The appealing power of dogwhistles: a new speech-act theoretic approach

Harmful speech has evolved into more strategic mechanisms enabling speakers to implicitly spread controversial ideas without facing backlash. One such mechanism is through so-called dogwhistles. While there has been growing awareness of the potentially harmful consequences of dogwhistles, it is still unclear what dogwhistles exactly are and how they work. In order to combat the pernicious power of dogwhistles, we need to have a proper understanding of what we are dealing with first. Whereas previous work has mainly focused on the expressions used by speakers as dogwhistles, I propose a new speech-act theoretic account of dogwhistles, shifting the focus to the actions performed by speakers when using such expressions. This thesis sets out to formulate a theoretically sound conceptualization of dogwhistles, as well as account for the processes through which dogwhistles convey meaning. As will become clear, however, dogwhistles are a tricky phenomenon that cannot be adequately...Show moreHarmful speech has evolved into more strategic mechanisms enabling speakers to implicitly spread controversial ideas without facing backlash. One such mechanism is through so-called dogwhistles. While there has been growing awareness of the potentially harmful consequences of dogwhistles, it is still unclear what dogwhistles exactly are and how they work. In order to combat the pernicious power of dogwhistles, we need to have a proper understanding of what we are dealing with first. Whereas previous work has mainly focused on the expressions used by speakers as dogwhistles, I propose a new speech-act theoretic account of dogwhistles, shifting the focus to the actions performed by speakers when using such expressions. This thesis sets out to formulate a theoretically sound conceptualization of dogwhistles, as well as account for the processes through which dogwhistles convey meaning. As will become clear, however, dogwhistles are a tricky phenomenon that cannot be adequately accounted for from a speaker-centric perspective on meaning. In this thesis, I will therefore introduce a new class of appellative speech acts, whose meanings are co-contributed by the hearer. Using this theoretical framework, I define dogwhistles as an appellative speech act with the illocutionary force of simultaneously appealing to multiple ideologically diverse audiences in their own right.Show less

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The appealing power of dogwhistles: a new speech-act theoretic approach