How someone detects dog whistling?

[DiegoPalacios]

So.....in the latest week, some people have mentioned dog whistling in some recent topics, and that got me curious......

Of course i am talking about the political message related definition.

How it is possible to detect dog whistling?, is there any concrete method to achieve this and how you prove it?

[Dane_Sherbet]

Dog whistles use language which appears normal to the majority, but which communicate specific things to intended audiences. They are generally used to convey messages on issues likely to provoke controversy without attracting negative attention. One example may be use of a phrase such as family values to signal to Christians that a candidate would support policies promoting Christian values, without alienating non-Christian supporters.[1] Another may be the use of the phrase 'international banks' to signal to racists that a candidate is antisemitic without alienating non-racist supporters.[2] Accusations of dog whistling are, by their nature, hard to prove and may be false.

In my experience it's usually accompanied by lot of doublespeak and language that is otherwise vague and wordy. Like you'll never get them to give concrete examples and they'll use a lot of inoffensive-sounding adjectives. They hold barbaric opinions but don't want to ever admit them. So if someone isn't arguing in good faith, look for code-phrases.

[DiegoPalacios]

They hold barbaric opinions but don't want to ever admit them. So if someone isn't arguing in good faith, look for code-phrases.

code phrases?, that's a new term to me , what does that mean?

[Dane_Sherbet]

When you're doing the dog-whistle game, you're using code-phrases. Like "family values" instead of "Christian values."

[DiegoPalacios]

so, is basically wording things in ways people are more receptive?

[Dane_Sherbet]

It's using a private vocabulary. These words and phrases sound innocent unless you're part of the in-group.

[NickRowler]

If you want to get better at detecting them, you might have to research common ones as well as observe context clues.

Most of the time dog whistles tend to be something that most people will agree with, like the phrase “we need to protect young women”. However this phase has been used as a dog whistle by racist and in recent years by transphobic people. Part of it is analyzing why someone would make a response like that and what is their motivation to do so.

[DiegoPalacios]

Most of the time dog whistles tend to be something that most people will agree with, like the phrase “we need to protect young women”.

Then, politics is full of dogwhistles.......

[Zaboem]

I have a cheesy, unhelpful, semantic answer. By strict definition, it is not possible to detect a dog whistle. If I learn a secret, it isn't a secret anymore, is it? If you detect my dog whistle it's not longer a dog whistle; then it is just a message.

[KRWright]

Examples of 'dog whistles':

"Inner cities" - almost always refers to areas with a large amount of BIPOC, allowing a politician to say something potentially incendiary if they made specific reference to people rather than geography.

The Birth Certificate Movement - Calls for Barrack Obama's birth certificate is an example of a racist dog whistle, in that they are assuming based on race that Obama could not be eligible for President.

"Save The Children" and "Where We Go One, We Go All" - Used by QAnon as a rallying cry to disguise the anti-semitic and racist hatemongering behind a fascade of wanting to protect children etc.

"AOC+3" - a reference to four members of congress who are all BIPOC women in an attempt to undermine them based on race, without mentioning race at all in the statement.

[darthmongoose]

Dogwhistles tend to rely heavily on the intended audience being deeply immersed in the history and culture, so they're easily missed by people from other countries or outside the intended group, because the exact words used easily read as innocent statements. I mean, that's what makes them effective dogwhistles.
If somebody talks about "urban crime" and they know, and the audience knows the intended meaning is "crime committed by black people", there's literally no way a third party can prove that, and anyone who tries will get jumped on by people saying "all they said was urban crime, why are you making this about race!?"

[Iris-Grimoire]

Another good example of dog whistle that's relevant in any election year - "upholding the nuclear/insert-your-country-here family", usually said when LGBT+ enters the subject and they don't want to say anything direct. Sounds like a whatever sentence to make everyone happy, actually means "I'm lgbt-phobic and I think their existence challenges my worldview too much". Note that it ignores divorce, housing, job/money issues that force families to stay apart; it's never going to get brought up in these subjects.

[But_a_Jape]

Lee Atwater was a famous political consultant who worked under US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In 1981 he gave an anonymous interview where he provided an inside look on how dog-whistling language is intentionally used:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “[n-word], [n-word], [n-word].” By 1968 you can’t say “[n-word]”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “[n-word], [n-word].”

EDIT: But to answer the question of "How do you detect dogwhistling?" - really, you just need to have a lot of experience interacting with these sorts of political discussions. It can be really exhausting and frustrating getting this sort of experience because the people who dogwhistle are often not discussing things in good faith and if you invest a lot of time in these discussions you'll eventually get exasperated when you realize they never intended on having an honest discussion.

And this is one of the insidious things about dogwhistles - even when you learn about them it's really difficult to educate others on it because they operate on plausible deniability. To any third party listeners who are observing the discussion, accusations of dogwhistling sound vaguely conspiratorial - "Watch out everyone! The racists are hiding in plain sight with secret codes!" And the dogwhistlers know this and play off of that and say things like "People will call anything racist these days - did you hear that apparently the numbers 14 and 88 are nAzI cOdEs now? Guess I'm a racist cause I was born on January 4, 1988!" For context: "The 14 words" is a Nazi slogan and "88" is code for "HH" which is "Heil Hitler." Yes, it's ridiculous, but that's part of the point.

