1 A structural explanation of injustice in conversations: It’s about norms Saray Ayala-López California State University Sacramento – ayala@csus.edu Draft. Forthcoming in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. Abstract In contrast to individualistic explanations of social injustice that appeal to implicit attitudes, structural explanations are unintuitive: they appeal to entities that lack clear ontological status, and the explanatory mechanism is similarly unclear. This makes structural explanations unappealing. The present work proposes a structural explanation of one type of injustice that happens in conversations, discursive injustice. This proposal meets two goals. First, it satisfactorily accounts for the specific features of this particular kind of injustice; and second, it articulates a structural explanation that overcomes their unattractiveness. The main idea is that discursive injustice is not the result of biased interlocutors, but of problematic discursive norms. 0. Intro In the current debate on explanations of social injustice we find two important elements. First, individuals’ explicit and implicit attitudes towards those who are the target of injustice; and second, social structures and the material reality beyond individuals’ minds that constraint individuals’ judgements, decisions and actions. Depending on the explanatory weight given to each of these elements, explanations of social injustice lean towards either the individualistic or the structural side of the spectrum. Individualistic approaches proceed by identifying causally relevant mental states in individuals’ minds. Jennifer Saul (2013), for example, has argued that what