Adam Hodges

About

Adam Hodges is a sociocultural linguist who has taught at Carnegie Mellon University (English Department), Stanford University (Linguistics Department), Colorado State University (Anthropology Department), and the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Linguistics. At Carnegie Mellon, he taught for two years at the home campus in Pittsburgh and four years at the international campus in Doha, Qatar, working with a student body representing more than 40 nationalities.

His research examines how language shapes contemporary social and political life, including the collective enactment of racism and the role of language in politics. His books include When Words Trump Politics: Resisting a Hostile Regime of Language (Stanford University Press) and The 'War on Terror' Narrative: Discourse and Intertextuality in the Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality (Oxford University Press).

His research articles have appeared in American Anthropologist, Discourse & Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language & Communication, and Language in Society. He has also contributed to major reference works including The Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, The Handbook of Language and Politics, The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, and The Handbook of Language and Globalization. From 2017–2019, he was a regular columnist for Anthropology News. His work has contributed to scholarly and public conversations about language, politics, and social life.

Research Area

Language & Politics

Books

When Words Trump Politics: Resisting a Hostile Regime of Language

Adam Hodges. 2019. Stanford University Press.

Journal Articles

2019 Adam Hodges. “How Trump’s Populism Shapes the Uptake of New Social Facts.” American Anthropologist 121(1): 185–187. doi:10.1111/aman.13190

2015 Adam Hodges. “The Paranoid Style in Politics: Ideological Underpinnings of the Discourse of Second Amendment Absolutism.” Journal of Language Aggression & Conflict 3(1): 87–106. doi:10.1075/jlac.3.1.04hod

Book Chapters

2020 Adam Hodges. “Plausible Deniability.” In Language in the Trump Era, Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton (eds.), 137–147. Cambridge University Press.

2017 Adam Hodges. “The Paranoid Style in Politics: Ideological Underpinnings of the Discourse of Second Amendment Absolutism.” In Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres, Monika Kopytowska (ed.), 129–148. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2014 Adam Hodges. “‘Yes, We Can’: The Social Life of a Political Slogan.” In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, Christopher Hart and Piotr Cap (eds.), 349–366. London: Bloomsbury.

Public Writing

2020, Apr 8 Adam Hodges. “Bernie Drops Out, as Democrats Pick Pragmatism over Consistency.” The Conversation.

2020, Feb 16 Adam Hodges, Andrew Graan, Meg Stalcup, and Mei-chun Lee. “Fake News and Anthropology: A Conversation on Technology, Trust, and Publics in an Age of Mass Disinformation” (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3). Political and Legal Anthropology Review .

2019, Oct 30 Adam Hodges. “Trump’s Metaphorical Drug Deal and Lynching Fallacy.” Stanford University Press Blog.

2019, Oct 3 Adam Hodges. “How to Stop Trump from Evading What’s Undeniably Impeachable.” Stanford University Press Blog.

Anthropology News Column

2019, Oct 21 Adam Hodges. “‘Yes, We Can’ and the Power of Political Slogans.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1291

2019, Aug 5 Adam Hodges. “What to Call US Border Detention Centers?” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1234

2019, May 22 Adam Hodges. “To Impeach or Not to Impeach?” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1172

2019, Apr 10 Adam Hodges. “Speak the Names of Those Who Were Lost.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1139

2019, Feb 14 Adam Hodges. “The Climate Change Messenger Matters as Much as the Message.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1092

2018, Dec 20 Adam Hodges. “Government Of, By, and For the Trolls.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1061

2018, Nov 2 Adam Hodges. “A Demagogue’s Words Matter.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1021

2018, Oct 23 Adam Hodges. “Speaking with Silence.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.1006

2018, Sep 5 Adam Hodges. “What ‘Types of Racism’ Does Trump Recognize?” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.959

2018, Aug 1 Adam Hodges. “Reclaiming ‘Allahu Akbar’ from Semantic Pejoration.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.934

2018, Jul 9 Adam Hodges. “How to Counter Misinformation.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.899

2018, Jun 6 Adam Hodges. “How ‘Fake News’ Lost Its Meaning.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.880

2018, May 10 Adam Hodges. “#MeToo Holds Lessons for Political Resistance.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.857

2018, Apr 9 Adam Hodges. “A Theory of Propaganda for the Social Media Age.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.823

2018, Mar 8 Adam Hodges. “Trump First and the Presentation of the Political Self.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.789

2018, Feb 14 Adam Hodges. “White Racism in the White House.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.768

2018, Jan 9 Adam Hodges. “How Trump’s Lying Affirms a Worldview.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.733

2017, Dec 5 Adam Hodges. “Rescuing Ourselves from the Argument Culture.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.712

2017, Nov 3 Adam Hodges. “Responsibility and Evidence in Trumpian Discourse.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.676

2017, Oct 11 Adam Hodges. “The Paranoid Style of Climate Change Denial.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.640

2017, Sep 5 Adam Hodges. “Wrestling with ‘The Donald.’” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.593

