Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

Oppressive Speech, Societies & Norms

Organizer(s) Mihaela Popa-Wyatt, Anton Benz & Stephanie Solt
Workshop Theme 6: Structural Oppression and the Road to Justice
Start of event 15.07.2021, 12.25 o'clock
End of event 16.07.2021, 20.10 o'clock
Venue virtual

Local Organisation Team: Lucie Petit, Maite Seidel, Janel Zoske & Susanne Schroeder


Description 

Download program poster (with links)

Theme 1: Social Norms & Institutions: Game Theory (3-4 December 2020)

Theme 2: Silencing, Speaking up & Free Speech (28-29 January 2021)

Theme 3: Social Meaning & Semantics/Pragmatics of Harmful Speech (18-19 February 2021)

Theme 4: Oppressive Practices & Norms: Speech Acts, Conversational Dynamics (24-26 March 2021)

Theme 5: Disinformation, Epistemic Vices & Online Harm (6-7 May 2021)

Theme 6: Structural Oppression and the Road to Justice (15-16 July 2021)

Registration (Attendance is free, for logistic reasons please register at eveeno)


Description ^

Speech can be used to change societies in bad ways. It supports institutional oppression, establishes new oppressive norms, silences opponents, spreads disinformation and propagates feelings of hate. Online communities magnify the effects of individual speech acts. This workshop series, comprising five meetings, will dive into five different aspects of oppressive speech. We’ll look at social norms and institutions, silencing and free speech, social meaning, norm-shifting and disinformation. We’ll bring several tools and perspectives from linguistics, social modelling, and philosophy, including game theory, semantics/pragmatics and speech act theory. We’ll seek answers to how oppressive speech works and how to defend against it.

Theme 1: Social Norms & Institutions: Game Theory (3-4 December)
Theme 2: Silencing, Speaking up & Free Speech (28-29 January)
Theme 3: Social Meaning & Semantics/Pragmatics of Harmful Speech (18-19 February)
Theme 4: Oppressive Practices & Norms: Speech Acts, Conversational Dynamics (24-26 March)
Theme 5: Disinformation, Epistemic Vices & Online Harm (6-7 May)
Theme 6: Structural Oppression and the Road to Justice (15-16 July)


Theme 1: Social Norms & Institutions: Game Theory (3-4 Dec) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 1 [pdf]

  • Andrea Borghini (Università degli Studi di Milano): Fat Shaming and Social Norms [YouTube]
  • Roland Mühlenbernd (ZAS): (UN)Fairness and Bargaining Games [YouTube]
  • Mihaela Popa-Wyatt (ZAS): Oppressive Speech Shifts Norms in Negotiation Games [YouTube]
  • Justin Bruner (University of Arizona): Priority, equality and collective decision-making [YouTube]
  • Cailin O’Connor (UC Irvine, California): Measuring Conventionality [YouTube]
  • Francesco Guala (Università degli Studi di Milano): Are Institutions Conventions? The Case of Marriage [YouTube]
  • Christoph Hesse (ZAS): Gaslighting and dynamic update of bargaining power [YouTube]
  • Kevin Zollman (Carnegie Mellon University): Conformity, social networks, and the emergence of pluralistic ignorance [YouTube]
  • José Luis Bermúdez (Texas A&M University): Framing in game theory: the “I”-frame VS “we”-frame [YouTube]

Theme 2: Silencing, Speaking up & Free Speech (28-29 Jan) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 2 [pdf]

  • Alessandra Tanesini (Cardiff University): Anger as a speech act and its illocutionary disablement [YouTube]
  • Bianca Cepollaro (University Vita-Salute San Raffaele): Remedies to discriminatory contents: on and offline counterspeech [YouTube]
  • Saray Ayala-López (California State University): Contestation and Resistance [YouTube, Talk] [YouTube, Discussion]
  • Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University): Just Kidding: Sarcasm, Jokes and Willful Deniability in Speech [YouTube]
  • Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern University): How Silence Sometimes "Speaks" [YouTube, Talk] [YouTube, Discussion]
     
  • Robert Simpson (University College London): Heckling, Free Speech, and Free Association
  • Rae Langton (Cambridge UK): Free speech as the empowerment of speech acts
  • Ishani Maitra (University of Michigan): Linguistic injustice, or, What’s wrong with silencing others?
  • David Beaver (University of Texas Austin) & Jason Stanley (Yale University): From Dogwhistle to Bullhorns [YouTube, Talk] [YouTube, Discussion]

Theme 3: Social Meaning & Semantics/Pragmatics of Harmful Speech (18-19 Feb) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 3 [pdf]

  • Elin McCready (Aoyama Gakuin University): Enriched dogwhistles and ideologies [YouTube]
  • Roland Mühlenbernd (ZAS): Politeness and Reputation [YouTube]
  • David Pietraszewski (Max Planck Institute): Understanding oppressive speech through the lens of humans’ evolved coalitional psychology [YouTube]
  • Julia Zakkou (Bielefeld University) & Alexander Dinges (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg): On Deniability
  • Eric Swanson (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): If You See Something, Say Something: On the Dynamics of Deniable Possibility Raising [YouTube]
     
