IX —PORNOGRAPHY, SPEECH ACTS AND CONTEXT

Author: Saul, Jennifer

Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 106, Number 2, March 2006 , pp. 227-246(20)

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Abstract:

Catharine MacKinnon has claimed that pornography is the subordination of women. Rae Langton has defended the plausibility and coherence of this claim by drawing on speech act theory. I argue that considering the role of context in speech acts poses serious problems for Langton's defence of MacKinnon. Langton's account can be altered in order to accommodate the role of context. Once this is done, however, her defence of MacKinnon no longer looks so plausible. Finally, I argue that the speech act approach (adapted to account for context) offers an appealing way to make sense of disagreements over pornography; but also that this will probably not be so appealing to most proponents of the speech acts approach.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2006.00195.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN UK

Publication date: 2006-03-01