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Wittgenstein' Semiotic Referentiality and Verbal Sexual Harassment
Wittgenstein' Semiotic Referentiality and Verbal Sexual Harassment
Wittgenstein' Semiotic Referentiality and Verbal Sexual Harassment
Verbal sexual harassments happens when a sexually motivated person throw verbal
remarks on another person whom he/she may know or not. In the Philippines, statistics
can prove that the usual victims of sexual harassments are women. And the most
rampant way of them being abused it through catcalling. Catcalling can be defined as a
verbal sexual harassment done by calling someone beyond who he/she is for sexual
pleasures or favors. An example is, but not limited to, calling an adult who is not named
“baby” as “baby”. This type of harassment led to different laws, ordinances, and
pending bills to be enacted and enforced to coerce such kind of actions. However, with
the foregoing situation of offensement by catcalling, perpetrators would argue that they
do not actually mean to sexually offend the victim but rather just randomly address
others people with words which meaning is defined by the objects they signify.
Given the definition of catcalling, one can ask if the referentiality theory can be applied
to analyze the excuse of the offenders that they merely mean the the object of the word
they say and therefore, not sexually driven. For Wittgenstein, meaning of words does
not simply rely on the object a word pertains to. A word like “honey” does not simply
pertain to the sweet liquid product made by honey bees. A word like “baby” does not
always pertain to a person on stage of infancy. He argued that words does not
necessarily need to have a definition for it to be useful. Therefore, it can go beyond the
boundaries of definition and can be used to pertain to other things. He also argued that
a word can express different meaning because a word can be expressed in different
ways. His central thesis is that the meaning of a word depends on the way it will be
used, considering the distinctions made by someone who said it.
In this case, offenders of catcalling cannot simply say that they are throwing words in
the air that whose meaning are merely what it is in the ordinary sense of understanding
it, a meaning of it being signified by an object. But one cannot also simply assert that an
offender of catcalling is really saying words which are sexually motivated. This will
depend on the timing, context, and situation it was said. For Wittgenstein, he just
expanded our conception of meaning, that it is not merely a one-to-one correspondence
but relies on the distinction and usage of words.
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