could adopt some of Hesni’s (2018, pp. 953) claims, mainly that uptake is present in
cases of illocutionary disablement, in order to strengthen her claim that the harm
imposed on women by pornography is best explained through illocutionary
disablement.
Investigation into the works of McDonald (2020), Bird (2002) and Hesni (2018)
leads me to my conclusion that despite Langton’s (1993) claim initially appearing
sceptical due to her incorrect notion of uptake, her conclusion that pornography
silences women can be justified if her argument is modified to sit within the correct
theory of uptake. This would require her to redefine what she means by silencing,
specifically illocutionary disablement. Adaptation of Langton’s (1993) claim would
also help to dismant le Bird’s (2002) objection, that Langton’s (1993) initial model of
uptake allows for cases of rape not to be counted as such.
Chapter 1: J.L Austin’s (1976) Speech Act Theory and Rae Langton’s (1993)
‘Speech Act and Unspeakable Acts’
In order to successfully understand Langton’s (1993) notion of silencing we must
first explore Austin’s (1976) theory of speech and language; Speech Act Theory, as it
is this theory on which Langton’s (1993) claims are based. Austin (1976) presents a
contemporary theory of language to explore how it is possible that the utterances
(speaking) of words allow for actions to occur. For example, how can it be explained
that the utterance “Can you put a log on the fire?” leads to the act of a log being put on
a fire? Austin (1976. Pp.6) calls these types of utterances speech acts or performative
utterances and presents a breakdown of each speech act into three separate acts to
demonstrate how the resulting act occurs.
1. The locutionary act – This is “the act of saying something” (Austin,
1976, pp. 94). By this, Austin means the act of making the utterance. In relation
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