Stanley Fish argues that "there is no such thing as free speech". Not only do I disagree, but I think that there are some substantial flaws with both his argument and his reasoning. He seems to say that the only way speech is truly free is if it is some absent, abstract, nonsensical speech which deviates from the norm, which he calls weightless situations. Oddly enough the thing that came to mind for me is the scene in Anchorman when Ron Burgundy and his crew are discussing the new female reporter, and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) says "I just burned my tongue". Completely out out place, out of context, it bothers me to think that this is the only time when speech is truly free (seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiHdL-6U4Sk).
Later, he goes on to note that once speech is given for a reason, it thus negates all other possible reasons it could be given, constraining the previously "free" speech. By this logic, only speech that is given completely without reason is free speech. But after reading that, I realized that it's not an issue with what he says that I have, but that we are essentially speaking two different languages. Fish has a substantial lexical confusion with what the rest of us call "free speech". He considers speech without purpose free. Thus he is referring to whatever was said itself as free. Nowadays, we consider free speech the ability to speak freely. It's not that we speak without purpose, it's that we have the freedom to designate for a purpose whatever it is we want to say. This lexical confusion, for me, makes his argument seem much less plausible and coherent
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