Nor Jnl Ling 41.2, 183–203 C© Nordic Association of Linguists 2018 doi:10.1017/S0332586518000148

Nick, I. M. 2018. In the wake of hate: A mixed-method analysis of anonymous
threatening communications sent during the 2016 US presidential election.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 41(2), 183–203.

In the wake of hate: A mixed-method analysis
of anonymous threatening communications
sent during the 2016 US presidential election

I. M. Nick

On January 20, 2017, Republican candidate Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the
45th President of the United States. The run-up to this inauguration was marked by
unusually hostile political rhetoric. For many, this linguistic divisiveness was fodder for
the post-election surge in physical and verbal aggression. Using a mixed-method approach
that combines actuarial and speech act assessment, this study examines 30 Anonymous
Threatening Communications sent during the US presidential election for the presence
and prevalence of (para)linguistic features associated with verbal and physical threat.
The article argues for more forensic linguistic research into mainstream producers and
consumers of hate-filled political rhetoric.

Keywords: Anonymous Threatening Communications, forensic linguistics, hate speech,
political rhetoric, risk assessment

I. M. Nick, Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics (GSFL), 24977 Flensburg, Germany.

mavi.yaz@web.de

1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (2017), hate crime
can be defined as a criminal act in which ‘a person is victimised [in reaction to]
their real or perceived ethnic background, race, skin colour or nationality, religious
belief, sexual orientation or transgender identity or expression, or for being perceived
as representing such a group of people’ (paragraph 3). Using this definition, this
crime type encompasses a broad spectrum of biases over a wide variety of offenses.
Despite this heterogeneity, one antecedent that hate crimes often share is Anonymous
Threat Communication (ATC). As the name implies, ATCs refer to written or verbal
messages ‘where knowledge of personal, historical, or clinical factors of the sender
is not available’ (Glasgow & Schouten 2014:41). Consequently, hate-crime threat
assessment commonly involves ATC analysis.

Though by no means fool-proof, such analysis has been shown to provide useful
evidence for predicting and minimizing the risk of inappropriate approach behaviors,

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184 I . M . N I C K

including physical violence (Calhoun 1998, Borum et al. 1999, Fein & Vossekuil
1999, Baumgartner, Scalora & Plank 2001, Calhoun & Weston 2003, Napier &
Mardigan 2003, Scalora, Baumgartner & Plank 2003). To date, ATC research has
identified a number of linguistic features (e.g. thematic content, stylistic format,
grammatical construction) and paralinguistic factors (e.g. mode, sophistication, and
location of ATC delivery, the relationship between the ATC sender and receiver)
with varying degrees of predictive value (Smith & Shuy 2002, Fitzgerald 2005,
Schoeneman-Morris et al. 2007, Smith 2008, Schoeneman et al. 2011, Meloy et al.
2012, Hancock, Woodworth & Porter 2013, O’Toole & Smith 2014, Simons & Tunkel
2014).

Within the US, these findings have been used by law enforcement agencies
such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioral Analysis Unit to develop
consistent, transparent, empirically-based procedures for ATC assessment (Miron
& Douglas 1979, Fitzgerald 2005, Simons & Tunkel 2014). Explained briefly, this
actuarial approach involves systematic empirical evaluation across a pre-determined
set of features shown to have both statistical and criminological significance. Through
international interagency cooperation, this approach has also been effectively adopted
and adapted by European law enforcement and intelligence agencies to assist in the
global fight against threatening communication.

One of the challenges of this work is determining what precisely constitutes a
verbal threat. Instinctually, most people would contend that threatening is somehow
fundamentally different than predicting, promising, warning, insulting, or defaming;
and most courts of law would agree. It is for this reason that some of these verbal acts
are routinely considered to be lawful and may even enjoy constitutional protections,
while others are regularly deemed unlawful and unprotected. Just where exactly the
essential differences lie between threatening and non-threatening speech has proven
notoriously difficult to discern, even for legal experts (Solan & Tiersma 2005; Shuy
2008, 2010; Walton 2014; Berk-Seligson & Seligson 2016).

This difficulty is exemplified in the following two constructed utterances:

(1) Keisha, if you move into this neighborhood, I will see to it that you wake up
tomorrow to a cross-burning on your front lawn!

(2) If you move here, you might wake up to a nasty surprise!

Example (1) contains many of the characteristics that have been identified as typifying
threatening utterances: (i) the addressor expresses personal intent to commit a future
negative action [Y] against the addressee; and (ii) the commission of this negative
action is made contingent upon the addressee’s failure to comply with the addressor’s
directive [X] (Fraser 1975, 1998; Storey 1995; Gales 2015, 2011). The ATC in (1) can
therefore be said to be not only directive, but also coercive: yet another hallmark of
threatening utterances (Glukhov & Martynova 2015). The bare argument structure of
(1) is also prototypical of a verbal threat: [If you (don’t) X, I will Y] (Salguiero 2010,

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Gales 2011). Example (1) also possesses many ancillary properties of threatening
utterances: (i) the intention to do harm is explicitly, directly, and unequivocally
expressed; and (ii) the time, place, manner, and target of the harmful action are
clearly specified (Fraser 1998).

