Jesper Arent Olsson

This article develops an account of the social foundations and functions of in-group languages. Drawing on Herbert H. Clark’s theory of communication, we define an in-group language as the communal lexicon proper of a cultural community that forms part of a larger, nested set of cultural communities. On this definition, in-group languages are sets of linguistic conventions that emerge as solutions to the coordination problems faced by their associated cultural communities. We argue that this explains both why in-group languages arise and why they exhibit characteristic social functions: signaling membership in a cultural community, marking boundaries between groups, and reinforcing social cohesiveness within them. We further show that the account provides a natural basis for defining language change restricted to a subgroup of a broader speech community, and for assessing—and partially dissolving—the apparent tension between such subgroup divergence and the assumption that language change is characteristically aimed at a common linguistic good.

In this paper, I propose an ambiguity account of dogwhistles that claims that some dogwhistles operate through polysemy, i.e., ambiguity between related meanings. First, I challenge Khoo’s (2017) argument against ambiguity in dogwhistles, showing that the linguistic tests he bases his argument on fail to reliably rule out polysemy. I continue by developing an ambiguity account of dogwhistles. On this account, some dogwhistles are ambiguous between a default meaning in the general language and a lexicalized dogwhistle message in a sociolect of that language. This account is then extended to explain how dogwhistle messages may spread and lexicalize in the general language community through a three-stage developmental process of (1) lexical innovation, (2) sub-community lexicalization, and (3) general community lexicalization. The paper offers a more nuanced understanding of how dogwhistles can emerge and stabilize. Finally, I discuss some consequences of the proposed account, particularly regarding how dogwhistle messages can become normalized.