Look who’s talking: Essays on speaker social-identity and politically significant language.

My dissertation focuses on the role that a speaker’s social-identity plays in various politically-interesting language phenomena. The chapter “Speaker Identity and Verbal Microaggressions” argues that a speaker’s social-identity can make it easier for their utterance to fulfill the conditions of being a microaggression even when the audience does not believe the speaker intends to communicate microaggressive content. The second chapter, “Slurs and the Power to Break Taboos” looks at the phenomenon of speakers facing backlash for mentioning or quoting slurs when they (the speaker) don’t belong to the social group that the slur targets. I argue that one reason that it can be objectionable for a speaker to utter a slur, when that speaker does not belong to the group that the slur targets, is because the speaker is unfairly taking power to control the taboo around the slur. The third chapter, “Group Counterspeech”, gives the first account of how groups can use language to counter harmful speech. I argue that group counterspeech is an important tool for speakers who find that their social identity systematically prevents them from being able to effectively counter harmful speech with their own words.