Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2022

Often preferred to its face-to-face counterpart, online dating has transformed the way we perceive practices relevant to meeting people, mostly because it offers “a wider pool of potential partners” (Heino, Ellison, and Gibbs 2010, 428). Despite its popularity, however, online dating is an under-researched area in general, crucially in linguistics. Looking at (mostly unsuccessful) naturally occurring initial interactions that have taken place on the popular Tinder application, the aim of this study is to gain some insights into the relationship among language aggression, impoliteness and communication failure in the context of flirting on Tinder. Results show that the most common way that users initiate interaction in this dataset is through sexually loaded language, which seems to be understood as a breach of the norms of appropriateness for first-time contact. Although Tinder has no manual to prescribe what should or should not be said in interaction, it transpires from the data that avoiding overstepping in terms of sexual matters (i.e. refraining from using sexually loaded language and/or innuendos) functions as an unwritten law which sparks impoliteness when not followed. Resulting impoliteness manifests itself mostly through the strategies of sarcasm and ignoring/snubbing the other, used to counteract (perceived) inappropriateness. Tracing this escalation of non-cooperative practices, from inappropriateness to impoliteness, also provides the opportunity to examine the emergence of playfulness and creativity as language behaviours interwoven with aggression. Therefore, online dating seems to lend itself well to the study of impoliteness and violation of norms of appropriate behaviour, providing opportunities for an expansion of contexts for linguistic analysis.

This paper responds to the call for more comparative research across online social media platforms (Graham and Hardaker 2017, 808) and examines discourse across two such platforms, YouTube and Reddit. More specifically, it attempts to investigate whether the affordances of these platforms have an impact on the amount and form of impoliteness employed by their users.

Data on a highly contested topic (the July 2018 wildfires in Attica, Greece) is studied both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, small but representative samples are qualitatively analyzed on the basis of the two major impoliteness types: implicational and conventionalized and their subcategories. In addition, swearword keywords extracted by means of corpus analysis tools are analyzed. It is shown that YouTube involves a great deal of (conventionalized) impoliteness (Culpeper 2011a) which could be due to factors such as the total absence of moderation, of post length limit and of detailed personal profiles as well as the presence of videos as stimuli for interaction. Considerably less impoliteness appears on Reddit, whose forum-like nature makes it a place that mostly invites civil interaction. Implicationally impolite (Culpeper 2011a) posts outnumber conventionally impolite ones, perhaps owing to the heavy moderation, the existence of public profiles and the size and coherence of the user community. It is concluded that, due to their characteristics, platforms seem to attract a certain userbase with its own motives and mindset, which in turn shape the impoliteness found within them.

The present study establishes what comprises the genre of venting as opposed to ranting and how venting functions within the Reddit community Fat People Stories. In this subreddit, users compose either real or fictional narratives describing encounters with people of size who are perceived to exhibit rude behavior. Given the sensitive nature of these discussions, they are often fraught with negative emotional expression, and individuals seek a variety of outlets to release these emotions and find commiseration and diversion. An analytical corpus of 45,867 words across ten posts and corresponding comment sections was gathered and analyzed using Askehave and Nielsen’s (2005) two-dimensional genre model and supplemented with discourse analysis of the individual texts. As the study explores how venting unfolds in a digitally mediated environment, insights gained can have implications for how humans sort through negative emotions in face-to-face communication, and, more specifically, for discourse surrounding public health and body weight.

Interactions on social media platforms are becoming increasingly relevant from an identity construction perspective. Conflict speech, in particular, is a form of interaction that is especially common in online spaces and constructs identity through polarization, strengthening the in-group while excluding the out-group. The young adult feminist identity has established a strong presence in online spaces, specifically the microblogging platform Tumblr. This study seeks to analyze the role of conflict speech in young adult feminist identity construction through focusing on recontextualization of comments and name-calling strategies. Within this analysis, it is possible to determine the importance of conflict speech as it strengthens the collective feminist identity while allowing those in the in-group to exclude and dismiss conflictual comments stemming from those in the out-group.

Research on impoliteness has underlined the need for multidisciplinary approaches to impoliteness (Sifianou 2019a). In this article, I adopt the concept of “safe space”, as discussed in works on feminist digital media (Clark-Parsons 2018; Rentschler 2014), to explore how impoliteness relates to identity construction and the negotiation of power dynamics in the context of a Greek feminist website, constructed as a safe space. Both the concept of “safe space” and discursive and relational approaches to impoliteness (Angouri and Locher 2012; Graham 2007; Locher and Watts 2005, 2008) relate to norms of appropriate behaviour in particular contexts and relational issues, such as power and identity.

