The incel lexicon: Deciphering the emergent cryptolect of a global misogynistic community
This research addresses the problem of understanding and mitigating online hate speech and its real-world impacts for social scientists and policymakers, though it is incremental as it applies existing methods to new data.
The study analyzed around three million comments from incel-themed Reddit channels to decipher the emergent cryptolect of a global misogynistic community, revealing the generation and normalization of an extensive coded misogynist vocabulary that contextualizes online expressions of misogyny and real-world violence against women.
Evolving out of a gender-neutral framing of an involuntary celibate identity, the concept of `incels' has come to refer to an online community of men who bear antipathy towards themselves, women, and society-at-large for their perceived inability to find and maintain sexual relationships. By exploring incel language use on Reddit, a global online message board, we contextualize the incel community's online expressions of misogyny and real-world acts of violence perpetrated against women. After assembling around three million comments from incel-themed Reddit channels, we analyze the temporal dynamics of a data driven rank ordering of the glossary of phrases belonging to an emergent incel lexicon. Our study reveals the generation and normalization of an extensive coded misogynist vocabulary in service of the group's identity.