In gender studies, one of the most contested subjects is the feminist philosophy of language. Many feminists have argued that for women to be free from the oppression in society, they need to develop a style that only they understand. One of the feminist philosophy theories is the feminism and speech act theory (Moi). Hornsby and Rae Langton did the first substantial research on the feminist philosophy of language as they tried to prove Catharine MacKinnon’s theory that pornography subordinates and silences women. According to Langton, pornography silences women during rape, since men cannot understand when women are saying no to sex. Langton distinguished three terms in the philosophy of language which are; perlocutionary, locutionary, and illocutionary (Moi). It is a locutionary act of uttering a word to change its meaning. A perlocutionary act involves speaking a word to have an expected result while the illocutionary act is uttering the concept altogether. An example is Jennifer uttering the sentence, “ I pledge my allegiance to her majesty the Queen and all her heirs. The locutionary act was speaking the sentence with a different meaning. The perlocutionary effect of this act is that she got a British passport, and the illocutionary act was becoming a British citizen.
The speech act theory became the most widespread idea in feminism and was taught and studied in mainstream education. Over the past years, more feminists have risen separately, each with different reasons and perspectives of feminism. In 2015, Bauer and Lorna Finlayson argued that pornography as an example in speech acts was misguided since pornography should not be treated as a form of speech. Her major critique was that the scholars in this theory did not consider other factors that may lead to the silencing of women in the society. Although pornography may have a role to play, there are other underlying factors in the community, such as toxic masculinity that lead to women’s subordination (Beattie).
She further argued that the idea of using the example of pornography was irrelevant and should never be used by scholars in speech act theory. Recent studies have shown improvements in the use of this theory in talking issues such as hate speech and racism. Modern feminists argue that there is a form of silencing that develops from pornography, but speech is not only considered as subordinating or silencing but also oppression. Indeed, researchers argue that the use of oppressive forms of expression is a widely developed phenomenon across the globe. More feminists have come up with the idea of using the speech theory act in explaining racism. Feminists such as Langton have shifted their attention to how hate speech affects interactions between people in society (Beattie)
