The topic of “coded rhetoric” (often known as “dog whistles“) particularly in research on political discourse has become even more popular, probably due to the apparent increase in instances as well as in the easier access to computational tools for analysis. This is a fascinating use of keywords in its utilization of “hidden meanings” that hasn’t been well studied either in the information retrieval area of LIS research or in the more sociologically-oriented research of those employing Raymond Williams’ keyword analysis techniques, as both of these tend to focus on explicit meanings that either enable finding (for LIS) or illustrate societal issues (for sociology). Coded rhetoric, on the other hand, has intentional dual meanings: one that is apparently literal and can be interpreted as such by outsiders, while insiders are aware of the hidden meaning, which is intended to promote a particular perspective (and often a specific bias, most notably racism and xenophobia) while avoiding public scrutiny or online censorship. Such terms tend to have “plausible deniability” due to their double meaning, which is especially valuable to users in situations where their usage may be questionable or actually questioned by the media.
Coded rhetoric is perhaps more dangerous than people realize, in that other types of toxic language can be more easily identified. Mendelsohn and her colleagues have provided a typology of toxic language, including implicit hate speech, microagressions, dehumanization, propaganda, condescension, and stereotypes. “The Great Replacement,” for instance, as “theorized” by Renaud Camus in France and espoused by Tucker Carlson and other far-right extremists, is an unambiguously toxic term, as is the term “anchor baby” used to describe the children of undocumented residents in the U.S. Klofstad and colleagues found in their 2024 “Belief in White Replacement” survey that a third of the people surveyed “agree that leaders are replacing white people with people of color” despite the obvious falsity of this conspiracy theory. This is quite alarming, but such blatantly false rhetoric can at least be identified and potentially refuted, even as such terms creep into popular usage and even into library catalogs (though, thankfully, not into Library of Congress subject headings).
Coded rhetoric, however, in its very ambiguity can also contaminate otherwise useful terms. (One example of this is “inner city,” which is a well-known example of how certain U.S. politicians used the term to denote black residents of particular urban neighborhoods in order to denigrate them, but which is also a very useful geographic locator in its original sense, whether referring to archaeological digs in ancient ruins or mapping contemporary metropolitan areas.) Mendelsohn and colleagues found that large language models are currently unable to distinguish between neutral and biased use of specific terms, even when provided with glossaries of covert meanings of dog whistles, which has serious implications for algorithmic content moderation on the internet.
A chief concern of dog whistle researchers is, of course, the wide diffusion of this type of discourse made possible by the internet. Mathilda Akerlund examined the case of the Swedish term kulturberikare (“culture enricher” in English), which originated as a neo-Nazi term for immigrants during the 1980s as a reaction to the political proposal that increasing immigration would enrich Swedish culture by introducing new cultural practices and ideas. The term, however, became mainstreamed through the ensuing decades as a derogatory term for immigrants to Sweden, especially on social media sites friendly to the far-right, which often attached the label of kulturberikare to legitimate news stories about crime if the suspect was presumed to be an immigrant. Akerlund pointed out that it was necessary to employ critical discourse analytic techniques in order to differentiate between this use of the term and other, more benign uses by Swedish cultural heritage institutions, which used kulturell berikning (“cultural enrichment”) long before its hijacking by neo-Nazi writers and still continue to use it today.
Gabriel Weizman and Ari Ben Am explored the use of so-called “hate slang” and visual symbols on the internet to avoid being blocked by content moderators and algorithms. This often involves a coded use of ordinary terms to refer to particular groups, such as referring to Latinos as Yahoos and Muslims as Skittles, and the use of runes unintelligible to ordinary outsiders. Such codes allow the users to utilize social media platforms and gaming sites in order to draw in casual and curious viewers as well as committed insiders. Weizman and Ben Am conclude that “meaning is often propagated to new initiates by combining the new meaning with extant social media frameworks and example such as profile picture frames and common memes and structures to ensure that the shared basic understanding can be developed further by those interested by utilizing logic and hidden cues. In addition, new members that join the page are exposed to this content over time and slowly begin to understand the context themselves while also being aided by other members who explain the meaning of any given meme or post when requested. Far-right language and meaning transmission methods are integrative and often context-based with only occasional explicit explanations” (page 21).
Jennifer Saul of the University of Waterloo has recently published Dogwhistles and Figleaves, a book which expands considerably on her 2017 “Racial figleaves, the shifting boundaries of the permissible, and the rise of Donald Trump” and her other articles on pernicious discourse, and which further explores how the use of dog whistle terms, accompanied by modifiers (“figleaves”) that attempt to make such usage acceptable to those who are not already attuned to such dog whistles, enabling the term to diffuse further. Saul’s “figleaves” include well-known modifiers like “I’m not a (racist or xeonophobe or antisemite) but…” which allow listeners to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt, as is normal in polite conversation but which also tends to “normalize” the dog whistle term for further usage. As noted above, this is a complex topic that perplexes even linguists, exemplified by the example Saul gives of the Linguistic Society of America’s unsuccessful effort to remove Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker from their list of Fellows for, among other issues, his use of the term “urban violence” in his tweets referring to the work of several other scholars.
