It was just a joke!’ Comedy and freedom of speech

Bibliographic Data

ID6260211
AuthorsSimeon Goldstraw (0000-0002-5386-131X, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume24
Issue3
Pages313-334
Publication date2025-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-8851 • E-ISSN: 1741-2730
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14748851231205375
OpenAlexW4387575992
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited42

Debates about controversial comedy are rife in public discourse. However, despite a great interest in wider issues surrounding freedom of expression, political philosophers have had curiously little to say about comedy. This is a costly omission because in mainstream public debates, many of the worries about the potential harms of comedy are often confused or conflated, and both the defences of comedians to use controversial material and calls for censorship of such material are usually under-theorised. This paper takes a step towards correcting this oversight by explaining the potential harms of comedy and identifying who should be held responsible for these harms. By transposing existing work on hate speech, three harms of comedy are diagnosed: that it can cause status harms, that it can silence speakers, and that it can motivate violence. Using linguistic theory and the philosophy of language, the paper argues that often, it is audience members and third parties who ought to be held morally responsible for these harms, and therefore, that comedians are not usually under moral duties to modify their comedic expression, even if it is harmful

Aesthetics · Art · Blasphemy · Censorship · Comedy · Joke · Literature · Mainstream · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Silence · Sociology · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Philosophy · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

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