Hit-and-Run Speech Acts
Lynne Tirrell · 2025
Abstract Classic accounts of conversation show the role of responsibility, mutual engagement, and cooperation in our talk exchanges. This chapter addresses the degradation of conversational norms and discursive responsibility by introducing the concept of hit-and-run speech acts and their twin, drive-by speech acts, to enhance our analysis of accountability for speech online. It draws analogies between offline and online hit-and-run speech acts and their intersections in actual cases. Tracking whether one is being spoken-at, spoken-to, or spoken-with helps illuminate kinds of encounters and dimensions of audience. Attention to speaker and hearer responsibilities in these contexts offers insights about the fraught issue of online counterspeech. It briefly concludes with concerns about the power of online speech to degrade discursive practices and norms of responsibility for speech offline.