speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Addressing the Harms of Speech
balise; marriage counselling often focuses on problems of communication.
78 Parents and teachers socialise children to address siblings
and friends without inflicting unnecessary hurt. 79 Speech codes at
American and British universities have been condemned by conservatives
and invalidated by courts, but academic institutions could
not function if their members "freely" hurled racist slurs, homophobic
taunts, or sexist innuendoes at each other, or if pornography
covered the walls of the senior common room or the co-ed toilets of
residence halls. All performers—especially the most successful—
cultivate their audience. While writing The Last Chronicle of Barset
in the drawing room of Athenaeum, Anthony Trollope heard two
clergymen disparaging his characters, with particular animus toward
Mrs. Proudie. He declared "I will go home and kill her before the
week is over" and promptly did so. 80 When 500 million people in
27 countries saw the premiere of Michael Jackson's video "Black or
White," many protested a scene showing him rubbing his pelvis and
unzipping his fly and another in which he smashed up cars.
Although he had already edited the tape for violence, Jackson
immediately agreed to cuts. "I've always tried to be a good role
model [a strange claim given his deliberately ambiguous sexual and
racial identity] .... I deeply regret any pain or hurt that the final
segments of Black or White has [sic] caused children, their parents
or any other viewers." 81 When Americans and Japanese collaborated
on a television programme about World War II, a scene of
Chinese being shot in a ditch was narrated differently. The English
text read: "Japan's claim it was liberating China was ludicrous to
Americans, particularly when hundreds of thousands of Chinese
men, women and babies were murdered in what was called the
Rape of Nanking." The Japanese version did not mention Nanking,
saying rather: "in a totalitarian attempt to grab land and wealth, the
Japanese military had led the country into an eight-year war in
Manchuria and China." 82
A. Measuring the Injury
Because the effect of speech on status is contextually specific, we
need a framework for analysing its harms in order to calibrate the
response. This section begins that task.
/. Speaker Identity Public officials purport to speak for the collectivity,
endowing their message with formal authority and apparent
consensus. Although James Watt, Reagan's first Secretary of the
Interior, could wreak havoc on the environment with impunity, he
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