By comparison, example (2) lacks many of these features. For instance, (2) does
not make any overt mention of the addressor or any future harmful action he/she
will undertake. Instead, it simply portends an unspecified negative event which might
befall the addressee as a possible consequence of his/her own actions. If one were to
take (2) on face-value alone, an equally convincing case could potentially be made
for arguing that it is not a malicious threat at all but rather a neutral prediction or
even a well-intended warning. Linguistic research informed by speech act theory has
offered great assistance in helping to resolve such classificatory ambiguities (Shuy
1993, Storey 1995, Fraser 1998, Walton 2000, Salguiero 2010, Gales 2015, Berk-
Seligson & Seligson 2016). According to this work, the key to drawing the lines of
demarcation is to examine not only the words contained in the utterance (locution),
but also their collective communicative intention (illocution) and consequences
(perlocution).

Using this logic, (2) may be classified as a threatening speech act, if its
perlocutionary effect is intimidating to the addressee; if so, it can be reasonably
deduced that the addressor’s intention in making the utterance (i.e. the illocutionary
point) is to harm rather than to protect (Verbrugge et al. 2005, Salguiero 2010). Of
course, not everyone who makes a threatening utterance has the desire, capability,
commitment, and/or opportunity to follow it up with an act of physical violence. This
fact does not, however, nullify the existence of the previous verbal threat. Instead,
the threat is simply said to be ‘infelicitous’, ‘insincere’, ‘breached’, or ‘vitiated’, but
a threat nonetheless (Austin 1955:16). Thus, as Solan & Tiersma (2005:204) remind,
‘to make a threat, the speaker does not actually have to be sincere, but need only
appear sincere’ [italics in the original].

Modern-day research into impolite or conflictive speech acts reveals that speakers
routinely employ linguistic strategies to amplify the illocutionary and perlocutionary
force of their face-threatening utterances (Locher 2004, 2006; Bousfeld & Locher
2008; Culpeper 2009, 2016; Katz 2015; Muschalik 2018). Consider the following
two utterances (where (1) above is repeated as (3)):

(3) Keisha, if you move into this neighborhood, I will see to it that you wake up
tomorrow to a cross-burning on your front lawn! (= (1))

(4) Hey NIGGER! If you move into this neighborhood, I will see to it that you wake
up tomorrow to a cross-burning on your goddamn front lawn, you stupid fucking
BLACK BITCH! Go back to AFRICA!

In example (4), the illocutionary force of the conditional threat displayed by example
(3) is significantly increased – or in the words of Culpeper (2009) ‘boosted’ – through

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186 I . M . N I C K

the use of profanity, blasphemy, and dysphemistic references to the target’s known
or presumed gender and ethnoracial identity. Further amplification of the deterrent
perlocution is achieved by framing the argument structure [If you X, I will Y] with
the personalized negative vocatives Hey NIGGER and the personalized negative
assertion you stupid fucking BLACK BITCH followed by the mutually-reinforcing
directive dismissal Go back to AFRICA!.

Of course, the mere presence of particular words or phrases cannot automatically
be taken as unequivocal evidence that a particular speech act is a threat. After all,
what is considered to be serious, insulting, or injurious in one speech community or
communicative situation may be viewed as humorous, complimentary, or affectionate
in another (Culpeper 2008, Warner & Hirshberg 2012). The analysis of speech
acts must therefore take into consideration the surrounding discursive environment.
Importantly, in post-modern approaches to speech act analysis, this ‘environment’
refers not only to the larger textual narrative in which the questioned utterance
appears. It also includes the historical, sociocultural, and interpersonal context in
which the communication took place (Locher 2006, Culpeper 2008, van der Bom &
Mills 2015, Berk-Seligson & Seligson 2016). Going back to example (4), within a
US American context, the impoliteness triggers NIGGER, BLACK BITCH and Go
back to AFRICA! – particularly in combination with the proposition of a public cross-
burning – carry strong, if not entirely inseparable, associations with domestic terror
organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Assuming that both the message sender
and receiver were cognizant of this history, the illocutionary and perlocutionary force
of example (4) would be affected. Change the context to Great Britain, Australia, or
India, and the illocution and perlocution of the utterance may shift as well, although
the locution remains the same. In the following section, the specific social, political,
and historical context of the ATCs examined in this study is presented. In line with
the abovementioned post-modern discursive investigations of impolite speech acts,
this detailed information is provided to facilitate the extrapolation of ‘the emergent
and situated meanings’ of the ATCs and the extraordinary conditions that precipitated
them (Culpeper 2011).

