When Hate Speech Leads to Hateful Actions: A Corpus and Discourse Analytic Approach to Linguistic Threat Assessment of Hate Speech
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Inspired by recent acts of mass violence motivated by hate, this work considers hate speech from a sociolinguistic perspective by combining corpus analysis and discourse analytic methods.The goals of this work are twofold.First, this research aims to propose a comprehensive definition of hate speech by leveraging the linguistic body of knowledge in conjunction with insights from legal scholarship, cross-disciplinary academic work, lexicography, and non-academic perspectives collected through a two-part survey.This work then employs the definition of hate speech that is developed to build two corpora of hate speech, one authored by those who went on to commit violence and the other by those who did not, called "Hunters" and "Howlers" respectively according to the threat assessment paradigm of Calhoun and Weston (2009; 2012).These data are used to address the second goal -to enrich future threat assessment protocols by identifying language patterns which correlate with violent behavior by the authors of hate speech.A bottom-up and top-down corpus analysis is complemented by a discourse analytic case study which focuses on positioning and stancetaking within two texts, one Hunter and one Howler, to identify a number of linguistic forms and functions that differentiate the Hunters' hate speech from the Howlers'.iv DEDICATION Dad, there are more than 80,000 words in this dissertation, but I have no words for how much I miss you.This is for you.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My name is on this dissertation, but that doesn't begin to reflect the many people without whom this work would never have happened.First, I would like to thank my wonderful committee -Heidi Hamilton, Tammy Gales, and especially my advisor Natalie Schilling.There were twists, turns, and more than a few delays in this work and the support and encouragement I received throughout it all from the three of you was beyond words.Natalie, you always managed to find all the things I was hoping you wouldn't notice in every draft and never failed to help me make them better.From the moment I stepped foot into your classroom as a master's student through our previous collaborations and now this dissertation, I am a much better writer, analyst, and linguist than I ever thought I could be because of your tremendous guidance and expertise.Second, I need to thank my colleague and dear friend Lauren Johnson, who has been my sounding board, my editor, my cheerleader, and has been more helpful than I could ever tell you.I know this work forced you to confront some dark places on the internet and you faced them (and all my bad drafts) with courage and kindness.I would also be remiss if I did not thank Dr. David Brown.You got me on track with Wmatrix and my corpus analysis.I am
Author: Alexandria Marsters
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2987408597