Dog Whistle Research Articles

Go home (6 Jan 2021)

Abstract The imperative go home represents a prominent part of a video message sent to the armed assaulters on Capitol Hill by the then-President of the United States on 6 January 2021 via Twitter. The paper aims to investigate to what extent this expression can be read as an ambiguous dog-whistle, and how an additional interpretation beyond the conventional meaning ‘return to your private homes’ can be justified. It is precisely the hidden nature of the potential additional message that illustrates a general issue of ambiguity research and pragmatics, i.e., the question of how plausible utterance meanings can be identified. To approach these questions, the paper focuses on the general communicative setting, prior communication between Trump and his supporters, and on linguistic features of the message (personal reference and semantic frames). Different types of interpretative openness are discussed to refine the analyses, and a broad approach to ambiguity is adopted that includes interpretations that are not (yet) conventionalised. The final part of the paper argues that the simultaneous orientation to multiple addressee groups represents a key feature of Trump’s message, which is reflected by a coexistence of different speaker instances. Comparing the example to classical examples of dog whistles, it will be classified as an accomplice whistle. The case study highlights the importance of multiple addressing in media-based communication, and the potential of linking ambiguity research and multiple addressing, considering different addressee groups with potentially strongly diverging backgrounds, interests, and modalities of interpretation.

The neural mechanisms of race priming in American politics

Abstract What are the psychological mechanisms of racial “dog whistles” in American politics? Literature on race priming in American politics argues when race is primed implicitly, racial biases influence political evaluations, but when race is made salient, individuals can use controlled processing to inhibit automatic biases and abide by egalitarian norms. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes have yet to be examined directly. In a 2 × 2 within-groups experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examine these neural mechanisms. We find brain areas associated with conflict detection, evaluative processing, and controlled processing are more active when race is primed explicitly rather than implicitly, as expected, although we do not find substantial brain activation associated with automatic responses to be more active during implicit than explicit primes. Results are discussed in terms of understanding how racial cues influence political evaluations while considering America’s ever-changing racial norms.

White by Another Name? Can Anti-Christian Bias Claims Serve as a Racial Dog Whistle?

Four preregistered experiments (N = 4,307) explored whether anti-Christian bias claims can discreetly signal White allyship among Christian American adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, reading about anti-Christian bias led White, but not Black, Christians to perceive more anti-White bias. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate the connection between Christian and White can be leveraged by politicians in the form of a racial dog whistle. In Experiment 3, White Christians perceived a politician concerned about anti-Christian bias as caring more about anti-White bias and more willing to fight for White people (relative to a control). This politician was also perceived as less offensive than a politician concerned about anti-White bias. In Experiment 4, Black Christians perceived a politician concerned about anti-Christian bias as less offensive than one concerned about anti-White bias yet still unlikely to fight for Black people. Results suggest “anti-Christian bias” can provide a relatively palatable way to signal allegiance to White people.

Abnormal in Alberta: The Genealogy of “Severely Normal” as a Biopolitical Dog Whistle

The phrase “severely normal” was often used by Premier Ralph Klein in 1990s’ Alberta to describe the Albertans he wished to interpellate, and it has had enduring power as a dog whistle by the political right in the province. Against commentators who see it as only a facile populist gesture, in this article the author deploys Foucault’s lectures on “racism against the abnormal,” together with Ladelle McWhorter’s interpretation, to argue that there is a historical and conceptual continuity to “severely normal” that ties back to Alberta’s infamous eugenic history. Articulating this genealogy enables the connection of political struggles on the part of sexual minorities, disabled people, members of non-normative families, and Indigenous people and illuminates the biopolitical rhetoric of successive Conservative governments.

Bringing Down the Scaremongers: Venezuelan Diaspora as a Dog Whistle in Colombia's 2022 Presidential Election

This article examines how the Venezuelan diaspora has been portrayed in the media during the Colombian presidential election of 2022 and how it has influenced voters' preferences there. It examines presidential debates and conversations on X (formerly Twitter), as well as traditional legacy media and digital natives' media material. The authors used a population‐based sample of 17,372 articles on the 2022 elections to analyse data from a stratified sample. Our findings point to a potential socio‐political turning point away from the social imaginary that had been equating Venezuelan realities with leftist ideologies in Colombia and other parts of Latin America.

Health Law and Bigotry Distractions.

