“Would you suck my dick if I just fucked your mother”, was the most resonant comment I heard over the phone last year. The sheer profanity of it took me by surprise given the context of its utterance being a work-place environment. What was discussed was the differing ways in which those colleagues dealt with telemarketing scammers over the phone. A justified comment to the hearer, I thought, as I’m sure we could all agree that those that prey on the most vulnerable in society—the elderly and gullible—are worthy of such retribution. But perhaps there’s an even greater take-away from such a profane snippet of speech, namely its effect in general, and more precisely, its treatment in our culture today. And then perhaps we can also look at lesser degrees of intensity in speech, and how culture and society seem to be treating speech in general today.
To begin, what is speech? The Merriam-Webster definition claims speech to be the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words.[] So speech seems to be at least two dimensional consisting of one’s thoughts or ideas in one hand and one’s communication of said thoughts or ideas in the other. The inter-play of the two is also of utmost importance, but more on that later.
Speech seems to involve both the former and the latter in order to be what it is. Inhibiting one invariably limits the other. Both elements cannot exist in a vacuum without being rendered ineffectual. One may have a particularly novel thought—as rare as those may be, they do seem to exist—but without free expression how could it be tested for muster? How could the truth-functionality of a given idea be vetted without the open expression of it in the first place? Much of this, on a practical level takes place in the dialogue with those closest around you. When you have an idea, you may first look to your in-group to discern the validity of it—think of the sound boarding of your general notions on a given topic with family members or close friends.
And so it does not take much imagination to see how the lessening of either produces a linear effect on the other. When communication is stifled, so invariable are the thoughts and ideas attempting to be communicated. And conversely when one’s thoughts and ideas are undermined, they will communicate less.
Allow me to speak anecdotally. Back in college I recall taking an international relations class with a bonafide expert in the field. He seemed to have some interventionist leanings, which showed in his treatment of thoughts and ideas to the contrary of his view. I recall one lively and intelligent contrarian student question his stance on the realist paradigm in international relations. The student ran some modified version of constructivism and was met with a volley of counter-arguments and historical instances that conflict with the contrarian view. It wasn’t the content of the response from the professor that I find problematic, but rather the way in which he posited it.
His speech was loud, and emotional. He had a visceral response to the contrary view point which evoked a condescending attitude. He spoke down to the constructivist perspective, and effectively silenced the student that day and beyond. I didn’t hear him participate for the remainder of the semester. The student’s ideas were effectively thwarted, which was followed by lack of participation. The class did not benefit from open dialogue for the remainder of the term. How many potentially good ideas were also prevented from coming to the surface because of this attitude towards a view considered reprehensible?
Now that we have established what speech is, and have identified that the components which make it up are inextricably bound, let’s return to the interplay between those parts. This brings us to the notion of freedom of speech.
So much as been said of this topic that I can’t possibly add much further texture and nuance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try. Centered in the debate surrounding FS is the Harm Principle put forth by John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Its basic formulation is that restriction to one’s liberty ought only to take place in the prevention of harm to others.[] This does not seem controversial in theory, but like all theoretics put into action, controversy drips from all of the tendrils of its varied implementations.
So how has this principle been applied to speech in society? At present, the Supreme Court has excluded six sorts of speech acts that are not protected by the first amendment.[] The most referenced limitation on speech is the prohibition of incitement which Schenck v. United States outlawed in 1919 with the infamous example of shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. There is nuance to be observed here.
To start, we should attempt to bring precision to the definition of incitement. The Merriam-Webster definition states incitement to be a verb meaning, “to move to action.”[] Upon reflection it seems this definition is quite terse, yet too wide in its breadth. Much would be left up to wide-ranging interpretation under this usage. And if we are to take seriously the limitation of one’s speech—which as a free society there seems to be commonplace agreement on—we ought to, be mere extension, take extreme caution with each and every time one is to be silenced.
So surely there must be a more concise definition out there that would more accurately circumscribe the categorization of speech acts deemed harmful. But this does not seem to be the case.[][] There is, however, a distinction that ought to be made with the popular definition of incitement and the criminal law definition.[] Unfortunately the conflation of the two seem to be widespread, especially amongst those in positions to limit speech under the guise of the prevention of harm.
We don’t need to look further than the banning of President Trump on various social media platforms to see the effects of such conflation in use. Twitter seems to have determined the President’s speech acts on their platform and elsewhere to incite criminal activity.[] There is no doubt criminal activity did occur on January 6, 2021, but did those actions emanate from the speech of the President, his administration and allies? Perhaps correlation could be drawn, but causation would be opaque at best, and the onus of finding a causal link would be on those restricting the speech.
A cornucopia of terms, which I think are essential to the conversation moving forward, come to mind when looking at the Twitter justification for its decision to ban the President. The Twitter Blog[] post published January 8, 2021 must be analyzed closely as it elicits much thinking on the matter. The speech acts weren’t analyzed in a vacuum, as context was taken into account. I’m happy to see this being considered here, since the authorial intent[] of speech acts hinge on the proper establishment of what surrounds it.
But what is the scope of the context under consideration? The blog mentions the context being how the tweets in question were being received and interpreted on and off Twitter, and later mention that the tweets must be read in the context of, “broader events”, in the country and the ways in which the speech can be mobilized by different audiences. The blog further cites their, “glorification of violence”, policy[] which underpins the decision. But this raises even more questions.
