The Philosophy of Counter-Language

This chapter provides an opinionated survey of a number of counterspeech strategies that have been variously discussed in contemporary philosophy of language. Each of the discussed strategies is promising under certain circumstances and unpromising, and even liable to backfire, under others. When it comes to countering toxic speech, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and to decide on a particular strategy one has to factor in a number of contextual variables – including the linguistic form of the toxic utterance (e.g. whether it is explicitly toxic, or conveys a toxic message implicitly) and the counterspeaker’s social role. Overall, the chapter uncovers how tools from philosophy of language can illuminate the workings of toxic speech and help us devise tailor-made strategies to counter it. It thus sketches the foundations of a philosophy of counter-language.