2. HATE-FILLED POLITICAL RHETORIC, ATCS, AND THE USA

In recent years, scholarly attention has increasingly focused upon the analysis of
ATCs produced by members of extremist groups (Miller 2008, Pennebaker 2011,
Meloy 2014, Schuurman 2015, Chiluwa 2016). Part of the reason for this focus
has been the alarming incidence of deadly critical and major incidents perpetrated by
offenders inspired in whole or in part by the incendiary rhetoric of charismatic leaders
of underground extremist organizations (e.g. the American Nazi Party, Confederate
Hammerskins, the KKK). In such cases, the offenders often see themselves as ‘foot

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soldiers’ in an invisible war (Cacialli 2010, Meloy et al. 2015). This blind allegiance
may not only be given to revered figure-heads of clandestine terrorist organizations.
The political leaders of legal, well-established, governmental institutions may also
serve as the object of toxic identification, especially when they resort to hate-filled,
populist, rhetorical strategies common to extremist organizations. It is the recognition
of this potentially lethal development that has led many to raise the warning flag in
response to the increasing frequency and severity of inflammatory rhetoric used by
mainstream politicians.

For many European observers, the pinnacle of incendiary political speech is the
United States. Without doubt, personalized attacks against political opponents have
a long, rather ignominious history (Chernow 2017). However, even by US American
standards, the acceptable limits of combative political rhetoric were breached during
the 2016 presidential election. For many, the crescendo of this political pugilism
was reached in the final race between Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton
and Republican Party newcomer, Donald J. Trump. In September 2016, for example,
Hillary Clinton described many of Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’ made
up of people with racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic attitudes
(Reilly 2016: paragraph 1). For his own part, the then presidential candidate Trump
also made numerous, highly controversial, deeply divisive remarks disparaging
ethnoracial and religious minorities, women, immigrants, and members of the LGBT
community (Cohen 2017, Silva 2018). Although causality is notoriously difficult to
establish, the candidates’ verbal animosities seemed to serve as powerful kindling
for politically-motivated violence (Dickerson 2016).

A particularly disturbing case in point occurred on June 14, 2017, when 66-
year-old, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, James Hodgkinson, opened fire during a
congressional baseball game in Washington, D.C., critically injuring a police officer
and several Republican lawmakers (Britt 2017, Person 2017, Reuters 2017). Just
two months later, in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Fields, a 20-year-old, self-
avowed white nationalist, plowed his car into anti-nazi demonstrators, injuring
19 and killing one: 32-year-old civil rights activist, Heather Heyer (ABC News
2017). Although on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both lone-assailants
had much in common: pre-existing mental health issues, an obsessive fixation
with inflammatory political rhetoric, toxic identification with a mainstream party,
and a history of threatening communications (Shear, Goldman & Cochrane 2017,
Sheth 2017).

These highly publicized acts of US domestic terrorism were viewed with
considerable concern by Europeans with an eye to their own elections, their worry
being that the unusually aggressive rhetorical style of the 2016 US presidential race
could detrimentally affect the comportment of European politicians and their societies
at-large (Aalberg et al. 2017). Such worries are not unfounded. Aside from the danger
that overly acrimonious rhetoric by politicians may help to legitimize intolerance

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188 I . M . N I C K

within mainstream society, there is also the risk that it may catalyze future acts
of verbal and physical violence (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
2016). As Anderson-Nathe & Gharabaghi (2017:3) state:

The language and ideas presented by the newly elected or imposed
leaderships in many jurisdictions around the world are those of violence.
When we accept pronouncement that some amongst us are to be feared, to
be rejected, to be excluded and to be watched, we are promoting not safety
and well-being but violence and cultural disintegration.

Despite these dangers, psycholinguistic research into politically-motivated
threatening communications has traditionally concerned itself with the potential risk
private citizens pose to political leaders (e.g. Calhoun 1998, 2001; Borum et al. 1999;
Baumgartner et al. 2001; Scalora et al. 2002; Meloy, Sheridan & Hoffmann 2008;
Chauvin 2011; Meloy 2014; Hoffmann, Meloy & Sheridan 2014). By contrast, the
potential impact of high-ranking politicians’ aggressive rhetoric on the threatening
communications produced by private citizens has been relatively overlooked. The
purpose of this investigation is to help address this oversight.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

For the current small-scale mixed-method investigation, an original corpus of 30
English-language ATCs were compiled from an internet search of hate crimes
reported in the United States during the final run-up to the 2016 US presidential
election. To be included in the corpus, each anonymous exemplar had to have been
received by the target(s) during November 2016, and be the subject of investigation
for possible violation of a hate-crime criminal code.

The selected letters were then manually digitalized and transcribed. Any and
all errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling identified in the original ATC texts
were retained. After the transcription process, the letters were coded for statistical
analyses. This analysis had three foci: (i) the format (e.g. hand-written vs. typed),
formatting (e.g. typed, italics, bolding, underlining), and thematic content of the ATC;
(ii) the transmission characteristics of the ATC; and (iii) the characteristics of the
ATC recipient and ATC sender. Each letter was evaluated to determine the presence
or absence of 24 linguistic and paralinguistic factors identified in the scientific
literature and by law enforcement agencies as being potentially significant markers
of ‘problematic approach behavior’ as it is formally called in threat analysis literature
(Scalora et al. 2003, Cacialli 2010, Schoeneman et al. 2011, Meloy 2014). A complete
list of these variables is presented in the appendix. The results of the dichotomous
coding were then used for chi-square analyses to determine which features, if any,
reached the level of statistical significance. In addition to the quantitative analyses,

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the investigation also involved a detailed qualitative examination of threatening
speech acts identified in the corpus. The varying linguistic form and function of
these face-threatening performatives are illustrated with 10 sample excerpts from
the corpus.

