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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:2 (2025) ► pp.214–234

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The utility of (political) dogwhistles  – a life cycle perspective

ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Gothenburg.

Published online: 26 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23047.say
Abstract
The term dogwhistle refers to an expression conveying a message to a subset of an audience which is not perceived by the rest of the group, in addition to a primary meaning directed at the group at large. We follow up on previous work in linguistics and political communication on defining dogwhistles, taking into account how they likely function in real-life political contexts. We consider the utility of dogwhistles in terms of their sensitivity and their specificity, which allows us to consider dogwhistles in terms of an idealized “life cycle”, whose phases we describe in terms of a multi-dimensional utility tradeoff, described in terms of dogwhistle users, the benefit they expect to receive from dogwhistling, and the deniability of controversial dogwhistle meanings. We propose an approach for the longitudinal study of dogwhistles, and describe the first stages of an experiment to characterize dogwhistles in terms of their lexical properties.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Previous treatments of dogwhistles
  • 2.The concept of utility in the dogwhistle context
    • 2.1Dogwhistle users and participants
    • 2.2Dogwhistle sensitivity and specificity
      • 2.2.1Deniability
    • 2.3In-groups, out-groups, and “hostile” out-groups
    • 2.4Realizing dogwhistle benefits
  • 3.Parts of the life cycle
    • 3.1Rise
    • 3.2Decline
  • 4.Empirical grounding and future work
  • References
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Howes, Christine, Ellen Breitholtz & Vladimir Maraev
2025. “We could shoot him…”. Pragmatics & Cognition 32:1 ► pp. 208 ff. DOI logo
Young, Jennifer
2025. Dogwhistles, Discrimination, Humour and the Law: Regulating Implicit Messaging. Open Library of Humanities 11:2 DOI logo
Lindgren, Elina, Björn Rönnerstrand, Gregor Rettenegger, Ellen Breitholtz, Robin Cooper & Asad Sayeed
2024. Coded Appeals and Political Gains: Exploring the Impact of Racial Dogwhistles on Political Support. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly DOI logo

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