Common Ground, Conversational Roles and Epistemic Injustice

Abstract

People partaking in a conversation can add to the common ground of said conversation by performing different speech acts. That is, they can influence which propositions are presumed to be shared among them. In this paper, I am going to apply the common ground framework to the phenomenon of epistemic injustice. In doing so, I am going to focus on two kinds of speech acts: making assertions and asking certain kinds of questions. And I am going to look at three varieties of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice, inquiring injustice and interpretative injustice. I am going to argue that what all these varieties of epistemic injustice have in common is that they unfairly inhibit the speaker’s ability to add to the common ground in the way intended by her. This in turn negatively affects which conversational roles a speaker can play in a given conversation. Based on these results, I am going to end by looking at some of the harms that epistemic injustice inflicts upon its victims.