Although some commentators such as Patrick O’Donnell have observed that political discourse has increasingly discarded both dog whistles and figleaves (forms of what in 2001 Tali Mendelberg famously called the “Standard Framing” to avoid accusations of racism and which O’Donnell considers outdated) in favor of explicitly racist language (which he calls “candid racial communication”) that seems to have become increasingly acceptable in many discourse communities both in the U.S. and abroad. A 2023 experimental study by Thompson and Busby found that post-racist statement justifications, either by denying accusations of racist intent or by turning the “racist” accusation on their critics can “boost support for political figures and their policies. … Even in a changing racial environment, justifications work effectively to target resentful Whites while insulating elites from disapproval from other Americans. Our findings also have broader implications. First, they help explain why political figures continue to use racialized messages and unpack the rhetorical strategies these actors use to circumvent criticism about their statements. Second, more troubling, these studies indicate that even as racial norms shift in the United States, elected officials can continue to promote racialized policies at no political expense to themselves” (page 1259).
In his “Mating call, dog whistle, trigger: Asymmetric alignments, race, and the Use of reactionary religious rhetoric in American politics“, Samuel Perry (2023, page 57-58) adds to the metaphorical mix by noting that some coded rhetoric can be considered “mating calls” to attract like-minded people: “Although the dog whistle concept has potentially lost some usefulness as it has come to represent a nebulous array of subtle communication tactics, … [r]eligious dog whistles are appeals to an ethno-religious identity that allow for plausible deniability; yet the intention is consciously recognized by target audiences because of culturally specific knowledge. Dog whistles are connected to mating calls in that the former connects the concrete (political actors) to the abstract (ethno-cultural groups) by associating the latter with vague, shadowy enemies assaulting ethno-religious symbols and values… Lastly, growing research in the sociology of religion, political psychology, and social identity supports the idea that certain identities implicitly overlap substantially with others such that reference to one may unconsciously “prime” another. This is another use of the dog whistle concept that is best understood as something more cognitive and so implicit that its potential to activate a response can be hidden from the hearers as well (e.g., a trigger word for a hypnotized subject or sleeper agent). Within the context of asymmetrical political sorting and racialized religious identities, reactionary politicians who reference threats against “Christianity,” for example, may be triggering White audiences to perceive distinctly racial threats to status and safety—likely in ways that White audiences would themselves not recognize.”
In her “Dog whistles, covertly coded speech, and the practices that
enable them,” Anne Quaranto argues that investigating such problems requires a community-oriented approach: “Understanding how covertly coded speech works requires attending to the structure of the linguistic community, and to the histories of and interactions among that community’s and its sub-communities’ linguistic practices. From a purely individualistic, ahistorical, or utterance-level view, we misunderstand or even overlook how and when covertly coded speech is possible. Crucially, the explanatory purchase that comes with a practice-focused approach does so precisely via attention to the historical, social, and political details—that is, not by taking a synchronic view that assumes a single, monolithic linguistic practice, but rather by focusing on the relations between and structures of multiple interactive practices, practices that are temporally extended, socio-politically shaped, historically and materially embedded. Using this tool does involve shifting our focus away from particular utterances and individual speakers, but this doesn’t make the practice-focused approach incompatible with other approaches to meaning and communication. Focusing on practices is thus a way to extend our existing theories, not replace them. A variety of views of communication can and should make room for the notion of practices and attend to the structures and histories of our linguistic practices. Indeed, even individualist approaches that focus on speakers’ communicative intentions or hearers’ beliefs and inferences must ultimately appeal to facts about communities’ practices, in order to identify the enabling conditions of covertly coded speech and explain the distinctive features. … What our existing theories stand to gain from the practice-focused approach is an added tool in the philosophy of language toolkit—another mechanism for describing and understanding how we communicate,
send messages, get our hearers to believe (or at least entertain) something. Of course, covertly coded speech isn’t just theoretically significant, but also socially and politically significant, for covertly coded speech allows speakers to plausibly deny having sent a certain message. Though this paper has not focused on the sociopolitical significance, it’s clear that covertly coded speech is a dangerous tool in the hands of politicians who must build coalitions to be elected. Their use of covertly coded speech undermines the quality of our public discourse and trust in
our public figures, by excluding some members of a political candidate’s audience from being given as full and complete an access to that candidate’s positions as other members. But not using covertly coded speech is liable to preclude a candidate from winning their races against candidates who do use such speech, so it’s not enough to simply expect or demand that candidates abstain from covertly coded speech. As I’ve
argued, covertly coded speech relies on audience familiarity with certain practices. Without our competence in these practices, politicians couldn’t manipulate us with overtly coded speech. If indeed we find covertly coded speech harmful, then we as audiences have to do our part in recognizing, repudiating, and desisting from the covertly coded practices we may have unknowingly mastered” (pages 31-32).
I have to agree with Quaranto: for instance, the infamous “Willie Horton” trope of the 1988 presidential campaign apparently lives on in the minds of today’s voters, as demonstrated by Rachel Smilan-Goldstein’s recent study, “The gendered political consequences of racialized sexualized threats,” and it is only through awareness and resistance that we can overcome this kind of political manipulation and pollution of the public sphere.
Keywords In and Out of Context 