The Dog-whistle/Wolf-cry Dialectic: Political Divergence via Speech-Act Attribution

Abstract

Attributions of certain speech-acts, like dog-whistling and wolf-crying, have an interesting complementary and antagonistic relationship that creates a kind of hostile dialectic and emergent divergence in political discourse. In the following, we will show how the wolf-cry and the dog-whistle are both epistemically difficult speech-acts to attribute, leading to asymmetric uncertainties in attribution. These uncertainties cause the attribution of wolf-cries and dog-whistles themselves to often be both reasonable but unconfirmable epistemic claims. Then, we will show how these patterns of attributions can lead to a reciprocal dialectic of entrenched and self-amplifying dog-whistling versus wolf-crying, until an unhappy status quo is developed. This leads to a number of problems, including an epistemic standoff of standpoints, the attribution saturation of the political discourse, and a condition of self-defeating truth-seeking. Seemingly, the only surefire solution is a unanimous alleviation of such attributions, a standard that may seem insurmountable, though other options can be considered.

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Walter Barta
University of Houston

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Studies in the way of words.Herbert Paul Grice - 1989 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Scorekeeping in a Language Game.David Lewis - 1979 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (3):339.
Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation, and Philosophy of Language.Jennifer Saul - 2018 - In Daniel Fogal, Daniel W. Harris & Matt Moss (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford University Press. pp. 360–383.

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