The data for this article comprise comments posted in discussions taking place in the Greek website of A, mpa, in which participants became involved in disagreements. Culpeper’s (2010) framework for conventionalised impoliteness formulae is the starting point of the analysis, which takes a discourse analytical approach to investigate the intersection of identity and power in the site. Results show that criticisms and challenging questions are linked to the identification of participants with particular feminist positions, and to the negotiation of the power distribution between the administrator and themselves. Furthermore, the paradoxical nature of safe spaces plays an important role in these processes, as the use of impoliteness points to the negotiation of the norms for interaction among participants and reveals the struggle between individual expression and maintenance of safety.

The emergence of digital platforms has allowed feminists to employ new methods to fight gender inequality and break the silence which surrounds gender-based aggression. This paper aims to examine evaluative discourses employed by Twitter users to construct and denounce sexual violence in a corpus of tweets containing the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport. This hashtag was created in 2018 as a response to Donald Trump’s tweets in which he questioned Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s decision not to report her case of sexual assault when it occurred. As a result, victim-survivors adopted the hashtag to explain why they did not report their own cases. The present study adopts a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach and draws on Appraisal Theory to examine ideological discourses of (sexually) violent acts and victim-survivors. Results show the presence of discourses of violence and emotional suffering employed to bond around shared experiences and publicly denounce oppressive patriarchal practices and a lack of support from institutions and authorities.

Adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective, this paper seeks to explore the conflict emerging from the ways YouTube users index, reaffirm or challenge gender ideologies by examining 2,304 YouTube comments posted in response to the misogynistic Greek pop song Καριόλα σε μισώ ‘Slut I hate you’. Our textual analysis draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach, focusing on the lexicogrammatical choices and discursive strategies employed for the positive presentation of the self and the negative presentation of the other. Our findings suggest that: (a) there is a dialectic relationship between the gendered representations of the videoclip and the gender ideologies indexed by individual YouTube users; (b) the discursive negotiation of gender ideologies in anonymous, asynchronous and polylogal discussions is a highly polarised and antagonistic discourse activity, with most comments under the videoclip of the song falling under two broad categories, i.e. those sustaining and those challenging gendered aggression and patriarchal discourses; (c) although both groups resort to common discursive strategies (e.g. nomination and predication strategies that legitimise the authority of the in-group and delegitimise the out-group), they differ significantly in their argumentation and intensification/mitigation strategies, which allows commenters to take sides in a polarised debate and index their gender ideologies; (d) due to the pervasive power of dominant ideologies across all levels of context, the democratic and subversive potential of conflict on YouTube is limited but not pointless as counter-discourses may still gain visibility.

The aim of this paper is to examine the functionality of impoliteness strategies as rhetorical devices employed by acclaimed African American and White hip-hop artists. It focuses on the social and artistic function of the key discursive element of hip-hop, namely aggressive language. The data for this paper comprise songs of US African American and White performers retrieved from the November 2017 ‘TOP100 Chart’ for international releases on Spotify.com. A cursory look at the sub-corpora (Black male/ Black female/ White male/ White female artists’ sub-corpus) revealed the prominence of the ‘use taboo words’ impoliteness strategy. The analysis of impoliteness instantiations by considering race and gender as determining factors in the lyrics selection process unveiled that both male groups use impoliteness strategies more frequently than female groups. It is also suggested that Black male and White female singers employ impoliteness to resist oppression, offer a counter-narrative about their own experience and self (re)presentation and reinforce in group solidarity.

Although the language of extreme nationalism has been well-investigated, no studies have been concerned with the cinematic representation of racism. This article discusses the most prominent rhetorical strategies employed by neofascist characters in four race-related movies. Adopting a CDA perspective, it examines instances of hate speech targeted at minorities and identifies how immigrants and other social groups are constructed as antagonistic. Direct verbal attacks against minorities were found to be particularly humiliating due to the recurrent use of racial slurs, culture-specific stereotypes, directives and contemptuous remarks targeting the immigrants’ background. Deemed to possess an innate inclination to criminality, immigrants were presented as a threat to white rights, jobs and public safety. Modern multicultural environments, resembling dystopias, were characterised as the ideal places within which unlawfulness could thrive. The government was held responsible for abandoning the native population that was inflicted by ‘anti-white racism’. Finally, xenophobia and antisemitism intersected with gender-related bias.