We assume that democracy is a straightforward matter of giving everyone a voice, but this misunderstands how fragile communication really is. Philosopher Mary Kate McGowan argues that the legitimacy of our political system is undermined not by censorship, but by the “silent” barriers of internal suppression, misinterpreted meaning, and testimonial injustice. By exposing how communication across difference can go wrong and the patterns of who this affects, she argues that democracy’s crisis isn’t that we cannot speak—it’s that we cannot hear each other, and often don’t try.
A healthy democracy relies on communication. We each need to be able to freely discuss issues of public concern, criticize the government if we so choose, and tell our elected representatives what we want them to do. Arguably, the legitimacy of a democracy depends on these communications flowing smoothly and effectively. Any significant barrier to these communications would undermine the very kinds of political participation that justify the democratic enterprise. Some of these barriers are obvious; others, quieter and more pervasive, distort the conditions of speech in ways that are harder to detect but no less harmful to democratic life. We ought to be aware of them, consider how to remedy them, and evaluate their import for the legitimacy of the democracies in which they obtain.
There are familiar—and it seems justified—forms of speech regulation all around us. In the U.S., for example, where we have a very strong commitment to free speech, the law nevertheless prohibits communicative acts that constitute crimes (e.g., criminal solicitation and insider trading). Speech is also implicitly regulated in many areas of life. Consider the workplace: if a waitress were to routinely scream at her customers for requesting a water refill, she would be reprimanded and perhaps even fired. We do not expect a surgeon and a layperson to have an equal say in the operating room, nor do we expect every voice to carry equal weight in a physics lab. In these specialized domains, we rely on epistemic authority to decide who is worth listening to. Job performance is measured in many ways by what you say and how you say it. For the most part, though, we take these barriers to communication to be warranted and hence unworrying.
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We don’t tend to notice what doesn’t happen, what isn’t said, and what results from internal cost calculations in the minds of other people..
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Democracy, however, presents a unique challenge to this logic. Unlike medicine or physics, democracy is built on the premise that there is no “expert” in the lived experience of citizenship. It assumes a straightforward equality where everyone has a voice. And when dissidents in authoritarian regimes remain silent, they do so not out of a lack of expertise but in order to avoid things like prison or death. This kind of speech interference is decidedly anti-democratic; it also involves a choice, even if it’s not much of a choice: remain silent or face extreme punishment. Fortunately for us, this doesn’t happen (much?) in liberal democracies, but there are plenty of other cases of speakers deciding to hold their tongues (in order to avoid the anticipated negative consequences of speaking) that do. They matter, and they can be somewhat hidden from view.
Legal scholar and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw has shown that women of color tend to refrain from reporting domestic violence out of fear that the only result of doing so would be to reinforce negative stereotypes about Black men being disposed to violence. This is a form of self-silencing; it involves an internal cost-benefit analysis of speaking one’s truth. With political polarization on the rise, many of us avoid discussing politics outside of our epistemic bubbles. The potential cost of doing so (extreme misunderstanding, angry outbursts, vilification, social shunning, broken relationships, or even just cognitive and emotional fatigue) just isn’t worth it. This is bad for democracy. It means that the very kinds of political discussions central to civic participation are less and less likely to happen; the expression of political opinions—arguably a main reason to embrace a free speech principle in the first place—is being systematically shut down. These decisions against engaging across political difference are happening a lot and, in any individual case, they can be quite difficult to detect. After all, we don’t tend to notice what doesn’t happen, what isn’t said, and what results from internal cost calculations in the minds of other people.
Even when we do decide to speak, misunderstandings are significantly more likely to happen when attempting to communicate across various kinds of difference. This is primarily because communication is highly inferential. When we use language to communicate, we rarely say what we primarily mean. Instead, we say something else that enables our interlocutor to figure out what we primarily mean. Consider this. Jane works with Sarah, and a mutual friend Tom asks how Jane is performing, and Sarah responds: “Well, the divorce is really distracting her.” Sarah conveys considerably more here than what she literally says. Sarah conveys that Jane is getting divorced; the divorce has impacted her a lot, and it has undermined her job performance. Sarah conveys all of these things without actually saying any of them. Moreover, Tom is easily able to recognize that Sarah means all of these things; he infers her intended meaning by relying on a whole host of things, including (but not limited to) the literal meaning of what she does say, the conversational context in which she says it, shared background information, his ability to reason through it, and the cooperative nature of conversation.