[rajillustration]

Dog whistling in itself is a political tactic to slander people--are they telling the truth? Are they not? When they say x does it actually mean z? Depends on if you like what they say or not. So some people call "Women's Rights" dog whistling to hide the negative term 'abortion'. Other people call "2nd Amendment Rights" dog whistling to prevent using the word 'guns'. However, Womens Rights isn't always referring to abortion, and 2nd amendment rights are not always about preventing gun control. Those words are not always dog whistling. It's all about context.

So a lot of Dog Whistling is absolutely accurate--that's what it is. Other times, people call things Dog Whistling because they want to invent conspiracy theories (and yo there are SO MANY very silly conspiracy theories on the internet.) So be very mindful that it is...legit.

Honestly, the best way to detect it is to have an educated opinion about the issues at hand, otherwise you'll fall into pits and pits of twitter rants and discord server meltdowns. TBH when people say the word "dog whistling," I get the hell out of there. Discussion basically disappears because it's like...if you aren't on the same political spectrum as the other person then it doesn't matter if there's dog whistling or not. They don't agree. Someone who thinks abortion is about Women's Rights, really thinks abortion really is about women's rights, and same with gun control. If they think gun control really is about the 2nd amendment, then that's why they're saying that. Calling it Dog Whistling won't matter if they don't agree.

[Linski]

TBH when people say the word "dog whistling," I get the hell out of there.

Agreed.

I doubt this will be a very popular opinion around these parts, but discussion on the internet has become so hyper-partisan and emotional lately that good faith discussion/debate has become increasingly difficult. "Dog-whistling" is of course a legitimate concept, but it's been weaponized lately with increasing frequency to bludgeon any opposing viewpoint into submission, by reading sinister meanings that usually aren't there.

[Dane_Sherbet]

You and @Linski helped me realize something that's been missing from a lot of recent discourse: The willingness to compromise, to find common ground, to work toward a world where we can coexist. That's not to say that we're giving up on fighting for what we believe in, but rather we're willing to do so peacefully, and possibly leave the resolution to future generations.

These days it's more like, "We disagree? Peace was never an option." And it is amazing how that uncompromising attitude has become normalized.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Have hearing range of 67-45,000 Hz.

My fear is my no spik inglish ass get contexts wrong and incidentally use words I don't meant to use. I have never known the examples used count, like I thought "Inner city" is like center part of city or something.

[DiegoPalacios]

That's why i ask about an accurate method to detect it. Some people may mean something else, but others are more straightfoward. And when communicating via text, the line may get even more blurry because you can't tell the tone of voice and body language used.

[darthmongoose]

I have never known the examples used count, like I thought "Inner city" is like center part of city or something.

It's worth being clear that words and phrases used as dogwhistles are not exclusively used as dogwhistles. Otherwise they wouldn't be very effective. It's really all to do with context. That's why they're such an effective tactic.

If you say "Oh I went to a shop today, it's located in the inner city", or "The inner city districts of London are pretty expensive to live in." absolutely nobody with half a brain, even if they're a pretty hardcore leftie like me will think you're being racist.
Where things do get muddy are say a white politician with a mostly white voter base is talking to a crowd of people and puts a big emphasis on how they need to "crack down on inner city crime". In this case, there is a chance that the politician is basically saying they want the police to arrest more black people. Again, this isn't necessarily 100%, and you'd really need to consider things like context, corroborate the evidence with whether that politician often says things like that etc.

It's usually one of those things where consistent use of similar dog whistles, combined with action that harms the dogwhistled groups such as abuse or legislation harmful to them, or the action it spurs that person's following to based on their words, forms part of a body of evidence.

[But_a_Jape]

There are no 100% accurate methods for detecting it - the whole purpose of dogwhistling is to provide a cover of plausible deniability. The best you can do is recognize the patterns of common dogwhistles and also know the person expressing them very well, so you can determine "From what I know about this person, do they have a history of holding these sorts of beliefs and hiding them behind language, or do I know they might be entering into unfamiliar territory and adopted this language from elsewhere?"

If you educate yourself on common dogwhistles, what you can do is 1) adjust your own language to avoid common dogwhistles and 2) let others know about this type of language if they hear or even express it (in a way that's more "just to let you know" and less "how dare you?!" - yes, I understand getting this tone through is harder than it sounds) so they can hopefully do step 1.

The most foolproof argument I can think of to almost certainly state that one, specific person is dogwhistling is if they do what Lee Atwater did in my previous comment - confess in an interview that they specifically meant "hurt black people" and not "we should be more discerning with our taxes." And mind you, the interview was anonymous when it was first published in 1981 and Atwater's name wasn't revealed until the 90s. Atwater died in 1991, so he still had a whole decade to continue spreading dogwhistles with plausible deniability.

I understand your desire of "I just want to know if people are engaging in good faith discussion or not" but that's literally a problem even the smartest people in the world haven't solved. It's one of those problems in the world you just have to mitigate by hunkering down and really studying where it comes from and how it works. And it's a very depressing topic to get into and the fact that it's not 100% solved makes it even moreso, so it's perfectly understandable if you get exhausted and just abandon the attempt.

Also, regarding:

And when communicating via text, the line may get even more blurry because you can't tell the tone of voice used.

Tone of voice will offer you nothing when trying to determine someone's sincerity - just look at any successful salesman.