This professor devotes her life to countering dangerous speech. She can’t ignore Donald Trump’s.

[ehrnst]

But in the past week, with Trump claiming that the election system and the media are rigged against him, his messages have the type of undertone that increases the risk of violence between groups, she said.

Benesch, 52, has dedicated the past six years of her life to developing and testing a framework for identifying dangerous speech. To rise to that level, at least two of these five indicators must be true:

A powerful speaker with a high degree of influence over the audience.

The audience has grievances and fears that the speaker can cultivate.

A speech act that is clearly understood as a call to violence.

A social or historical context that is propitious for violence, for any of a variety of reasons, including long-standing competition between groups for resources, lack of efforts to solve grievances or previous episodes of violence.

A means of dissemination that is influential in itself, for example because it is the sole or primary source of news for the relevant audience.

“Trump’s speech is very difficult in the sense that he is so often slippery with it,” Benesch said in a recent interview. “The meaning is so often ambiguous.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/10/24/this-professor-devotes-her-life-to-countering-dangerous-speech-she-cant-ignore-donald-trumps/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[lonestarnot]

1. Hoodwinked by the Ruskies and to ignorant to notice the slippery.