Research Project

Dogwhistles are a type of bi-level speech act that feature a surface, semantic meaning alongside an implicit secondary meaning that is designed to inappropriately, oftentimes pejoratively, and deniably mention some social group. They are particularly salient in political discourse as their ability to give ingroups, who believe in the content delivered by the secondary meaning, a means of escaping the social sanction their language would otherwise incur. This paper analyzes the usage of dogwhistles and how they function as part of conversation through the lens of conversational environments, defined as the broad collection of features and norms that unify different types of conversation, while focusing on political conversation in contrast to day-to-day conversation. I argue that politicians’ dogwhistle usage differs from ordinary citizen’s usage in both usage and effect, and that the different means of interacting with politicians, in combination with lower discursive standards allow for a more cleanly justified calling out process.