic.



Another term that is becoming prominent in this area is that of
*conceptual engineering*, which is supposed to refer to
ameliorative projects that aim to revise our current concepts and
engineer new concepts that can better serve our main purposes. This
term originates from discussions about Carnap's methodological
insights (see for instance French 2015 for a useful overview), but is
now being used in a more general, encompassing sense. Several
philosophers have recently argued that we could understand many
traditional debates in philosophy as debates in conceptual ethics or
conceptual engineering (see for instance Floridi 2011 and Plunkett
2015).


### 2.4 Hermeneutical Injustice



As we saw above, Fricker (2007) argues that there is a distinctive
kind of injustice that has to do with the inability to properly
understand and communicate important aspects of one's social
experience: she calls this *hermeneutical injustice*. According
to Fricker, people in a position of marginalization are prevented from
creating concepts, terms and other representational resources that
could be used in order to conceptualize and understand their own
experiences, especially those having to do with being in that position
of marginalization. People in a position of power will tend to create
concepts and linguistic representations that help to conceptualize the
experiences and phenomena that matter *to them*, rather than
the experiences and phenomena that matter the most to people in a
position of marginalization. Because of this, members of marginalized
groups might suffer from a lacuna in the representational resources
that are available to them, and in particular might lack the concepts
and terms that would allow them to understand and communicate their
experiences. In order to illustrate this phenomenon, Fricker (2007)
focuses on several examples, such as the articulation of the term
'sexual harassment': before the term was coined, victims
of sexual harassment lacked the language to explain their experiences
of receiving unwanted sexual advances at work in a way that would make
clear why those interactions *wronged* them.



In the growing literature on hermeneutical injustice, philosophers
have mainly focused on the following two central questions: first, how
to properly understand the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice
(namely, what is distinctively *epistemic* about it, and what
makes it *unjust*); and secondly, how to resist this kind of
injustice and how to fill in the corresponding conceptual and
linguistic gaps in our collective understanding of situations of
marginalization.



Regarding the first question, Laura Beeby (2011) has argued that the
relevant notion of hermeneutical injustice is one that focuses on the
epistemic situation of lacking the relevant concepts and terms, rather
than on one's position within the background social conditions
that give rise to it. She argues that, for example, in the case of
sexual harassment both the victim and the harasser suffer from
hermeneutical injustice since they both have similar epistemic
situations, that is, they both have similar gaps in their collective
understanding of what is going on. As Beeby argues, if we offer a
characterization of hermeneutical injustice in terms of the
*epistemic* situation of the subject, and in particular in
terms of their conceptual gaps, then both the harasser and that
harassee will be in a situation of hermeneutical injustice, but this
seems to be in tension with Fricker's claim that only the victim
suffers from hermeneutical *injustice*. However, as Beeby also
emphasizes, one could respond, following Fricker, that people in a
position of power are epistemically advantaged in another sense,
namely, they do have the ability to create concepts and terms that are
useful in order to understand and communicate their own experiences
and the social interactions that matter the most to them. This
contrasts with the situation of the marginalized, who lack this
ability.



However, the idea that the marginalized lack the ability to
conceptualize and communicate their own experiences has also been
contested by philosophers such as Rebecca Mason (2011), Kristie Dotson
(2012), Gaile Pohlhaus (2012) and Jose Medina (2013). For
example, Mason (2011) and Medina (2013) have both argued that although
Fricker is right that people in a situation of marginalization might
not have access to publicly shared terms in order to communicate their
experiences to those in a position of power, they might nonetheless be
able to make sense of their own experiences in a useful way, even
before those public concepts are introduced in the dominant language.
For example, in the case of sexual harassment, some victims of sexual
harassment were able to attend women's consciousness-raising
meetings and talk to each other about their similar experiences, that
is to say, they were able to understand their experiences and
communicate them to people in the same predicament, even before they
had a term like 'sexual harassment'. Therefore, Mason
(2011) argues, it seems plausible to say that members of marginalized
groups already have some conceptual resources that enable them to
understand their own social experiences, and what they actually lack
is the power to introduce these meanings into the collective
understanding, which is unjust, and which results in the fact that
dominant groups have a distorted understanding of the social
experiences of non-dominant groups. Relatedly, Pohlhaus (2012) has
argued that marginalized subjects are in a better position to notice
gaps in our collective epistemic resources in order to properly
describe and conceptualize the experiences of those who are socially
oppressed. Moreover, these subjects could work cooperatively with
other subjects in the same predicament so as to develop new epistemic
resources that can deal with those spheres of the social world that
people in a position of domination do not usually pay attention to.
However, as Pohlhaus argues, it will be difficult to convince the
privileged to employ those new epistemic resources developed by the
marginalized. She calls this phenomenon of dismissive ignorance
*willful hermeneutical ignorance*.