As with every investigation, this methodological design is not free of
limitations. The comparatively small sample-size and scope, for example, necessarily
limit the statistical power of the analyses and the generalizability of the
findings. The use of a single researcher to assess the material may also have
introduced unwanted subjectivity. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated here,
the combination of the quantitative approach developed by the FBI with the
qualitative approach pioneered by speech acts theorists still yields many useful
insights.

4. FINDINGS

The ATCs were randomly identified in and collected from 15 different states. In
alphabetical order, the states represented in the corpus with the number of ATCs
recovered within them is as follows: California (2), Florida (2), Georgia (2), Illinois
(1), Iowa (2), Massachusetts (3), Michigan (1), Missouri (1), Nevada (1), New York
(2), North Carolina (2), Texas (5), Washington (3), West Virginia (1), and Wisconsin
(1). While all of the major regions of the continental US were represented, the South
and the Midwest were particularly prevalent. Accounting for 16.13% of the corpus,
Texas contributed the largest share of ATCs recovered for this investigation. The bulk
of the communications (56.67%) were reported between the 15th and the 18th of
November.

Of the ATCs in the corpus, 73.33% made explicit mention of the 2016 US
presidential election and/or one of the leading candidates. The most commonly
occurring proper noun in the corpus was Trump (e.g. Go TRUMP!, TRUMP
COUNTRY!, Trump won!). References to the election were not always this direct,
however. Sometimes, they were simple declarations that would only make sense
within the post-election context (e.g. We won!).

With regard to the ATC-recipients’ identities, four different minority groups
were attacked: (i) racial, ethnic, or national (13.33%); (ii) religious (20.00%); (iii)
sexual orientation/gender (40.00%); and (iv) mixed (26.67%), where more than one
of the aforementioned characteristics seemed to have been targeted. For example, in
one instance, a family of Muslim immigrants from the Sudan was sent an ATC. In
this case, it was impossible to discern whether the object of the ATC-sender’s negative
attention was the family’s immigrant status, religion, or both. Overall, however, there
seems to have been a good deal of overlap between the hatred expressed for Muslims
and foreigners. A closer examination of the ATCs expressing hatred towards a racial,

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ethnic, or national heritage revealed that 75.00% were anti-immigrant. Moreover, in
the subset of ATCs with utterances explicitly attacking a religious grouping, 66.67%
were anti-Islamic and 33.33% were anti-Semitic.

It is important to note that in 33.33% of all the cases examined, the ATC targets
were not identical to the ATC recipients. In one instance, for example, the same
message was sent to all of the residents of a major apartment complex without regard
for the individual demographic identities. An extract from this ATC is displayed
below:

(5) PLEASE DO NOT SELL OR RENT YOUR HOMES TO THEM
[Muslims, Indians, Blacks, and Jews]
WE ARE EVERYWHERE AND WATCHING EVERY MOVE

In the first line of extract (5), an explicit direct request is made. According to
some theorists, the realization of the request via an imperative as opposed to the
more indirect communicative alternative of an interrogative (e.g. Can/Could/Would
you please not sell or rent . . . ) ‘already constitutes a significant breach of Anglo-
American politeness norms’ (Searle 1979, Brown & Levinson 1987, Leech 1990).
The use of the conventionalized politeness marker PLEASE does little to soften
this effect. This initial face-threatening illocutionary act then receives immediate
reinforcement in the following line. Note the aspect, tense, and mood utilized in
the double declarative: the omnipresence of the message-sender is underscored
by the simple present indicative which is used for expressing a constant state
of being or a natural law. Along with that, the simple continuous is used for
indicating that an action – in this case surveillance – is currently taking place.
The cumulative perlocutionary effect is coercion and threat. The fact that the
message recipients are asked for compliance does not change this effect. What
is key here is that an attempt is made to secure compliance through duress
(Trosborg 1995).

As in the example above, in 76.67% of the cases examined, the ATCs had
been hand-delivered rather than mailed via the postal service or electronic means.
An examination of the locations where these ATCs had been discovered revealed
that the majority (43.3%) had been delivered to the ATC recipients’ homes.
Accounting for 26.67% of the sample, the second most common delivery site was
the recipients’ cars. This location was followed closely by the recipients’ place
of work (23.33%). Finally, 1.3% of the ATCs were left at the recipients’ place
of worship. The chi-square tests revealed no significant differences in the delivery
locations.

Overall, the ATCs were exceedingly short communications, with the average
page length and number of words 1.10 and 61.27, respectively. The shortest
communication contained only four words and the longest 1,099 words. In 66.67% of

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cases, the ACTs were handwritten messages scrawled on scraps of paper. A little less
than one-third (30.30%) were prepared using a computer and just over one-quarter
(26.67%) contained symbols, imagery, or drawings. The most common image was
the swastika.

