WORDS AS WEAPONS - WHEN DO THEY WOUND - INVESTIGATIONS OF HARMFUL SPEECH

The following investigations juxtapose jurisprudence and communication literatures to examine under what conditions racist speech is perceiv ed as harmful. Specifically, one theory of legal liability, the tort o f intentional infliction of emotional distress, and one intergroup app roach, social identify theory, guided three empirical studies investig ating verbally disturbing communication targeted at Asian Americans. T he studies examined how the attribution of harm was influenced by vari ables such as group membership, message severity, message explicitness and the medium of presentation. One finding in particular, an interac tion between group membership and message explicitness (direct vs. ind irect), emerged across the three studies. Results revealed that as ''o bjective'' evaluators of deprecating speech, out-group members attribu ted the direct messages of racism to be more harmful than in-group mem bers did, but, conversely, in-group members evaluated the indirect mes sages of racism to be more harmful than the out-group members did. The oretical explanations for this finding and its resulting legal implica tions are discussed.