  • Uli Sauerland (ZAS): The division of socio-emotive and logical meaning from the meaning first perspective
  • Anton Benz (ZAS): Precision and Vagueness: Social meaning in Bayesian games
  • Stephanie Solt (ZAS), Andrea Beltrama & Heather Burnett: On the social meaning of (im)precision in context
  • Michael Franke (Universität Osnabrück) & Chris Cummins: Modeling manipulative language use
  • Justin Khoo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Coded speech and norms of acceptability [YouTube]

Theme 4: Oppressive Practices & Norms: Speech Acts, Conversational Dynamics (24-26 March) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 4 [pdf]

  • Manfred Krifka (ZAS): The marking and effects of assertoric strength [YouTube]
  • Nicholas Asher (CNRS, IRIT, scientific director of ANITI) & Julie Hunter (Linagora, Toulouse): Bias and epistemic content
  • Stephen Barker (Nottingham University): Slurs and Conventional Implicature: The Power of Presupposition [YouTube]
  • Janice Dowell (Syracuse University): Silencing and Assertion
  • David Beaver (University of Texas Austin) & Jason Stanley (Yale University): Oppressive Resonance
     
  • Laura Caponetto (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan): Accommodated Authority: Flipping Langton's Picture
  • Mihaela Popa-Wyatt (ZAS) & Jonathan Ginzburg (Université de Paris): Slurs and Conversational Structure [YouTube]
  • Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University): Framing and Looping; Solidarity and Resistance [YouTube]
  • Mary Kate McGowan (Wellesley College, Massachusetts): Oppressive Speech and Accommodation: On the Role of Interlocutors 
  • Gillian Russell (University of St Andrews/ ACU in Melbourne): Social Spheres [YouTube]
     
  • Lucy McDonald (St John’s College, University of Cambridge): How to Woo Things With Words
  • Lauren Ashwell (Bates College): Gendered slurs and the pretense of neutrality
  • Amanda Kathleen McMullen (University of Arkansas): Gendered Pejorative Utterances as Acts of Warning [YouTube]
  • Lynne Tirrell (University of Connecticut): Toxic Speech: A Virus Model [YouTube]
  • Robin Jeshion (University of Southern California): What’s Wrong with Slurs

Theme 5: Disinformation, Epistemic Vices & Online Harm (6-7 May) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 5 [pdf]

  • Alessandra Tanesini (Cardiff University): Arrogance and Anger on Social Networking Site [YouTube]
  • Quassim Cassam (University of Warwick): Disinformation, Narratives and Radicalization [YouTube]
  • Tatjana Scheffler (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Veronika Solopova (Freie Universität Berlin) & Mihaela Popa-Wyatt (ZAS Berlin): The Telegram chronicles of online harm [YouTube]
  • Kevin Zollman (Carnegie Melon University): Homophily, polarization, and epistemic performance: a simple model [YouTube]
  • Cailin O’Connor (UC Irvine, California): Retraction in Scientific Network [YouTube]
  • Stephan Lewandrosky (University of Bristol): The Knowledge Dementors [YouTube]
  • Anastasia Kozyreva (Max-Planck Institut, Berlin): Psychology of disinformation and cognitive tools against online manipulation [YouTube]
  • Eric Beerbohm (Harvard University): Gaslighting Citizens
  • Michael Lynch (University of Connecticut): Social Media, Conspiracy and Bald-Faced Lies [YouTube]
  • Raymond Drainville (University of Waterloo) & Jennifer Saul (University of Waterloo): Visual and Linguistic Dogwhistles [Background material by Jennifer Saul] [YouTube]

Theme 6: Structural Oppression and the Road to Justice (15-16 July) ^

Handout with schedule and abstracts for Theme 6 [pdf]

  • Katharine Gelber (University of Queensland): The downsides of speech as expressive conduct [YouTube]
  • Cass Sunstein (Harvard University): Animal Welfare Cascades: A Study in Possibility [YouTube]
  • Susan Benesch (Harvard University): Put it On A Billboard: Contrarian Responses to Hateful Content [YouTube]
  • Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern University): Extracted Testimony and the United States Criminal Legal System [YouTube]
  • Philip Pettit (Princeton University): Free Speech: Three These [YouTube]
     
  • David Livingstone Smith (University of New England): Selection for Oppression [YouTube]
  • Sally Haslanger (MIT): How to Distinguish and Address Systemic, Structural, and Institutional Racism [YouTube]
  • Ron Mallon (Washington University): Accumulation Mechanisms, Structural Oppression, and Structural Justice [YouTube]
  • Colleen Murphy (University of Illinois): Countering Denial through Transitional Justice [YouTube]
  • Allen Buchanan (University of Arizona): The Explanatory Power of Ideology [YouTube]

Watch all YouTube talks on the HaLO channel.

This event is sponsored by the DFG, XPrag. We gratefully acknowledge their support.

The source project: The Marie Skłodowska-Curie action HaLO - How Language is Used to Oppress (841443)