Conversations Online: Explorations in Philosophy of Language

The growth of communication technologies has profoundly and inescapably impacted politics, society, and how we coordinate our lives. One of the central components of this change has been the transformation in our communicative possibilities. Amongst other things, the internet has given rise to new linguistic phenomena, novel ways of doing things with words, and new types of communicative behaviour. It has created communicative possibilities that we might think are broadly positive, and yet it has also been instrumental in—and the locus for—the spread of malevolent types of speech.

Conversations Online collects eighteen original contributions from twenty-six philosophers of language. These thinkers are well-placed to provide insights that can help us sift through and understand linguistic phenomena in online settings, considering them in terms of existing theories and providing analyses that will be helpful for anybody who is interested in online communication. Together they show that great possibilities are available to us when we look at conversations online and develop a broader understanding of how language develops in digital settings. This diverse volume will not only advance the topic of online communication within philosophy of language—it will also equip readers with a better understanding of the utility of the field and the many ways in which technological developments are changing how we interact.

Chapter 2 of this work is available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. This part of the work is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

P. J. Connolly, Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellow, Universitat de Barcelona, Sanford C. Goldberg, Chester D. Tripp Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Jennifer M. Saul, Waterloo Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, Honorary Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo and University of Sheffield

P. J. Connolly is Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, as well as a senior member of the LOGOS research group and the Barcelona Institute for Analytic Philosophy. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sheffield in 2021 on the topic of online conversation. His published work looks at online trolling and linguistic liability. Connolly is currently researching the linguistic, social and ontological aspects of artificial intelligence.

Sanford C. Goldberg is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is also Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg. His research is primarily in the areas of epistemology and philosophy of language.
Goldberg’s books include Foundations and Applications in Social Epistemology (2021) and Conversational Pressure: Normativity in Speech Exchanges (2020). He is also Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg.

Jennifer M. Saul is currently Waterloo Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language. Prior to this, she taught at the University of Sheffield for 24 years. Her current research is on the pragmatics of racist and sexist speech, and on various species of misinformation and disinformation. Although she has served as President of the Mind Association, and won the APA’s Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award, her proudest accomplishment remains serving as a consultant on a zombie movie script.