Abstract Language is a remarkably efficient tool for transmitting information. Yet human
speakers make statements that are inefficient, imprecise, or even contrary to their own …

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 …

The paper focuses on the semantics and pragmatics of dogwhistles, namely expressions
that send one message to an outgroup while at the same time sending a second (often …

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of so-called covert dogwhistles. I discuss
whether a covert dogwhistle is a specific sort of mechanism of manipulation or whether, on …

Recent work at the interface of semantics and sociolinguistics showed that listeners reason
about the semantic/pragmatic properties of linguistic utterances to draw social inferences …

Cant is important for understanding advertising, comedies and dog-whistle politics.
However, computational research on cant is hindered by a lack of available datasets. In this …

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to
address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates …

Conspiracy theories are powerful narratives that can decisively shape people's
understandings of the world. Despite a long-standing scholarly interest, however, they have …

Jennifer Saul articulates the notion of a figleaf, which is an utterance that blocks the
inference (that would otherwise be warranted) that the speaker has violated the relevant …

Here's the three-word version of this paper: dogwhistles aren't dogwhistles. Let's add to the
definition of dogwhistles, then, that their secondary content isn't necessarily a secret shared …