In keeping with the ‘letter-genre’, 60.00% opened with some form of salutation.
However, in contrast to non-threatening written communications, these openers were
more often than not pejorative (e.g. Hey Faggot, Hey Dumbass, Hey Looser, Hey).
In the three instances where the standard formulaic Dear was employed, it was
immediately followed by an insult (e.g. Dear Nigga (As you like to say)). Thus,
from the very first line of text, the ATC recipients were confronted with verbal
aggression. This combative stance was further reflected in the fact that 16.67%
of the messages depicted the target as non-human (e.g. vermin, trash, a disease).
However, generally speaking, the message writers preferred profanity over injurious
metonymy.

In 59.90% of the ATCs, at least one instance of obscenity was utilized.
The selection of vulgarities targeted four aspects of identity: sexual orientation,
gender, religion, and ethnoracial identity/association (e.g. bitch, dike, faggot, hymie,
nigger, nigger-lover). Aside from their surface face-threatening function, these
negative vocatives were commonly used to magnify the underlying perlocutionary
function of the ATCs’ primary illocutionary point (PIP). The obscenities accordingly
appeared in one of three syntactic positions: (i) integrated within the PIP
(25.00%); (ii) framing the PIP, immediately before and/or afterwards (43.75%);
and (iii) both within and around the PIP (31.25%). Examples of each appear
below:

(6) FAggoTs GeT OuT!
(7) Get out of our neighborhood NOW

FAGGOTS!!
(8) HEY FAGGOT

We won, so you better WATCH YOURE bACK. YOU’RE dAys ARE
NUMbERd. YOU Will SEE you COCK SUCKER

In extract (6), the directive illocutionary act of ordering gays to leave the country
is heightened by the use of the pejorative faggots at the head of the utterance.
In (7), the same illocutionary act is performed; however, the perlocutionary boost
appears after the directive, in the subsequent line. Extract (8) is a bit more complex.
Here, a mutually-reinforcing syntactic chain of three idiomatic expressions with
complementary denotative meanings is used. According to the Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, the first phrase is used to tell someone to be attentive or vigilant. The
second is used to say someone will ‘die, fail, or end soon’. Finally, the third is a
variant of ‘just (you) wait and see’ and is used to communicate that ‘one is sure that
something will happen’. Collectively, this illocutionary chain is meant to warn the

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192 I . M . N I C K

target of imminent though non-descript harm. This warning does not appear to serve a
benevolent purpose, though, given that it is syntactically framed by face-threatening
derogatory references to the target’s sexual orientation (i.e. FAGGOT and COCK
SUCKER). The perlocutionary effect is therefore more likely to be intimidatory than
protective.

As reported above, not all of the ATCs relied on obscenity to bolster their
menacing effect. Take, for example, the following excerpt:

(9) WE ARE NAHZIIS!!! AND NOW THAT TRUMP IS PRESIDENT WE CAN
KILL YOU!!!

This text utilizes the aforementioned prototypical argument structure [If you X, then
I will Y] with one key difference. The condition upon which threatened negative
action will take place is not predicated upon the target’s future compliance with a
demand made by the ATC sender. Instead, the condition has already been fulfilled
by an event beyond the target’s individual control (i.e. the result of the presidential
election). It is upon this basis that the declaration is made: We can kill you!!! The
choice in modality is critical here. Had the message utilized the future indicative (i.e.
‘We will kill you!!!’), a far higher degree of speaker intention and volition would have
been communicated. By using the modal auxiliary can, ability and permissibility are
emphasized instead. In other words, now that there has been a change in government
and Donald Trump has been elected president, the speaker and those of his/her ilk
(i.e. WE) are now free to kill the target of the message.

Note here that the explicit predicate kill is used rather than an indirect figure of
speech that merely hints at a potential physical threat to life. This lexical choice lends
more credence to the inference that the intended illocutionary point is to intimidate.
Of course, one could argue that the purpose of the utterance was not to frighten
but to forewarn. What undermines this alternative interpretation is the preceding
three-word predicate nominative construction (WE ARE NAHZIIS!!!). In this concise
statement, the ATC sender proclaims membership in a modern-day, violent, right-
wing extremist group in the United States that takes its inspiration from the National
Socialists of Europe, who, after the political ascendancy of Adolf Hitler were allowed
to kill millions. By historical extension, the threatening perlocutionary effect of the
utterance now . . . we can kill you!!! is effectively bolstered.

The ATC from which this text was extracted was not alone in making historical
allusions to National Socialism. In the following excerpt taken from a different ATC,
the same linguistic boosting strategy is used:

(10) You muslims are a vile and filthy people. Your mothers are whores and your
fathers are dogs. You are evil. But, your day of reckoning has arrived. There’s
a new Sherriff in town - - President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse
America and make it Shine again. And, he’s going to start with you muslims.

