Languaging anti–East Asian racism: Examining raciolinguistic, embodied, and status-based slurs on Twitter over fourteen years

Linguistic racism operates as symbolic violence, dehumanizing racialized groups and reproducing racial hierarchies through everyday language. Drawing on fourteen years of Twitter (now X) data, this study examines the prevalence, temporal dynamics, discursive contexts, and contestation of anti–East Asian racial slurs. Combining raciolinguistics with Triangulated Race Theory, we treat linguistic racism as a relational process co-constructing race, language, and social position in digital publics. We distinguish three slur mechanisms: raciolinguistic mockery that polices linguistic legitimacy, embodied slurs that degrade through corporeal and sexualized othering, and status-based epithets that reproduce labor hierarchy within racial capitalism. Status-based slurs dominate by volume, while raciolinguistic terms attract disproportionate engagement. Production varies by gender and race, and although counterspeech is rare, solidarity-oriented responses circulate widely.