2017, Aug 10 Adam Hodges. “A Bully in the Presidential Bully Pulpit.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.569

2017, Jul 3 Adam Hodges. “America’s Most Consequential Racial Divide.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.453

2017, Jun 1 Adam Hodges. “Trump Echoes Bush in Middle East Visit.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.467

2017, May 1 Adam Hodges. “The Myth of the Apolitical Judge.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.419

2017, Apr 13 Adam Hodges. “Playing Telephone with the Power of the Presidency.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.398

2017, Mar 1 Adam Hodges. “When the Discourse of Theater Trumps Truth.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.375

2017, Feb 1 Adam Hodges. “How Plausibly Deniable Is It?” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.335

2017, Jan 18 Adam Hodges. “Trump’s Formulaic Twitter Insults.” Anthropology News. doi:10.1111/AN.308

Book Reviews

2021 Adam Hodges. Review of U. Schneider & M. Eitelmann (eds.) Linguistic Inquiries into Donald Trump’s Language: From ‘Fake News’ to ‘Tremendous Success.’ Journal of Language and Politics. doi:10.1075/jlp.21014.hod

2012 Adam Hodges. Review of R. Wodak’s The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Language in Society 41(4): 530–533.

2008 Adam Hodges. Review of John E. Joseph’s Language and Politics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(1): 112–116.

2005 Adam Hodges. Review of P. Chilton’s Analyzing Political Discourse. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 2(4): 244–247.

2004 Adam Hodges. Review of M. Talbot, K. Atkinson, and D. Atkinson’s Language and Power in the Modern World. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(2): 311–314.

Invited Talks

2021, Jan 22 Talking Politics Final Colloquium. Talking Politics Series organized by the University of Chicago, University of Colorado, and Society for Linguistic Anthropology.

2020, Oct 10 “How Plausible is the Deniability?” Talking Politics Series organized by the University of Chicago, University of Colorado, and Society for Linguistic Anthropology.

2019, Nov 20 “When Words Trump Politics.” Metropolitan State University, Denver, Colorado.

Research Area

War Discourse

Books

Discourses of War and Peace

Adam Hodges (ed.). 2013. New York: Oxford University Press.

The ‘War on Terror’ Narrative: Discourse and Intertextuality in the Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality

Adam Hodges. 2011. New York: Oxford University Press.

Discourse, War and Terrorism

Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep (eds.). 2007. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Journal Articles

2008 Adam Hodges. “The Politics of Recontextualization: Discursive Competition over Claims of Iranian Involvement in Iraq.” Discourse & Society 19(4): 479–501. doi:10.1177/0957926508089940

2008 Adam Hodges. “The Dialogic Emergence of ‘Truth’ in Politics: Reproduction and Subversion of the ‘War on Terror’ Discourse.” Colorado Research in Linguistics 21. doi: 10.25810/gkzf-q768

2007 Adam Hodges. “The Political Economy of Truth in the ‘War on Terror’ Discourse: Competing Visions of an Iraq/al Qaeda Connection.” Social Semiotics 17(1): 5–20. doi:10.1080/10350330601124627

Book Chapters

2016 Adam Hodges. “Defining ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ through the Words of the Enemy: The Use of Reported Speech in the Bush ‘War on Terror’ Narrative.” In Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11. Volume 2: Perspectives in Language, Anna Gonerko-Frej and Małgorzata Sokół (eds.), 93–110. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2013 Adam Hodges. “The Generic U.S. Presidential War Narrative: Justifying Military Force and Imagining the Nation.” In Discourses of War and Peace, Adam Hodges (ed.), 47–68. New York: Oxford University Press.

2013 Adam Hodges. “War, Peace and Discourse.” In Discourses of War and Peace, Adam Hodges (ed.), 3–19. New York: Oxford University Press.

2007 Adam Hodges. “The Narrative Construction of Identity: The Adequation of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in the ‘War on Terror.’” In Discourse, War and Terrorism, Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep (eds.), 67–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2007 Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep. “Introduction: Discourse, War and Terrorism.” In Discourse, War and Terrorism, Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep (eds.), 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Book Reviews

2010 Adam Hodges. Review of L. Chouliaraki’s The Soft Power of War. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(3): 406–409.

2010 Adam Hodges. Review of A. Hoskins and B. O’Loughlin’s Television and Terror: Conflicting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(1): 146–149.

Invited Talks

2012, Jan 19 “The ‘War on Terror’ Narrative.” Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

2010, Nov 1 “The Presidential Construction of the ‘War on Terror’ Narrative.” Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

2010, Oct 18 “Discursive Tactics of Resistance against the ‘War on Terror’ Narrative.” Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Panels Organized

2006, Nov 15–19 “Critiques of ‘Truth.’” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Jose, California.

2004, Dec 15–19 “Discourse, War and Terrorism.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta (with Chad Nilep).