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He’s going to do to you muslims what Hitler did to the jews. You muslims
would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge

After a series of personalized negative assertions about the target’s family and
religious heritage, the ATC goes on to ‘recite the circumstances under which the
transaction is to be effected’ (Austin 1955:7). As before, the condition for the
portended negative event is described as already having been met by Donald Trump’s
election. The US American idiom ‘There’s a new Sheriff in town’ harkens back to
Hollywood Westerns in which righteous town citizens are terrorized by a gang of
outlaws while corrupt officials turn a blind eye. The turning point comes when a
new sheriff, typically an outsider, arrives in Dodge, the quintessential US American
wild West town. The newcomer then single-handedly restores law and order. In (9),
the then political outsider Donald Trump is cast in this role as savior: hence the
Biblical allusion to the ‘day of reckoning’. However, in (10), the new justice forecast
is not one of peace and tranquility. The protagonist is instead presented as CLEANSING
America of Muslims who are depicted as vile and filthy. Since the introduction of
the euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing’ during the Balkans Wars, this predicate is strongly
associated with genocide. This connotation is immediately reinforced with the two
predictions: (i) he’s [Trump is] going to start with you muslims; and (ii) He’s going
to do to you muslims what Hitler did to the jews.

Once again, tense, aspect, and modality are key here: the use of the future
indicative present progressive is commonly used in US American English to express
personal purpose, aim, or intention (Alexander 1989), and in this case, that express
intention is the repeat annihilation of a religious minority. As Austin reminds, the use
of the third person singular as opposed to first person singular in the agentive role
does not automatically undermine the performative nature of the utterance – threat
in this case. The action of the performer must not, Austin cautions, be ‘wrongly cast
into a purely grammatical mould’ (Austin 1955:60). Following this logic, Donald
Trump is a passepartout for the politically like-minded, including the ATC sender. It is
against this exposition that the final act of advising the target to get out of Dodge must
be analyzed. The final locution operates similarly to the familiar coercive conditional
threat [You had better (not) X, or else Y]. When [Y] involves the sender taking
actions that will result in the receiver’s murder, the perlocutionary effect is not one
of advisement but threat. Here again, much can be learned about the speech act by
attending to the embedded sociocultural and historical references.

In the ATC corpus, 20.00% explicitly mentioned National Socialism. The other
equally common reference was US American Slavery. An excellent example is found
in (11):

(11) Now that our man TRUMP is elected and republicans own both the senate
and the house – time to organize tar & feather VIGILANTE SQUADS and go

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194 I . M . N I C K

arrest & torture those deviant university leaders spouting off all this Diversity
Garbage.

The beginning of (11) is familiar: the condition upon which the menacing augury
is predicated is said to have been fulfilled by the election results. The message
then proclaims that the time has come for retribution. The agent of this action,
the VIGILANTE SQUADS, is pre- and post-modified by the adjectival and verbal
couplets tar & feather and arrest & torture. This syntactic mirroring helps to
build a historical bridge between the past and the present calls to arms. In the
US American Reconstruction Era (c. 1863–1877), for example, the KKK used
tar-and-feathering in its lynching rituals to punish individuals deemed to have
trespassed the lines of racial segregation (Harris 1995). The targets of this vigilantism
were carefully selected to maximize public warnings against challenging the
ideology of White Supremacy (Russell-Brown 2009). In much the same way, the
grammatical and political object singled out for vigilantism in extract (11) are also
community leaders: academicians. More specifically, the designated targets are those
deviant university leaders who are progressively spreading or spouting off Diversity
Garbage.

The ATC from which (11) was excerpted was randomly distributed across a
US university campus. The meaning intended and taken no doubt shifted with the
recipient. For like-minded readers on campus, the illocutionary act performed by
the triple imperative to organize, arrest, and torture may have been a command
to take action. The accompanying perlocutionary effect may then have been one
of persuading, convincing, or inciting. For receivers who either identified as
or sympathized with the projected targets, the very same locution may have a
different perlocutionary effect: intimidation and threat. Thus, as stated before, the
interpretation of the speech act depends upon the relationship of the message sender
and recipient.

Across the entire corpus, an examination of those ATCs containing some form of
linguistic threat (be it direct, veiled, specified, or unspecified) revealed that 93.33%
had been articulated without linguistic equivocation or hesitation. This finding was
highly significant (�² (1) = 22.54, p � .001). Nevertheless, only 10.00% contained
details which would tend to indicate that the threat made was feasible or imminent.
This set of findings might relate to the next. Despite the fact that 69.97% of the
ATCs had been deposited on the recipients’ private property, only 43.33% of the
cases showed clear evidence of a prior relationship or contact between the sender
and the receiver. In one such case, the ATC sender revealed that he/she had once
been an admiring high school student of the recipient and was deeply disappointed
by the recipient’s anti-Trump postings. This identity cue was a-typical for the corpus,
however. As a general rule, prior sender–receiver contacts were indirectly (and most
probably inadvertently) revealed. For example, occasionally ATCs contained private

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information about the recipient that could only have been known by someone in
his/her immediate social circle (e.g. intimate details about the recipient’s private
routine or use of a private nickname). However, as a group, the ATCs contained very
little detailed information about the recipients. Even basic information such as the
ATC-target’s personal name was statistically significant in its absence (�² (1) = 10.8,
p � .05).