Furthermore, Dotson (2012)
has introduced a new kind of epistemic injustice, in addition to
testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, namely, what she
calls *contributory injustice*. This kind of epistemic
injustice has to do not only with the phenomenon of willfully ignoring
the epistemic resources developed by the marginalized, but also with
the continuous use of distorted epistemic resources developed by those
in a position of power, without paying attention to the experiences of
the marginalized. This use of faulty conceptual resources acts to
block the uptake of the new conceptual resources developed by the
marginalized, which leads to further misunderstandings. In addition,
Medina (2013) has argued that the fact that members of non-dominant
groups have the ability to understand their own experiences and
communicate them to each other is a prior and necessary step in order
to bring new, more sophisticated concepts and terms into our shared
language. According to Medina, this can also help with our second
question above, namely, how to resist hermeneutical injustice: he
suggests that members of dominant groups should be more sensitive to
inchoate attempts at communication by people in a position of
subordination, even before they have access to shared concepts to
properly conceptualize those aspects of our social interactions. Finally, Derek E. Anderson (2017) distinguishes a new kind of epistemic injustice, namely, conceptual competence injustice, which occurs when a marginalized subject is not considered to be a competent user of a concept, because of a lack of linguistic or conceptual credibility, when in fact they are perfectly competent. This is different from hermeneutical injustice, Anderson argues, since in cases of hermeneutical injustice marginalized subjects lack access to some important concepts due to structural reasons, whereas in cases of conceptual competence injustice they fully possess the concepts but are regarded as incompetent speakers. However, this kind of injustice is closely related to Dotson's notion of contributory injustice, since in cases where privileged subjects use distorted or biased hermeneutical resources, they will be more likely to doubt the conceptual competence of marginalized subjects (even if these are in fact more fully competent), which amounts to conceptual competence injustice, and hence the conceptual resources of the marginalized will in turn be less likely to get uptake, which amounts to contributory injustice.



Finally, regarding the question of what kinds of conceptual resources might be
needed in order to fill in the hermeneutical gaps in our collective
understandings, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (2016) argues that what is
needed are new terms and concepts that have the correct
*evaluative* component, in addition to the right descriptive
component. For instance, introducing the term 'sexual
harassment' was very useful because the new term somehow implies
that sexual harassment is wrong, whereas previous terms such as
'harmless flirting' did not connote the appropriate
negative evaluative component. Likewise, as Medina (2013) argues, the
appropriation of terms such as 'gay' and
'queer' by the LGBT community can be seen as a strategy
for overcoming a situation of hermeneutical injustice, since these
terms came to express new, positive conceptions of same-sex desire, in
contrast to old conceptions of it as something pathological or
perverse. In addition, George Hull (forthcoming) argues that
consciousness-raising is very important, not only as a means to
overcoming hermeneutical injustice, but it "can itself
constitute the overcoming of hermeneutical injustice" (2016:
13). He focuses on the case of black South Africans during apartheid,
and he argues, drawing on the work of Black Consciousness theorists
such as B.S. Biko and N.B. Pityana, that they were liable to
experience a mismatch between their experiences of racism and
oppression, and the collective hermeneutical resources available to
them. Because of this, consciousness-raising can help to correct false
or distorted conceptions and images of themselves, and to develop new
conceptual tools in order to make sense of those aspects of their
lives. Furthermore, Charlie Crerar (2016) has argued that the
injustice associated with lack of hermeneutical resources does not
occur only in cases of conceptual absence (i.e. conceptual lacunas) or
conceptual inadequacy (i.e. lack of concepts with the appropriate
connotations), but also in cases where there is a rich conceptual
repertoire but taboos or other social practices prevent marginalized
subjects from discussing some matters of interest to them. Therefore,
he argues, "we require access to an expressively free
environment in which to put these concepts to work: an open and
receptive social context in which a particular experience that
individuals or groups have a significant interest in coming to
understand can be discussed in hermeneutically conducive ways"
(2016: 205).


### 2.5 Generics



Generic statements are ones such as "cats are furry", or
"a cat has fur", which are neither universal
generalizations (there are furless cats) nor existential
generalization (the claim being made is clearly stronger). They give
rise to many puzzles, which have for some time interested both
linguists and philosophers. For a fuller discussion of generics, see
 the entry on generics.
 Our focus here is the social and political import that has recently
been suggested for generic statements about social groups, on which
there is a growing literature. This literature takes as its starting
point Sarah-Jane Leslie's work (Leslie 2015; Wodak, Leslie, and
Rhodes 2015). Of key interest here are examples such as "boys
don't cry" or "women place their families before
their careers". These sentences can be used to express merely
descriptive claims--describing, for example, crying as something
not that many boys do. But they can also be used to make normative
claims about what boys or women *should* do. Wodak, Leslie, and
Rhodes (2015) suggest that "we can understand the difference
between normative and descriptive generics in terms of the different
concepts picked out by the noun phrase in the generics
themselves" (Wodak et. al. 2015: 629). 'Woman' may
pick out a normative concept--an ideal, which might include such
things as a focus on family over career; or, alternatively, it may
pick out a descriptive concept, and refer to women regardless of
whether they focus on family over career. Leslie uses this as a
foundation for explaining utterances like "Hillary Clinton is
the only man in the Obama White House", suggesting that
'man' here refers to the ideal of manliness. It is also a
part of a more general project of arguing that generic utterances have
harmful effects on social cognition. Leslie (forthcoming) also
discusses what she calls "striking property generics",
statements that attribute dangerous properties to groups generically
specified--like "black people are dangerous" or
"Muslims are terrorists". She argues that striking
property generic claims may not require many instances to be accepted
as true (assuming some other conditions are also met) allowing them to
serve as a key mechanism in perpetuating and exacerbating prejudice.
(For some criticisms of Leslie on striking property generics, see Saul
forthcoming and Sterken 2015a,b.)



Haslanger (2011) has built on Leslie's work, arguing that
generic claims often carry conversational implicatures about natures,
and that these help them to serve as a key mechanism for perpetuating
the ideologies that hold unjust social structures in place. She
suggests that--whatever their truth conditions (one understanding
of Leslie's view would make striking property generic claims
very easily true)--one should deny them via the mechanism of
meta-linguistic negation (Horn 1985) which allows the denial of a
claim because it carries a false implicature. By this method, we can
start to disrupt the ideologies that have us in their grip. (For
criticism of this, see Saul forthcoming).