All of this happens quickly; we’re barely conscious of doing it; we do it all day long, and our brains have evolved to do it remarkably well. But, as skilled as we are, we don’t always get it right and some of our interpretive mistakes go undetected.
Imagine this: Pete’s Black Lives Matter sign is found face down on his front lawn; indignant, he mentions this to his (politically conservative) neighbor, Laura, who responds, with a bit of a jab in her tone and facial expression, “Looks better that way, Pete, to be perfectly honest.” Pete is horrified by Laura’s response; he takes Laura to be clearly and unapologetically rejecting the sentiment behind his sign; Laura notices his reaction, takes it to be an overreaction—that’s perfectly compatible with her view of Pete as a sanctimonious twit—so she shrugs her shoulders and walks away. Pete is further upset by her dismissive reaction to his reaction; he is also completely mistaken regarding what Laura meant by what she said. She meant only to express her frustration with the laziness and hypocrisy of people who do nothing more for racial justice than place inert signs in their yards. In saying what she said, Laura fully expected Pete to recognize what she meant; she thought he knew things (about her anti-racist activism and the broader political climate) that he apparently did not know. In this case, Pete and Laura each acted in good faith; each left the interaction thinking they got it right, and each overestimated how much background information was actually shared. Such misunderstandings are more likely to happen when speaking to people who are different from us in some important way, and such miscommunications across political difference—especially when they go undetected—are also damaging to democracy.
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If a speaker is misunderstood, that speaker’s utterance is unlikely to impact the world as intended. Sincere assertions mistaken for lies are not going to be believed. Sexual refusals mistaken for coy flirtation are not going to be respected.
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Misidentified speaker meaning is not the only way that a communication attempt can go awry. Speech actions can also be misinterpreted. When a woman’s (perhaps polite) objection is interpreted as an expression of confusion and thus an implicit request for help, men take themselves to have been invited to explain things to her. Such mansplaining, as it is called, is all too familiar. It’s also a kind of microaggression: insulting, stressful, and exhausting, microaggressions are also no doubt present in all manner of political participation. And it stands to reason, then, that a justified desire to avoid them will decrease the political participation of those targeted, thereby leading to even more marginalization.
Another way that communication can go awry is when it is prevented from impacting the world as it should. We use language as a tool for affecting the world around us. Assertions share knowledge; warnings protect friends; apologies repair relationships; orders get things done, and refusals prohibit the impermissible. When these effects are prevented, communication is thwarted in yet another way. It’s probably no surprise to learn that the claims of some groups of people are given more credibility than they deserve while the assertions of others are systematically devalued. The unwarranted amplification of some voices, combined with the improper inhibition of others, leads to what philosophers call testimonial injustice. This is an alarming and unjust imbalance of epistemic authority and resources; it’s also damaging to democracy. It means that many sorts of voices are not able to influence the political process as they should, and this is anti-democratic.
These kinds of communication mishaps—sometimes called silencing—also interact with one another in complex ways. If a speaker is misunderstood, that speaker’s utterance is unlikely to impact the world as intended. Sincere assertions mistaken for lies are not going to be believed. Sexual refusals mistaken for coy flirtation are not going to be respected. Similarly, if a speaker anticipates being misunderstood in any one of these ways or if she believes that her utterance is futile, she might well decide not to speak at all. These are not mere abstract possibilities; for too many of us, they are a lived reality.
What is to be done? Let’s distinguish between the depressed political participation of marginalized groups and the suppression of effective communication across political difference; the remedies for these must be different. The former can only be solved by changing the social norms, the norms regarding who counts as what and who is treated how. The law can be an important tool in this regard, but it can only reach so far. As individuals, we are limited, but one thing we can do is shape the norms in our micro-environments, in our homes, classrooms, neighborhoods, and workplaces. As more and more of us do this, it can reshape norms at the broader social level. With respect to the latter, I recommend actively seeking to understand the views and justifications of those with whom you disagree, consuming journalistically responsible sources, fact-checking your feeds, and practicing epistemic and communicative humility; always be aware of the possibility that you might be wrong and that you might be misinterpreting those around you. These communicative failures are largely invisible to our existing political and legal categories—no single agent is to blame, no law is broken—and this invisibility is precisely what makes them so durable. The health of our democracy depends on our willingness to see them.
Mary Kate McGowan
Mary Kate McGowan is an American philosopher who is the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s Studies as well as Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College.
