The United Nations condemns discrimination under the following definition: “Discrimination is any unfair treatment or arbitrary distinction based on a person’s race, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, age, language, social origin or other status.” Discrimination, so understood, is considered morally wrong. Many scholars argue that calling an act discriminatory communicates, by conceptual necessity, its wrongfulness. According to this view, DISCRIMINATION is a thick concept. In contrast, Descriptive View claims that DISCRIMINATION signifies a specific type of differential treatment. Proponents of the Descriptive View argue that related terms can be used in both a moralized and a descriptive sense.

Based on converging empirical evidence from four empirical studies, we argue that the folk concept of “discrimination” is a thick concept with an inseparable evaluative component. Two corpus analyses reveal a historical shift, with “discrimination” evolving from a neutral to an evaluative term. A cancelability test shows that denying the evaluative aspect of “discriminatory” leads to contradictions, indicating the communication of moral judgment by default. In a vignette study, cases often cited as examples of descriptive discrimination were judged either non-discriminatory or as morally wrongful. These results clearly support the Moralized View and propose “discrimination” as a thick concept.

This paper examines the linguistic practices of Polish non-binary speakers, focusing on their use of

neuter grammatical gender. In many languages, using "it" or neuter gender for people often

expresses negative judgments and distances the referent from full human status. Neuter gender and

the pronoun "it" commonly have pejorative connotations, reflecting a broader dehumanization or

objectification. I argue that when non-binary people refer to themselves with neuter grammatical

gender it is not merely linguistic innovation but a practice akin to slur reclamation.

In November 2024, after years of using the same opening formula, Tagesschau discontinued the use of “Damen und Herren” (“Ladies and Gentlemen”) in an effort to make its language more inclusive and accessible. This change sparked an online debate, with some arguing that its going initially unnoticed suggests a lack of significance, while others view it as a step toward greater inclusivity. Drawing on the framework of analytic philosophy of language, this paper explores the dynamics of the strategic use of silence, examining whether this choice aligns with the speaker’s intended message and identifying the potential challenges and implications of such a decision. Specifically, I argue that current frameworks still struggle to adequately account for the meaning conveyed by this silence, and thus leave open various questions about the potential consequences, both positive and harmful, of this communicative choice. I argue in this paper that while the shift away from traditional formulas may have some merit in promoting inclusivity, it can also lead to unintended consequences, such as those explored in the analysis: the potential for the speaker to absolve itself of responsibility and the potential for the omission to subtly stigmatize the omitted phrase and influence listeners’ speech practices.

Recent philosophy of language has seen a surge of interest in how language can change the attitudes and feelings of conversational parties, in particular when it comes to hate speech and political speech. Another socially relevant area where language plays a key role in changing feelings and attitudes is psychotherapy. After all, a large number of therapeutic approaches is done verbally, in the form of a conversation between therapist and client. This raises the question whether insights from philosophy of language also help shed light on the workings and the effectiveness of therapeutic conversations. The main thesis of the present talk is that David Lewis' scorekeeping model of language use enhances our understanding of the effectiveness and the linguistic workings of several core methods and interventions of talking therapy. Speaking on an abstract level, these methods and interventions are effective by changing the score of the therapeutic conversation, in particular in the form of accommodation. Using various examples, we will show that this can affect different components of conversational score.

The term "Greenwashing" has become a central battleground in climate and environmental debates, with activists, journalists and NGOs accusing businesses and governments of falsely or deceptively advertising their products, policies and actions as environmentally or climate friendly. My claim is that greenwashing is a speech act with propagandistic purpose for governments and corporations that seek to limit, silence or undermine climate and environmental policies, constituting what Stanley (2016) calls “undermining propaganda” as it initially appeals to a political ideal that it ends up undermining. I provide three observations to support my claim. Firstly, greenwashing is a way for governments and corporations to illocutionarily disable advocates of climate and environmental policy, silencing climate activists, journalists and scientists and making their assertions misfire with their audiences. Secondly, greenwashing mirrors what Saul (2018, 2024) calls covert intentional dogwhistles by exploiting existing social resentments as a tool for political manipulation away from climate and environmental policies. Thirdly, greenwashing constitutes what Shields (2022) calls conceptual domination, a form of conceptual engineering that exploits institutional authority to enforce the uptake of a revised concept. Greenwashing is an excercise in conceptual domination of green, climate and environmental concepts to make them more convenient for governments and corporations.

An attractive way to characterize substantive disagreement as opposed to merely apparent disagreement is in terms of noncotenability. Noncotenability is standardly described in terms of exclusion of joint truth in a broadly Kaplanian framework. Against this standard model, it has recently been suggested that this kind of truth-based noncotenability – sometimes called “referential” noncotenability – is not sufficient for substantive disagreement. The reason for this is that substantive disagreement often seems to require a more fine-grained understanding of content. In this vein, Verdejo and de Donato-Rodríguez (2021) argue that disagreement is best characterized at the level of intension conceived of as Fregean sense, or mode of presentation. This paper agrees that referential noncotenability is not sufficient for disagreement. However, it argues against the conclusion that disagreement is best described at the level of Fregean sense. Contending that neither a referential nor a Fregean characterization covers all intuitive cases and thus fails to get the extension of “substantive disagreement” right –, the paper recommends a conceptual ethics approach to the notion of substantive disagreement. It argues that considerations stemming from the debate about peer disagreement in social epistemology should guide our delineation of this notion in philosophy of language.