Mansplaining and Illocutionary Force

Casey Rebecca Johnson

doi:10.5206/fpq/2020.4.8168

Abstract

In this paper I describe three kinds of mansplaining, “well, actually” mansplaining, straw-mansplaining, and speech act–confusion mansplaining. While these three kinds have much in common, I focus on speech act–confusion mansplaining and offer a speech act theoretic account of what goes wrong when people mansplain in this way. In cases of speech act–confusion mansplaining, the target of the mansplaining is not able to do what she wants with her words. Her conversational contribution is taken to have a different force than the force she intends. This contributes to women’s discursive disablement and to the restriction of women’s participation in epistemically relevant exchanges.

Highlights

In the course of the interview, Kimmel had the following exchange with Clinton: JK: Are you familiar with mansplaining? You know what that is?
This parody works, in part, because so many women who are experts with respect to some area have that area of expertise explained to them by men who are less expert
4 This is similar to the kind of mansplaining that Federico Luzzi (2016) describes as “a man explains to a woman why something she just asserted is true.”

Summary

Introduction

4 This is similar to the kind of mansplaining that Federico Luzzi (2016) describes as “a man explains to a woman why something she just asserted is true.” I’m suggesting a different etiology and explanation for the phenomenon. In paradigm cases like this, the mansplainer takes the utterance to be a question or a request for information. According to speech act theory, the basic picture of a successful communicative exchange is as follows: A speaker, Martha, utters, “The window is open” to George, her interlocutor.

Results

Conclusion