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Article published In:
Hate speech: Definitions, interpretations and practices
Edited by Fabienne H. Baider, Sharon Millar and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics and Society 11:2] 2020
► pp. 316–335

Civil courage as a communicative act

Countering the harms of hate violence

| Lancaster University

Hate violence which denigrates a person’s social identity whether it involves physical or verbal aggression off or online – is a communicative act. It transmits a message to the victim that they are devalued and unwelcome. It is a marginalising and exclusionary message. Answering back to hate violence by challenging hateful expression is one way of responding. It is a form of ‘civil courage’. Yet why should anybody want to take a stand and speak out – given the risks involved that perpetrators might turn on those who intervene or respond in some other way? This paper proposes that the importance of civil courage goes beyond being the right thing to do, or the humane thing, when a bystander witnesses hate violence off- or online. Instead, if we comprehend hate violence as a communicative act, and if we understand the particular impact of the exclusionary message it sends (and understand how bystander inaction can magnify the felt sense of social exclusion), then we might appreciate the potential value of an act of civil courage in response. There is a moral imperative for civil courage as it answers back to hate violence by sending an inclusionary message to the victim – as reasoned in this paper.

Keywords: hate speech, hate crime, communicative acts, exclusion, inclusion, civil courage
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Hate violence and the need to strengthen ‘civil courage’
    • 1.1Civil courage in the face of hate violence
  • 2.The measurable hurts of hate violence
  • 3.Why does hate hurt?
  • 4.Why does social exclusion hurt?
  • 5.Bystander inaction hurts even more
  • 6.The meaning of civil courage
  • 7.Implications and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18075.iga
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