Hate Speech

This project will take a more measured approach than that evident in the press by looking at the use of hate speech from a linguistic perspective, bringing together work in law and criminology in a project in which corpus linguists can inform the debate. The proposed research will explore to what extent we can evidentially determine linguistic triggers for prosecution, and hence a linguistic warrant for action. 


Team:

Principal Investigator: Paul Iganski

Senior Research Associate: Abe Sweiry


  • CASS presentation at Cambridge University Centre of Islamic Studies symposium on Anti-Muslim Hate Crime (2 July 2015)

    The CASS ‘Hate Speech’ project team were invited on the 16th of June to present some of our findings at a Symposium on Anti-Muslim Hate Crime held at the University of Cambridge Centre of Islamic Studies. The Symposium was organised by Julian Hargreaves, a Lancaster University Law School PhD student and Research Associate at the …

  • The spectre of Nazism haunts social media (12 February 2015)

    Each time there is an upsurge in the Israel-Palestine conflict there is a rise in violent and other abusive incidents against Jews around the world. This phenomenon is now well-known. So it was in 2014 with Israel’s military operation ‘Protective Edge’ in July and August. Numerous backlash incidents against Jews in the UK and elsewhere …

  • Using the law to challenge cultures of hate (18 December 2014)

    Outlawing homophobic and transphobic hate crime in Europe All crimes hurt in one way or another — emotionally, physically, or economically. Yet an accumulation of research evidence now shows conclusively that as a category of crime, hate crimes hurt more on average compared to otherwise motivated crimes. Hate crime victims are more likely to report experiencing …