Co-authored with Kai Tanter. We look at a problem case for the relationship between speaker intent and audience uptake. If a speaker says “no”, intending to refuse sex, but her addressee gives the utterance uptake as a speech act of consent, does the speaker refuse or consent? We argue that: 1) addressee uptake can unjustly force a speaker to perform a speech act of consent, and 2) this is a distinctive way speakers can be wronged. However, we also argue that the addressee’s uptake is not the only form of uptake that matters—the broader discursive community’s uptake matters too, and can override the addressee’s uptake, constituting the speaker’s utterance as the speech act it was intended to be.

Available here.

I develop a theory of speech acts as actions which unfold over time. Within speech act theory, it is commonly accepted that speech acts are performed instantaneously, in the moment of utterance. Drawing on apologies as a case study, I argue that this assumption about the temporal structure of speech acts is ill-equipped to explain important elements of speech acts which take place after the moment of utterance, such as the addressee’s acceptance or rejection of an apology. As illustrative examples, I consider Joseph Biden’s apology to Anita Hill and the Australian national apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. As an alternative, I propose a novel theory of speech acts as a kind of temporally extended process, which involves both the speaker and their addressee. Apologies, I argue, are best understood as actions which unfold over time, like building a house or baking bread.

Draft available on request.

I argue that speakers can perform unintended speech acts, including threats, urgings, and orders. Within speech act theory, it is standardly supposed that speakers can only perform speech acts they intend to perform. I examine a range of disputes over which speech act a speaker performed, including whether catcalls (like “Come over here and let me get a look at that a**!”) are compliments or threats. I argue that these uptake disputes demonstrate that we accept the possibility that a speaker can unintentionally perform some speech acts. I then defend the idea that speakers can reasonably be held responsible for some unintended speech acts—I argue that we can hold a speaker morally accountable for an unintended illocutionary act iff the speaker should reasonably expect that their utterance will be given uptake as an unintended illocutionary act.

I examine whether we ought to suspend judgment in response to sexual violence claims. In cases where there is conflicting testimony about sexual violence (so-called “he said, she said” cases), it is often suggested that ordinary epistemic agents ought to suspend judgment about sexual violence claims in an attempt to remain epistemically neutral. I argue against what I call the business as usual approach to suspending judgment, where epistemic agents act as if an act of sexual violence did not take place. Drawing on William James’ (1897) discussion of religious belief, I argue that adopting the business as usual approach in sexual violence cases unjustly prioritizes the testimony of the accused and forces the accuser into a kind of limbo. Presenting this way of responding to sexual violence claims as epistemically neutral is a form of what I call epistemic hypocrisy. Genuinely suspending judgment in sexual violence cases requires us to act in a way which is consistent with both possibilities—the accused person’s guilt and their innocence. I conclude that suspending judgment is a lot more difficult to do than is commonly supposed. We often have to take a side, rather than attempt a form of fence-sitting.