These results are congruent with the finding that a statistically significant
minority of the ATCs made mention of an interpersonal motivation for the
communication (e.g. financial recompense (13.33%), revenge (6.67%), or obvious
personal fixation on the specific ATC recipient (6.67%)). Instead, the primary
motivation for selecting the ATC receiver seemed to have been the ATC-senders’
desire to vent their hatred towards a particular group. Be that as it may, relatively
few of the ATCs warned of a future contact (30.00%) or gave concrete evidence of
preparation for a future violent act (6.67%). Both of these features were statistically
significant in their absence: (�² (1) = 22.54, p � .001) and (�² (1) = 4.8, p �
.05), respectively. After issuing the intended threat(s) or insult(s), most of the ATCs
(63.33%) abruptly ended. An examination of those ATCs that did include closings
yielded one final interesting finding: 26.67% were signed as if the ATC had been
composed by a large group (e.g. America!, Trump Country, Trump Nation, and
The World). This hyperbolic autonymy seems to have served the double purpose of
simultaneously inflating the relational power of the ATC senders while minimizing
that of their targets.

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

In the past, it has proven extremely difficult to obtain large stores of authentic written
material from forensic cases involving threat (e.g. extortion, blackmail, ransom,
kidnapping, stalking, etc.; Nini 2017). The compilation of large-scale forensic corpora
with millions of words has been consequently thwarted. However, with the rapid
proliferation of electronically transmitted messages via social media and the internet
(e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), it is now at least theoretically possible to
compile large collections of ATCs. As Spitzberg & Gawron (2016:58) explain, ‘the
larger the corpora, the more stable the results are likely to be, and the greater the
opportunity to examine unique discriminating features of different types of threats’.
Once important ethical and legal questions surrounding ownership, authorization,
and use have been resolved, such corpora could be used for mixed-method
multivariate metalinguistic analyses. Expanding on the current investigation, for
example, such studies could be conceivably used for the identification, classification,
and interpretation of potentially threatening linguistic utterances made by private
citizens in response to politicians’ postings (e.g. Presidential Tweets). However,

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196 I . M . N I C K

even in small-scale corpus-driven investigations such as the one presented here,
it is possible to learn much about how language can instill feelings of anxiety
and dread. As Glasgow & Schouten (2014:44) remind, ‘the very act of sending
an argumentative or hostile communication’ in and of itself ‘represents a breach of
normative behavior and suggests that the sender may have difficult controlling hostile
impulses and maintaining appropriate boundaries’. Aside from the risk connoted by
this overarching transgression, several of the paralinguistic and linguistic features
found in the ATCs could be interpreted as potentially important risk indicators for
future inappropriate, potentially dangerous, behavior. For example, the fact that the
majority of ATCs were left at the target’s private property (e.g. home residence
or car) may well indicate a disconcerting level of risk-taking behavior on the part
of the ATC sender (Simon & Tunkel 2014). In addition, the unequivocal use of
offensive language (e.g. name-calling, insults, and threats) to belittle, intimidate,
threaten, chastise, humiliate, injure, and shame the ATC recipients may indicate
a troubling level of hostility. This tendency is not without importance, when
one considers that verbal and physical aggression have been found to correlate
(Straus 1979, Linaker & Busche-Iversen 1995, Hillbrand 2000, Scalora et al. 2003,
McNiel & Binder 2006, Gidycz, Warkentin & Orchowski 2007). Seen together,
these features could reasonably be interpreted as potential warning signals of future
violence.

However, the ATC analysis also revealed several potential contra-indicators of
future physical aggression (e.g. the relative absence of concrete planning, threat
feasibility, and skill level) (Calhoun 1998, 2001, Fitzgerald 2005). Moreover, the fact
that so many of the ATCs appeared to resort to rather obvious forms of linguistic
staging (e.g. suggesting that the ATC had been written by the entire US nation or even
the world itself) could be interpreted as the ATC-senders’ attempt to lend strength
and credibility to the communicative force behind their messages (Simons & Tunkel
2014). Another finding which might be interpreted as risk mitigatory was the fact that
the majority of the ATCs were conspicuously short, handwritten, notes that appeared
to have been hurriedly scribbled on scraps of paper and quickly deposited in easily
accessible public locations. By contrast, lengthy, carefully prepared, typewritten
letters that had been placed in hard-to-access intimate spaces (e.g. the recipient’s
bedroom, the glove compartment of the recipient’s car) were comparatively rare.
This finding is important in view of the fact that detail-rich, lengthy communications
with specific demands have been found to be more commonly written by people who
not only threatened, but also engaged in subsequent problematic approach behaviors
(e.g. Schoeneman et al. 2011).