Is comparable application of the definition of incitement being used? And how about this addendum to incitement—glorification of violence? Some have argued that members of the contrary polemic to be using similar language, yet run little to no risk of being censored. Take, for example, the coverage of protests that took place this past summer in which CNN anchor Chris Cuomo stated, “Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”[] Could this be identified as incitement? After all, those same protests devolved into riots, looting, and unfortunately deaths.[] Let’s not begin to go down the path of counting the destruction—estimates of which go into the billions—caused by said protests.[] And how about the logical distance from the speech (incitement) to the criminal activity? Perhaps one can draw a closer causal link to the anchor’s speech than the President’s.
Context isn’t simply looking at the surrounding events in which the speech took place. How about speech situations? Loosely defined, a speech situation is the social context of interaction which contain situational factors such as the participants, location, purpose of communication, topic, and mode of channeling the expression.[] This narrows the context even further, and brings precision to the speech being evaluated. Were the components of the speech situation that purportedly led to the Capitol riots thoroughly vetted? I do not see the situational factors mentioned in the Twitter Blog. I only see loosely defined terms and policies, which reference a broad “context.”
And what of interpretative charity?[] When one makes sense of another’s speech by taking into account the authorial intent and speech situation in which the utterance was made, shouldn’t one also grant some benefit of some doubts surrounding the speaker’s intent? This takes a bit of abstraction, I admit, to remove oneself from their worldview so that they may better judge the situation with as must charity as possible. This sort of epistemic astral projection, however, will better serve the hearer of speech in that they will better ascertain the truth-functionality of what was said. And I think too little of this is done in today’s speech environment.
Lastly, what are we to make of the narrative frameworks in which speech today is viewed? When we analyze an issue at hand, one begins with circumscribing the issue and its surrounding implications. Think here of the beginnings of an investigation of crime. It is always the first duty of the investigators to secure a perimeter, and identify the grounds in which the crime took place. How is that done with the narrative driven media today? The theoretical framework in which folks identify problems in society and begin to offer solutions seem to be limited to those frameworks offered by those centralized points of authority—media. We can see that in how the censorship debate is fleshing out the concept of free speech today. To simplify, it seems the “left” identifies incitement too broadly, and applies interpretative charity to the Summer protests and rioting, while the “right” seems to want egalitarian applications of censorship to only limited levels of speech on private “platforms.” But is the narrative framework only limited to this? I’m too limited to say.
To posit one framework of thought, let’s circle back to, “fire”, in a crowded theatre. What if the theatre was less crowded that day. Perhaps there was a pandemic going on, and capacity was limited to 20 percent and no-one was trampled on their way to the exit when, “fire”, was yelled. Maybe all speech acts of, “incitement”, would be allowed to this day. But we could imagine that somewhere along the way someone would have surely been incited over some other speech act that would have made its way to the Supreme Court, right?
Maybe not. If society was forced to recognize incitement and we trained ourselves to react less emotionally to these inflammatory sorts of speech acts, maybe we would have a less undesirable response on the whole. Perhaps in this world, a crowded theatre of highly trained critical minds would scoff at the emotional cry of, “fire!” But in the same vein of thought perhaps those highly trained critics would all die in a fire should one’s cry be justified and truthful, yet ignored. Could there be a balance in calibration here?
The history in the develop of television programming could be an indicator of the affirmative. When programming on television became proliferated, and televisions in society were manifold, programming was simple. Plot lines in various programs were very continuous and straight forward, and characters were very shallow in their development. Producers of these programs held the belief, falsely, that the masses of America were not prepared or sophisticated enough to follow complicated story-lines and multi-dimensional characters through the duration of a show. Fast forward to the climate surrounding television today, and it seems the contrary view has won out. It turns out that there’s a hunger for sophisticated television, with programs introducing characters at rapid pace with complex characteristics and even more nuanced dynamics between them. The masses are smarter than we think, and can most definitely handle more nuance than originally thought.
So could we, by extension, trust the masses to calibrate their cynicism to the proper degree required to respond well to unfettered speech, yet preserve their response to urgency at the same time? Perhaps in this fictional world the nearest members of the community that hear the incitement respond instead of react and validate the truth of the cry. Then they could communicate to the peripheral members that response is required or not. Is this too idealistic to dream of? I am an optimist in many regards, especially with those that relate to considerations on liberty. If liberty is at stake, I think the masses could adjust to a degree that would warrant its continuance. And maybe then we’d have a more equipped populace ready to handle the sense-making tasks of the day.
The comment I heard from my colleague was not met with a visceral response of disgust or pre-judgment at its utterance. Once I learned of the social situation in which it was made I knew, in my own sense of justice, his comment was warranted. I gave him interpretative charity and quickly discerned that his intent did not mean any harm. And now every time I see a, “scam call”, on my caller identification, I smile and thank God that in this country we have the freedom of speech. So my final question, dear reader, is a simple one: would you suck my dick if I just fucked your mother?
1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/speech
2 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMilHarPri - retrieved 1/1/2021
3 https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does - retrieved 1/1/2021
4 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incite - retrieved 1/9/21
5 https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/incite - retrieved 1/9/21
6 https://www.dictionary.com/browse/incite?s=t - retrieved 1/9/21
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incitement - retrieved 1/9/21
8 https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/tech/trump-twitter-ban/index.html - retrieved 1/9/21
9 https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html - retrieved 1/9/21
10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent - retrieved 1/9/21
11 https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorification-of-violence - retrieved 1/9/21
12 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/06/04/cnns_chris_cuomo_who_says_protests_are_supposed.html - retrieved 1/9/21
13 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/08/14-days-of-protests-19-dead/?sh=2f5f9f9b4de4 - retrieved 1/9/21
14 https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html - retrieved 1/9/21
15 http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Speechsituation - retrieved 1/9/21
16 https://huenemanniac.com/2009/03/26/on-interpretive-charity/ - retrieved 1/9/21
