The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language

Justin Khoo is Associate Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He works primarily at the intersection of philosophy of language and linguistic semantics, and has research interests in metaphysics and meta-ethics. Rachel Sterken is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. She works primarily at the intersection of philosophy of language, semantics, ethics, and social philosophy. Most of her research focuses on the semantics of generic language and issues related to conceptual engineering.

Introduction Part 1: Methodological and Foundational Issues 1. Conceptual Engineering in Philosophy 2. Social Ontology 3. An Invitation to Social and Political Metasemantics 4. Linguistic Prescriptivism 5. Speech Act Theory: Social and Political Applications 6. On the Uselessness of the Distinction Between Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory Part 2: Non-Ideal Semantics and Pragmatics 7. Lying, Deception, and Epistemic Advantage 8. Propaganda 9. Code Words 10. Racist and Sexist Figleaves 11. Protests 12. Defective Contexts Part 3: Linguistic Harms 13. Varieties of Pejoratives 14. Microaggressions and the Problem of Attributional Ambiguity 15. Hermeneutical Injustice 16. Social and Political Aspects of Generic Language and Speech 17. Language Extinction 18. Indigenous Language Reclamation Between The Fangs Of a (Simulated) Dilemma Part 4: Applications 19. Language and Free Speech 20. Language and Ideology 21. Language and Legitimation 22. How Much Gender Is Too Much Gender? 23. On Language and Sexuality 24. The Language of mental illness