ABSTRACT
Research in intergroup communication is built on the notion that people engaged in interaction often define themselves or others in terms of group memberships (Harwood, Giles, & Palomares, 2005). This research perspective is relevant to hate motivated speech precisely because hate speech and stereotypic talk are undergirded entirely by cognitions involving social groups. Moreover, with the goal of understanding and ameliorating situations of prejudice and discrimination (Harwood et al., 2005), an intergroup perspective is ideally suited to examine the growing problems of hatred and extremism. The manifesto entitled “A European Declaration of Independence” that mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, released just prior to his 2011 terrorist attack in Norway brings into sharp focus how salient group identity is to those engaged in hate speech and stereotypic talk (Breivik, 2011). The care that Breivik took to email and post his manifesto to a purported “7000 patriotic Facebook friends” underscores the importance he attached to communicating views rooted in social identity.
