Episode 18: Mark Lance discusses language and power
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What is the central connection between language and power that Mark Lance explores?
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Mark Hopwood. With us today is Mark Lance, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, and he's here to talk with us about language and power. Mark Lance, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. For, I guess, a number of people, the idea of language and power as a topic might sound somewhat unusual because often the philosophy of language is pursued in abstraction from, as it were, worldly and political concerns. But in your work, I guess you try to bring them together. What connection do you see between issues around meaning and semantics and ethical and political issues?
Yeah.
Thanks. Of course, there's a lot. And actually, in a lot of my work, and I'll be talking mostly about joint work with Rebecca Kukla, who's my new colleague at Georgetown, previously at South Florida. And we're looking more at the pragmatics of language, that is to say, at the function of the uses of language in discourse. But let's start with this sort of a simple idea that Social interactions come from the kinds of people we are and the kinds of social positions we inhabit. So I'm a philosopher. I'm a parent. I'm a partner. I'm a chess player. All of these are, in many ways, skills. That is to say, I know how to teach a class. I know how to have a philosophy conversation. I know how to be a parent to some extent, I suppose.
No one really knows how to do that. And in none of those cases should we think of what one's doing as following a set of rules, some sort of a script. Rather, one has internalized an ability to do these things. So in many ways, despite the fact that all of these are things that involve a lot of language and involve using words and talking to people, They still should be thought of in the way that you think of understanding how to dribble a basketball or to drive a car. These are things that you build into, through long practice, your habits of life. So one of our claims is that one of the fundamental ways in which people get enculturated into these skills that give us positions in society is through kinds of linguistic transactions.
and in particular through what we call second personal transactions or calls, where two people recognize one another in particular ways and assign one another implicitly by their practical engagement, assign one another roles that have normative significance for the ongoing social practice. So let's take the very simplest version of this. We recently wrote a book called Yo and Lo. So the yo or the hail claim like hello, right? So I... see you on the street and I say, yo, Matt. Now, how do you understand what's happened right there? Well, it's got, we claim, two dimensions to it. First of all, I'm recognizing you. I'm expressing my recognition of you in just yelling hello. I'm expressing that I've recognized you, but not recognized you in the way that you'd recognize a piece of furniture or a rock or something like that.
I've recognized you precisely as a a potential interlocutor as the kind of being that has normative status that I can interact with in this human way that we do in a social way. I've seen you as a member of the social space.
How do ‘second‑personal transactions’ (calls) create social roles and normative expectations?
But the hello isn't just that. I could look at Mark and say, oh, look, there goes Matt. He's a social being or something like that. That would be another way of recognizing it. But rather, by yelling hello... The recognition is expressed in an act that at the same time calls for the same thing from you. So what's the proper response to hello, of course, is hello back. So it's both a recognition of you as a social being and a demand that you recognize me in the same way as one. So this is the structure Hegel called mutual recognition. And it's given explicit form in this transactional performance of hailing someone. We call these things that have this general structure to them in general calls. That is to say, second personal interactions that place each other in specific normative positions.
We call those calls.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central connection between language and power that Mark Lance explores?
0:03–3:32
2
How do ‘second‑personal transactions’ (calls) create social roles and normative expectations?
3:32–7:12
3
What is mutual recognition and how does a simple greeting like “yo, Matt” illustrate it?
7:12–11:46
4
How do performative speech acts differ from mere reports, and why does that matter for power?
11:46–15:22
5
In what ways do orders and commands embed differential authority and obligations?
15:22–19:08
6
How do everyday linguistic practices reinforce gendered identities and norms?
19:08–23:07
7
What structural factors make school‑choice processes unequal, and how does language shape that inequality?
23:07–27:31
8
Why should we resist certain linguistic and institutional practices, and how can that resistance contribute to political liberation?
27:31–33:38
Speakers
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