Name: 言語是如何傷害的：速成班哲學#28 (How Words Can Harm: Crash Course Philosophy #28)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:32:46.000Z
Duration: 10 min 46 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

情態助動詞 B1

A warning: This episode of Crash Course Philosophy contains language that may be upsetting for some viewers and may not be appropriate for viewing in certain settings.

Consider the following sentence: Jason shot
a mouse in his boxer shorts.

Like, my first thought was that Jason was
wearing the boxer shorts when he shot the mouse.

But maybe the mouse was wearing Jason's
boxer shorts?

Or maybe the mouse was wearing his own boxer
shorts?

Or was the mouse in Jason's boxer shorts
while he was wearing them!?

And while we're at it – what kind of shooting
are we talking about?

Was it done with a gun, or with a camera?

Words can go wrong, in lots of different ways.

And when they do, the problem usually comes
down to the distinction between speaker meaning

and audience meaning – or what a speaker
intends, as opposed to what a listener understands.

When these two meanings don't match up,
the results can range from confusing to hilarious.

And when a speaker's attitude doesn't match that of their audience, their words – whether they were intended to be just funny, or edgy, or dirty – can end up being seriously harmful.

And now is the part where I warn you that we're going to talk about some of those harmful words today.

I'm going to say them, even though I'm
not going to like it.

And we're both going to know what they mean.

But we have to talk about them because they're everywhere, and they're powerful.

Let's start out with a harmless example of miscommunication: our mouse-in-boxer-shorts.

The reason that sentence is so confusing is because we understand most language by context.

But sometimes – like in a lone sentence
about a mouse – the context just isn't there.

And the result is often ambiguity – when a statement has more than one plausible interpretation.

But there are other times, when we do have
context, but it isn't enough.

Because there's the context that you share with your interlocutor – stuff that's known to both of you – like how mice don't wear underwear.

But there's also the personal context that
each of you brings to the conversation.

Like, if somebody makes a stupid off-the-cuff joke about “your mother,” that could turn out to be painful, if your mother has recently died.

There are other kinds of unintentional linguistic
harm, as well.

Some of which I'm sure you've encountered,
probably in texts or emails.

One person says something as a joke, but the other person reads it as serious, and takes offense.

These are cases where the speaker tried to flout one of Grice's maxims that we talked about, by, say, using sarcasm or irony.

But the audience was using the cooperative principle, and assumed that everyone involved was saying what they really meant.

So a sarcastic text, if read without the help of social cues like tone of voice or body language, can end up creating miscommunication.

But when it comes to the injuries caused by language, the greater concern for us here is words that are deliberately chosen to cause harm.

Now, let's pause for a moment here to talk
about how we talk about harmful language.

Philosophers often rely on what's known
as the Use/Mention Distinction.

This is the difference between talking about
a word, and talking with the word.

Let's look at the difference between using the word "philosophy" and simply mentioning it.

“I have a hard time staying awake in my
philosophy class after lunch.”

Right there, I used the word "philosophy."

But when I say: “Philosophy' is a Greek
word meaning 'love of wisdom,'”

I'm mentioning the word, or talking about it.

The use/mention distinction is helpful when we talk about sensitive, or taboo words, because, we have to use them in order to talk about them.

And there are actually many kinds of taboo
words.

Some are considered off-limits just because they're, for lack of a more philosophical word, dirty.

Dirty words are scatalogical, blue, coarse.

They refer to things like body parts, bodily
functions, and sexual acts.

You probably don't want to use these words in polite company, but if they do offend people, it's because they offend their sensibilities, and not, say, their ideas about themselves or their identity.

These words are used for emphasis, to shock, and to express strong attitudes, but their point isn't to target a person.

In contrast, hate speech consists of words
that are directed at a member of a group.

And they're used specifically because of
that person's membership in that group.

These groups are generally based on something that's key to a person's identity – like race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

Hate speech is typically understood as more morally problematic than dirty words, because hate speech is designed to hurt.

To understand this, we need to talk about
a linguistic phenomenon known as thick concepts.

These are words or ideas that come pre-loaded not just with descriptive meaning, but also with evaluative content.

There are attitudes and values that are baked into these words that are hard, if not impossible, to un-bake.

For instance, "murder" is a thick concept that contains a description – it means to kill someone.

But it also contains evaluation – murder
is unjustified killing.

Now with this concept in mind, let's consider a theory about how certain words cause harm, posed by American lawyer Charles R. Lawrence III.

Lawrence argues that hate speech should be legally punishable in the United States, just as it is in some other countries.

His argument focuses on thick concepts that are used to disparage a person for simply being who they are.

What's problematic about these concepts,
he says, is that you can't pull their descriptive meaning away from their inherent negativity.

Both the meaning and the attitude are tied
up in a single word.

Let me give you an example, a word that I am going to have a hard time saying.

It's a hateful word, but we can't pretend
it doesn't exist.

Because, in a sense, that mentality – the idea that certain words shouldn't be discussed, and analyzed, and argued about – gives these words even more power.

The word I want to talk about is "faggot."

This word has descriptive content, in that it's commonly used to describe a homosexual man.

But that description is bound up with an inherently hateful attitude – so much so, that the target of the word is unable to separate that attitude from the fact about his identity.

The word hurts, because it tells its target
that an essential part of his identity is bad.

Being told you're wearing an ugly shirt or that you have a stupid haircut might sting, but those aren't essential parts of you.

If you're told that who you are is inherently bad, or wrong, then you're being hit to your core.

The point of using a word like that
is to harm.

And Lawrence argues that, while free speech is important to democracy, hate speech should not be protected.

Instead, he says, hate speech should be understood as belonging to the class of speech known as “fighting words.”

And yes, that's an actual term.
They're not just for cartoon cowboys.

Fighting words are words that are meant to
incite violence.

And since the point of protecting speech is
to promote open communication, Lawrence says,

words that are designed to replace communication with violence and fear don't deserve constitutional protection.

Contemporary American philosopher Stephanie Ross offers another explanation of the way that words can cause harm.

Let's head over to the Thought Bubble to
explore it with some Flash Philosophy.

Rather than focusing on words that most people would agree are negative, Ross deals with words that generally seem innocuous.

Think of the word 'baby,' used as a term of endearment among adults, particularly applied to women.

Nothing wrong with calling your significant
other 'baby,' right?

She says the words that people use to refer to us can create what's known as metaphorical identification.

Think about the characteristics of your average
baby:

helpless, dependent, relying on others to
care for them, to make decisions for them.

Ross argues that, when a person is repeatedly referred to with a word like "baby," a metaphorical identification gradually takes place, whereby she begins to think of herself as having those traits.