So who came up with the dog whistle metaphor?

[The Backlash Cometh]

Most brilliant addition to our political lexicon.

[tridim]

1. Here's what I found on google..

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005294.html

Josh's phrase dog whistle is itself a piece of political-operative jargon, discussed at some length in an earlier Language Log post ("The comma really was a dog whistle", 9/26/2006). The first place that I ever saw this phrase was in a weblog post by Ian Welch ("Just a Comma: Dog Whistle Politics", The Agonist, 9/25/2006):

The other name for this is dog whistle politics. When you blow a dog whistle humans can't hear it, but the dogs sure can. It's a pitch higher than humans can hear. When you speak in code like this, most of the time the only people who hear and understand what you just said are the intended group, who have an understanding of the world and a use of words that is not shared by the majority of the population. So it allows you to send out two messages at once - one pitched for the majority of Americans, the other pitched for a subgroup. This goes on all the time, and usually it isn't caught - most people don't hear it, and the media is made up of people who can't make the connections because they don't belong to these subgroups. So they can't point out the subtext either.

It's very effective, and it's one reason why Bush still has his hard core of support - he's constantly reassuring them, at a pitch the rest of us can't hear.

The "dog whistle" in that case was supposed to be President Bush's comment that the Iraq war is "just a comma". As discussed in the cited Language Log post, that particular argument turned out to be an extremely weak one, since the relevant use of comma was found mainly in the (left-wing) United Church of Christ, and was apparently unknown to the conservative evangelicals who were the alleged dog-whistle target.

[tridim]

2. Also this sub-thread from 2005 on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3680981&mesg_id=3681123

Dog Whistle Politics

"The British came up with the phrase. It refers to the coded language that people like the Dobsonians use to make sure the base knows what they're talking about, while hopefully keeping it hidden from the rest of us. (In their environment it's the National Front type politicians that use it, subtle racial slurs that they can back away from if they ever get called on it. The difference between such people and Chimpy is that they're generally pretty articulate.)"

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. This is going to be the next level of political awakening.

To get the mainstream to understand we broke the code.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. It was brilliant.

I knew about the phenomenon when I came on DU and referred to it as "reading between the lines." Later we would all refer to it as using code words.

It was tough back then because the discourse was about Affirmative Action and I was jumping up and down trying to tell everybody that the same culture of separation and division existed. You couldn't see it as much because you had to learn how to read between the lines of what they were saying. That whole culture was very much alive, just more covert.

But dog whistle. That explains it best because you can actually see the obedience aspect of the call.

[Spike89]

5. I seem to remember hearing it somewhat commonly pre-Internet

Even back in the 70s. I remember thinking it was a great metaphor. The example I recall was about George Wallace and much of his rhetoric as he ran for president. I'm not sure if "states rights" was the prime example used the first time I encountered the dog whistle metaphor, but of course it is a classic.

[slackmaster]

6. I think it's off the mark. The usual reason for using a dog whistle is to inflict discomfort.

To get a dog to stop doing something that you don't want it to do, such as barking at nothing.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Most people associate it with calling the dog.

For people who never learned how to properly whistle on their own.

[slackmaster]

8. They are used for both purposes

I think applying the term to politics is rather paranoid, as if people outside of the conspiracy aren't perfectly capable of decoding the secret messages.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. No offense, but we didn't.

I wish I could remember all the things that were double-speak. Maybe they wouldn't seem so obvious today because we already uncovered those double meanings.

The one that comes to mind is welfare queen, for a lazy black woman who prefers to collect welfare checks rather than to work.

[slackmaster]

10. Welfare queen is painfully obvious to me, as is family values

Anti-gay, anti-womens' rights, etc.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Yes. Exactly.