I am a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. I specialize in social and political issues in the philosophy of language. My research tries to understand the ways that language can be a tool of both oppression and resistance. In my work on on dog whistles, coded speech, propaganda, reclaimed slurs, and subversive speech, I trace how speakers are constrained yet also empowered by their communities' practices. Only by identifying the sociopolitical structures and histories of our speech practices, I argue, can we make sense of what we can do with our words—and why.