Research Area

Language, Race & Racism

Journal Articles

2021 Adam Hodges and Gianna Cipponeri. “How the ‘Law and Order’ Trope Individualizes Racism and Inverts Racial Vulnerability.” Colorado Research in Linguistics Vol. 25. doi:10.33011/cril.v25i.1349

2016 Adam Hodges. “Hunting for ‘Racists’: Tape Fetishism and the Intertextual Enactment and Reproduction of the Dominant Understanding of Racism in US Society.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26(1): 26–40. doi:10.1111/jola.12106

2016 Adam Hodges. “Accusatory and Exculpatory Moves in the Hunting for ‘Racists’ Language Game.” Language & Communication 47: 1–14. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2015.11.002

2015 Adam Hodges. “Ideologies of Language and Race in US Media Discourse about the Trayvon Martin Shooting.” Language in Society 44(3): 401–423. doi:10.1017/S004740451500024X

Book Chapters

“The Social Life of Slurs Revisited”

Adam Hodges. 2024. “The Social Life of Slurs Revisited.” In The Everyday Language of White Racism, 2nd Edition, by Jane Hill, Christina Leza (ed.), Barbra A. Meek (ed.), Jacqueline H. E. Messing (ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

2019 Adam Hodges. “Identifying ‘Racists’ While Ignoring Racism: The Case of the Alleged Slur on George Zimmerman’s 911 Tape.” In Language and Social Justice in Practice, Netta Avineri, Laura R. Graham, Eric J. Johnson, Robin Conley Riner, and Jonathan Rosa (eds.), 27–34. New York: Routledge.

Invited Talks

2021, May 14 “The Individualization of Racism.” Language and Social Interaction Working Group Virtual Lecture Series, Columbia University.

2020, Apr 12 “Language & Racism.” Colorado College Virtual Symposium on the Language of Racism.

Panels Organized

2015, Nov 18–22 “Language and Racism.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado.

Research Area

Social Media & Technology

Journal Articles

2019 Norah Abokhodair and Adam Hodges. “Toward a Transnational Model of Social Media Privacy: How Young Saudi Transnationals do Privacy on Facebook.” New Media & Society 21(5): 1105–1120. doi:10.1177/1461444818821363

2014 Sarah Vieweg and Adam Hodges. “Rethinking Context: Leveraging Human and Machine Computation in Disaster Response.” Computer 47(4): 22–27. doi:10.1109/MC.2014.97

Conference Proceedings

2017 Norah Abokhodair, Adam Hodges, and Sarah Vieweg. “Photo Sharing in the Arab Gulf: Expressing the Collective and Autonomous Selves.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’17). doi:10.1145/2998181.2998338

2016 Sarah Vieweg and Adam Hodges. “Surveillance & Modesty on Social Media: How Qataris Navigate Modernity and Maintain Tradition.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’16). doi:10.1145/2818048.2819966

Public Writing

2017, Jun 22 Norah Abokhodair, Adam Hodges, and Sarah Vieweg. “Adapting Social Media to Arabian Gulf Norms.” Anthropology News 58(3): e171–e177. doi:10.1111/AN.494

Research Area

Discourse Studies & Reference Works

Books

2005 Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Adam Hodges, and David Rood (eds.). Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Handbook & Encyclopedia Chapters

“Political Discourse”

Adam Hodges. 2026. “Political Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology (2nd edition), Inmaculada García-Sánchez and Nancy Bonvillain (eds.). Routledge.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics

“Discursive Underpinnings of War and Terrorism”

Adam Hodges. 2017. “Discursive Underpinnings of War and Terrorism.” In The Handbook of Language and Politics, Ruth Wodak and Bernhardt Forchtner (eds.), 673–686. Routledge.

“Intertextuality in Discourse”

Adam Hodges. 2015. “Intertextuality in Discourse.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Second Edition, Deborah Tannen, Heidi Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin (eds.), 42–60. Chichester, UK: Wiley & Sons.

“Sociocultural Linguistics”

Adam Hodges. 2015. “Sociocultural Linguistics.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel (eds.), 1390–1401. Boston, MA: Wiley & Sons.

“War Discourse”

Adam Hodges. 2015. “War Discourse.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel (eds.), 1545–1551. Boston, MA: Wiley & Sons.

“Discursive Constructions of Global War and Terror”

Adam Hodges. 2010. “Discursive Constructions of Global War and Terror.” In The Handbook of Language and Globalization, Nikolas Coupland (ed.), 305–322. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Journal Articles

2004 Adam Hodges, Valerie Krugler, and Deborah Law. “A Corpus Study on the Item-based Nature of Early Grammar Acquisition.” Colorado Research in Linguistics 17. doi: 10.25810/ekag-3410

Book Reviews

2007 Adam Hodges. Review of J. Blommaert’s Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Discourse & Society 18(1): 115–117.

2007 Adam Hodges. Review of R. Wodak and P. Chilton’s A New Agenda in Critical Discourse Analysis. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(1): 98–102.

2006 Adam Hodges. Review of J. Baxter’s Positioning Gender in Discourse. Discourse & Society 17(4): 551–552.

Featured Books

Language & Politics

War Discourse

Language, Race & Racism

Discourse Studies & Reference Works

Courses Taught