Finally, the frequent use of profane and derogatory language in the ATCs
may also be a risk mitigatory sign. Contrary to popular belief, the use of
abusive language has not consistently been shown to be significant predictor
of future inappropriate approach behaviors (Baumgartner et al. 2001, Scalora

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A N O N Y M O U S T H R E AT E N I N G C O M M U N I C AT I O N S 197

et al. 2003, Schoeneman et al. 2011, Gales 2015). In fact, empirical evidence
from large-scale investigations of threatening communication indicates that a
polite tone is actually associated with future acts of violence (Dietz et al. 1991,
Smith 2008).

Based on this overall constellation of linguistic and situational features, the
quantitative analysis of the ATCs seemed to indicate a relatively low level of risk for
imminent physical violence. This does not mean to negate or in any way diminish,
however, the psychological damage these verbal acts may well have done to their
primary targets. Therein lies one of the major conceptual advantages of applying
speech act theory to ATC analysis: it highlights the equal importance of analyzing
what was said, what was meant, and what was the result (Strawson 1964). The
context-sensitive examination of all three aspects can enrich traditional actuarial
approaches to ATC analysis.

This mixed-method approach might facilitate more accurate risk estimates for
future physical violence and encourage more sensitive assessments of the present-
day psychosocial harm done by ATCs. This is an important point. Even if an ATC
does not culminate in direct contact, the trauma of this communicative act alone can
produce long-lasting and deep-seated pain, fear, suspicion, resentment, and anger in
the recipient (Craig-Henderson & Sloan 2003). What is more, the negative effects
may extend far beyond the original target. The injury and offense may be felt by a host
of secondary victims who identify as and/or with the primary target. This dynamic
can help to (re)ignite inter-group tensions which can, in turn, catalyze more acts
of aggression. This negative potential is, of course, not restricted to the politically
embattled US.

Even within Nordic countries that have long prided themselves on their
comparatively cordial tradition of political discourse, some Scandinavian observers
have warned that mainstream politicians have increasingly adopted rhetorical
methods once associated with extremism, be it to the left or the right (Schierup
& Ålund 2011, Hellström, Nilsson & Stolz 2012, Sakki & Pettersson 2015, Juul
Christiansen 2016, Nedergaard & Wivel 2018). As Fryklund (2013:275) observes,
these changes in Nordic political rhetoric have been accompanied by a return of
populism ‘both as an empirical reality and as an important research topic’. While the
presidential election is over in the US, the general elections in many Nordic nations
are right around the corner (Sweden: 2018, Denmark: 2019, Finland: 2019, Iceland:
2020). This timing provides an excellent opportunity for conducting analogous
forensic linguistic research within Scandinavia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to express her gratitude to Dr. T. Karoli Christensen.

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198 I . M . N I C K

APPENDIX

Presence Absence
Feature n (%) n (%)

1. ATC hand-delivered∗∗ 24 (80.00) 6 (20.00)
2. Target mentioned by name∗∗ 6 (20.00) 24 (80.00)
3. Single author∗ 22 (73.33) 8 (26.67)
4. Mention made of the 2016 US presidential

election∗ 22 (73.33) 8 (26.67)
5. Concrete signs of preparation for violent

act∗∗∗ 2 (6.67) 28 (93.33)
6. Skill evident in carrying out threat∗∗∗ 3 (10.00) 27 (90.00)
7. Single target∗∗ 7 (23.33) 23 (76.67)
8. Violent linguistic imagery∗∗ 7 (23.33) 23 (76.67)
9. Financial motive∗∗ 4 (13.33) 26 (86.67)

10. Attempt to make the target take action∗∗∗ 2 (6.67) 28 (93.33)
11. Revenge expressed as a motive∗∗∗ 2 (6.67) 28 (93.33)
12. Fixation on the targeted recipient∗∗∗ 2 (6.67) 28 (93.33)
13. Target dehumanized (e.g. described as

trash, vermin, or a disease)∗∗ 5 (16.67) 25 (83.33)
14. Threat of future contact∗ 9 (30.00) 21 (70.00)
15. Equivocation∗∗∗ 2 (6.67) 28 (93.33)
16. Capitalization (n.s.) 12 (40.00) 18 (60.00)
17. Underlining∗∗∗ 5 (16.67) 25 (83.33)
18. Closing (n.s.) 11 (36.67) 19 (63.33)
19. Salutation (n.s.) 18 (60.00) 12 (40.00)
20. graphic symbols or illustrations∗∗ 7 (23.33) 23 (76.67)
21. Feasibility of threat (n.s.) 10 (33.33) 20 (66.67)
22. Religiosity∗∗ 6 (20.00) 24 (80.00)
23. Evidence of relationship to target (n.s.) 13 (43.33) 17 (56.67)
24. Profanity (n.s.) 20 (66.67) 10 (33.33)

∗ p � .05; ∗∗ p � .01; ∗∗∗ p � .001; (n.s.) = non-significant

Table A1. Chi-square analysis of the absence and presence of (para)linguistic
variables.

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	1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
	2. HATE-FILLED POLITICAL RHETORIC, ATCS, AND THE USA
	3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
	4. FINDINGS
	5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
	ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
	APPENDIX

	REFERENCES