Bigotry distractions are strategic invocations of racism, transphobia, or negative stigma toward other marginalized groups to shape political discourse. Although the vast majority of Americans agree on large policy issues ranging from reducing air pollution to prosecuting corporate crime, bigotry distractions divert attention from areas of agreement toward divisive identity issues. This article explores how the nefarious targeting of identity groups through bigotry distractions may be the tallest barrier to health reform, and social change more broadly. The discussion extends the literature on dog whistles, strategic racism, and scapegoating.

Currents of Innuendo Converge on an American Path to Political Hate

Abstract Uses of innuendo such as enthymemes, sarcasm, and dog whistles by politicians and the resulting interlineal readings available to some listeners gave us an early warning about the type of relationship that has now obtained between Christianity and politics, and specifically the rise of Christian Nationalism as facilitated by President Donald Trump. I argue that two currents of indirectness in American politics, one religious and the other racial, have converged like tributaries leading to a larger body of water.

Biased Evaluative Descriptions

AbstractIn this essay I identify a type of linguistic phenomenon new to feminist philosophy of language: biased evaluative descriptions. Biased evaluative descriptions are descriptions whose well-intended positive surface meanings are inflected with implicitly biased content. Biased evaluative descriptions are characterized by three main features: (1) they have roots in implicit bias or benevolent sexism, (2) their application is counterfactually unstable across dominant and subordinate social groups, and (3) they encode stereotypes. After giving several different kinds of examples of biased evaluative descriptions, I distinguish them from similar linguistic concepts, including backhanded compliments, slurs, insults, epithets, pejoratives, and dog whistles. I suggest that the traditional framework of Gricean implicature cannot account for biased evaluative descriptions. I discuss some challenges to the distinctiveness and evaluability of biased evaluative descriptions, including intersectional social identities. I conclude by discussing their social significance and moral status. Identifying biased evaluative descriptions is important for a variety of social contexts, from the very general and broad (political speeches) to the very particular and small (bias in academic hiring).

A Burglar of the Better Sort: Poems, Dramatic Works, Theoretical Writings

A Burglar of the Better Sort: Poems, Dramatic Works, Theoretical Writings

:Hunde in der römischen Antike: Rassen/Typen - Zucht - Haltung und Verwendung

:<i>Hunde in der römischen Antike: Rassen/Typen - Zucht - Haltung und Verwendung</i>

‘Power besieged and power protected’: Conservative uses of COVID-19 to attack Black Lives Matter

This essay discusses uses of COVID-19 by American conservatives to attack the legitimacy of demonstrations against racial injustice in the United States following the murder of George Floyd. The essay considers the conflation of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter in journalism published by conservative media organization The Daily Wire, situating its reportage within a tradition of conservative movement racial politics from Barry Goldwater to Donald Trump. During summer 2020, conservative responses to COVID-19 expanded the discursive spheres in which racialized conflict played out, exemplifying the diffuse and pervasive nature of White backlash politics in contemporary movement conservatism and the continuity of that discourse with patterns established during earlier periods of civil rights struggle. After Floyd’s murder, conservative voices utilized COVID-19 as a racialized wedge, dividing those Americans characterized as authentic and deserving citizens from civil rights protestors and their supporters whose actions were presented as subversive of the legitimate body politic. The essay shows how these treatments of COVID-19 sit within conservative ‘dog whistle’ traditions of the later twentieth century – massaging White resentments without appearing to talk explicitly about race – while simultaneously, in a rhetoric characteristic of the post-Tea Party alt-Right, openly disclosing the politics of racial polarization and exclusion such traditions were once intended to obfuscate or encode.

Mating Call, Dog Whistle, Trigger: Asymmetric Alignments, Race, and the Use of Reactionary Religious Rhetoric in American Politics

Asymmetric social alignments are transforming American partisan rhetoric, particularly how politicians leverage identity-based appeals. For example, asymmetric religious, racial, and ideological alignments within the Republican party now make reactionary religious rhetoric increasingly strategic. Focusing on that case, I propose a novel conceptual model to understand what such rhetoric aims to accomplish. Reactionary religious rhetoric advertises, appeals, and activates on a spectrum from overt to subconscious registers, which I explain using three metaphors: mating call, dog whistle, and trigger. Within a context of asymmetrical partisan “sorting,” Christian nationalist rhetoric overtly advertises partisanship (mating call). Rhetoric deploying encoded terms like “Christian” and “socialist” appeals to ethno-culture, connecting specific political opponents to abstract ethno-religious threats (dog whistle). Lastly, research on overlapping identities increasingly suggests rhetoric involving threats to “Christianity” may unconsciously activate White racial threat (trigger). I consider applications of this conceptual model to growing political appeals to nationalist and populist identities.

Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco

Book Review| December 01 2022 Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy by Vanessa Rocco. Bloomsbury (sb 2022) 216 pp. $31.45, ISBN 1350284246; (hb 2020) 210 pp. $99.00, ISBN 1501347063. Maud Lavin Maud Lavin Maud Lavin is professor emerita at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her most recent book, co-edited with Ling Yang and Jing Jamie Zhao, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols, was nominated for a Lambda award. An earlier book, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (1993), was named a New York Times Notable Book. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2022) 49 (4): 59–63. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2022.49.4.59 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Maud Lavin; Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco. Afterimage 1 December 2022; 49 (4): 59–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2022.49.4.59 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search Fascism is an art built on propaganda as well as economically reactionary policies. In the 1920s, ’30s, and early ’40s in Europe, in its rise, rootedness, growth, and continuance as a political system, fascism grew as a radical allegiance to ultranationalism, to racism including antisemitism, and to dictatorship. It has since been copied and updated in extreme right-wing movements in Europe and the United States, movements that announce their historical ties to the original fascists either indirectly through dog whistles (Trumpism, specifically with Donald Trump’s praising of such American groups as the Proud Boys) or directly with, say, Nazi emblems (neo-Nazis in Germany, even though these emblems are illegal for public display). The term also applies to genocidal dictators such as Vladimir Putin. The art of fascist propaganda has fed, and still does feed, adherence to fascist beliefs such as white superiority. Although modes of production and dissemination, most meaningfully... You do not currently have access to this content.

A Blueprint for Genetic Determinism

A Blueprint for Genetic Determinism

Bookshelf: Kappan authors on their favorite reads

In this regular column, Kappan authors recommend books and articles that have influenced them. Emily Hodge’s book is Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney López, which she says makes concrete and explicit how politicians can activate and exploit people’s fear for their own political gain. Jack Schneider’s choice is Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. The book, he says, helped him understand the relationship between educational policy and practice in new ways.

Who are the Real Top Dogs and the Real Underdogs?

Three predominant explanations have been offered for the success of Donald Trump: first, that increased Republican support was based on a backlash against Democratic centrists and “elites” who had abandoned the working class by advocating neoliberal economic policies; second, that Trump and his supporters used racism, sexism, xenophobia and other “dog whistles” to create a backlash among white voters; and third, that support for Trump was based on misinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda promoted by various media and online outlets. While all three interpretations reflect some degree of accuracy, the common threads are that Trump supporters are seen as victims or underdogs, struggling against powerful “top dogs” who pose an existential threat to their livelihoods, culture, and social standing. In this article, we first address this question of underdogs versus top dogs, using the framework presented by William Dugger and other institutionalist economics to describe the consequences of liberal capitalism. We then ask whether these categories of “elite” and “populist” are mutually exclusive and all inclusive. We conclude by offering some thoughts on whether use of this terminology has muddled the basic understanding of the economic transformation that the United States is experiencing at this present time.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Dog whistles, covertly coded speech, and the practices that enable them

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate.

It's All about the Benjamins!

It's All about the Benjamins!

Dog Whistles and Work Hours: The Political Activation of Labor Market Discrimination

Many commentators have suggested that Donald Trump's 2016 election emboldened discrimination against racial minorities. We focus on changes in weekly work hours among hourly paid employees during the five months following the 2016 election (relative to 12 months prior). Using two-wave panel data from the Current Population Survey, we find that black workers suffered temporary work hours and earnings losses relative to white workers in areas where Trump received greater electoral support. There were no within-person declines among non-Hispanic whites in high-Trump-support areas or among any groups in lower-Trump-support areas. These patterns are not driven by seasonality, industrial composition, or pre-election trends, suggesting that Trump's victory exacerbated racial disparities where he received strong electoral support. The findings reveal how political events can catalyze surges of discriminatory behavior in labor markets over the short to medium term, and they provide new evidence about the effects of Trump's early presidency on U.S. race relations.