Subordinating Illocutions in Online Communicative Environments

Speech constitutes action (Austin 1962) and, sometimes, it constitutes the action of subordination (Langton 1993). One's utterance can constitutively (rather than causally) unfairly rank someone as inferior and make them count as inferior in a particular domain, unfairly deprive them of rights or powers, and/or legitimate discriminatory behaviour against them (Langton 1993). Such an utterance

is the illocution of subordination (henceforth subordinating illocution). The philosophical literature on subordinating illocutions focuses primarily on in-person illocutions. Little systematic attention has been paid to how speakers perform subordinating illocutions in online communicative environments (social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook). This is a gap that

needs to be filled given that online environments are a primary outlet for hate speech, they occupy an important role in our communicative practices, and they are importantly different to in-person conversational exchanges, therefore requiring special philosophical treatment. I aim to offer a detailed analysis of online subordinating illocutions, adding both to the literature on

subordinating illocutions and to the nascent literature on online illocutions.