Politics

Shouting Your Pronouns in a Crowded Theater

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This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire

By Dave Barfield
Real Clear Wire

The following is a condensed version of “Shouting Your Pronouns in a Crowded Theater” by Dave Barfield, published at Law & Liberty.

Let’s try out a thought experiment. Imagine you’re in a crowded theater and someone yells, “Fire!” What happens? People flee the room in a panic. Rightly so. Now let me change the question slightly. When someone yells, “Fire!” what happens linguistically?

According to philosopher J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory in his influential book How to Do Things with Words, three things occur:  locution,

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