Words in Action An Introduction to the Social Philosophy of Language

Social philosophy of language considers the role language plays in reflecting and enforcing social relations. This fast-growing field combines philosophy of language with ethics, epistemology, and feminist, social, and political philosophy to ask crucial questions about the importance of language in the social world.

Words in Action offers an authoritative and accessible introduction to the social philosophy of language, for students at undergraduate and graduate levels. Authors Ishani Maitra and Mary Kate McGowan show how tools from the philosophy of language can help illuminate both how language works socially and how we can challenge the injustices wrought by the use of language. They examine topics like lying and deception, telling and testimony, silencing, jokes, slurs, linguistic manipulation, linguistic oppression, consent, promises, threats, gendered language, and much more. To fruitfully address these topics, the book introduces important tools and concepts from the philosophy of language that are relevant to theorizing these issues, including saying, assertion, conversational and conventional implicature, taxonomies of speech acts, indirect speech acts, common ground, conversational score, semantic and pragmatic presupposition, at-issue and not-at-issue content, and much more.

Ishani Maitra is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She works in philosophy of language, feminist philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of law and has published on silencing, subordination, hate speech, assertion, testimonial injustice, and conceptual ethics, among several other topics. She is the co-editor, with Mary Kate McGowan, of Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech (2012).

Mary Kate McGowan is the Margaret Clapp '30 Distinguished Alumna Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. Her work focuses on metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of law, and feminism. Her previous publications also include Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm (2019).