Trust, credibility, and injustice › Listening Can Mitigate a Structural Wrong

The structural character of hermeneutical injustice does not make individual listening irrelevant. Fricker's hermeneutical justice involves sensitivity to the possibility that difficulty communicating reflects impoverished shared resources. A hearer may need to adjust or suspend a credibility judgment instead of treating an account's unfamiliarity as evidence against the speaker. The introduction, page 7, explicitly describes this response.

In the reporting example, a manager could invite a concrete description before insisting that it fit an existing category. The manager could acknowledge that the form might be inadequate without immediately accepting every interpretation the employee proposes. That response keeps inquiry open while avoiding a premature verdict about the speaker's competence. It is an application of the virtue's purpose, rather than a claim that sympathetic listening repairs the entire institution.

Fricker also emphasizes the need for institutions to possess virtues of epistemic justice. Her conclusion, pages 176–177, names institutions including employers and public bodies, while recognizing the book's primary focus on ethical conduct. Institutional reform is therefore compatible with her project. It would misrepresent the account to say that its remedy consists solely of making individual listeners nicer.