CU Linguistics PhD student
Kate Arnold-Murray was recently featured in
Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine, in an interview discussion of her work on the Settle for Biden Instagram campaign during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Drawing from the theoretical/methodological toolkits of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, Kate's analysis drills down into the inter- and subtextuality of memes shared by Settle for Biden (a group unaffiliated with the official Biden campaign), which aimed to produce Biden as an altogether unideal yet obviously preferable candidate in the eyes of progressive voters during the lead up to the United States' 2020 election.
Kate's findings were published this year as an open-access article in the journal Language and Society: "Settle for Biden: The scalar production of a normative presidential candidate on Instagram."
Congratulations, Kate!
A meme shared by Settle for Biden, representative of the textual and visual strategies used by the campaign
