Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2024

Abstract

Identity conflict and the loss of meaning experienced by some Muslim young people in Western countries are key factors behind fanaticism, leading some of them to find purpose in life within extremist groups (Adam-Troian et al. 2021; Moyano and González 2021). The narrative that emerges from the radicalisation process provides a rich source for psychologists and discourse analysts, exploring not only the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, but also issues stemming from self-perception and other-representation. Such conflict-based narratives materialise in individuals’ evaluative language patterns (Etaywe and Zappavigna 2022). In this paper, we conduct a close analysis of the discursive construction of emotion and opinion in a collection of semi-structured interviews with social workers or neighbours who knew the perpetrators of the 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. To do so, we use corpus-driven methodologies and a refined version of Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework (see Benítez-Castro and Hidalgo-Tenorio 2019). Our analysis aims to cast light on the social frictions that may have contributed to their endorsement of violence (Moyano et al. 2021).

Abstract

This paper addresses the specificities of online hate speech against the Afro-descendant, Roma, and LGBTQ+ communities in Portugal. The research is based on the analysis of CO-HATE, a corpus composed of 20,590 YouTube comments, which were manually annotated following detailed guidelines created for that purpose. We applied methods from corpus linguistics to assess the prevalence of overt and covert hate speech, counter-speech, and offensive speech, considering different grounds of discrimination, and to investigate the main linguistic and rhetorical strategies underlying hatred messages. The research results highlight the importance of tackling covert hate speech, a recurring phenomenon often anchored in irony and fallacious argumentation, including the emotional appeal to fear and the implicit call to action. We believe this study will aid in advancing the analysis of online hate speech, while promoting the development of efficient automated detection models, specifically regarding the Portuguese language.

Abstract

This study investigates users’ gendered attitudes towards Muslim Canadian politicians on Twitter with regard to intersectionality. Its purpose is to understand the tone and intersectional dimensions of Twitter users’ responses to Muslim Canadian politicians and the gendered responses to them. Therefore, we extracted all the available Twitter replies to 11 Muslim men and women politicians. Using a mixed method approach, we investigated how the public engages with Muslim politicians by focusing on intersectional characteristics. Results show that Muslim politicians are not directly under attack because of their religion unless they engage in public discussion of Islamic issues. Overall, both men and women politicians received higher numbers of negative replies than positive ones. Women received more personal replies while men received more professional ones. For both men and women politicians, personal attributes such as nationality, gender, and religion were used as a means for discriminating against them. However, we found that replies to women were more likely to be stereotypical and refer to characteristics of their identity and their appearance. The digital analysis shows, however, that men politicians were more trolled than their women counterparts and that the quality of attacks differed as well.

Abstract

This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of metapragmatic commentary in online news surrounding the emergence of a new offensive gesture in South Korea. This new offensive hand shape is a “precision grip” gesture whereby the thumb and index finger are pursed together to represent small size. In May 2021, male-dominated online communities started to take offence at the prevalence of this gesture in advertising campaigns, viewing it as a misandrist emblem mocking them for the size of their genitals. Conservative media sources ratified their stance of “taking offence”, which they treated as part of an ongoing “gender conflict”. Although this view drew opposition from progressive sources, I argue that male communities backed by the conservative media were able to utilise the stance of taking offence to redirect gender politics and further their misogynistic agendas. The results advance our understanding of “taking offence” as a social action in populist, multimodal and post-digital discourses.

Abstract

Even after the demise of its territorial caliphate in 2019, ISIS persists as a potent threat, adapting to new technologies and maintaining its status as an active insurgency. Amidst the backdrop of the terror group’s demonstrated resilience, this paper examines its practice of (de)legitimation and language of persuasion through a multimodal argumentation analysis. It combines the argumentation strategies (topoi) proposed by Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and tools from Social Semiotics with argumentation theories, achieved through a comprehensive enthymematic deconstruction of arguments in ISIS’s e-magazine, Dabiq. The findings reveal four interrelated sets of plausibly inferable premises, namely, advantage and disadvantage; threat and obligation; negative consequence and history; and authority and Shariah law. These premises fall within broad social, political, historical, and religious categories and are deliberately crafted to lend support to ISIS’s desired conclusions, aimed at systematically altering the addressees’ state of knowledge and eventually eliciting acceptance from the intended public.

Abstract

In this paper, we explore how (im)politeness and face are managed by two top diplomats of the US and Iran amidst an ongoing conflict where both claim to occupy moral high grounds. To that end, 360 relevant tweets posted on the Iranian Foreign Minister and US Secretary of State’s official accounts over one year were selected and analyzed qualitatively through the theoretical lens of Culpeper’s (2011) impoliteness formulae and implicational impoliteness framework. Three overarching pragmatic functions were identified: criticizing the adversary, giving directives, and showing solidarity with allies while projecting a significant amount of face-threat to the adversary. We also identified three main strategies that they used to justify their impoliteness, namely, appeal to the moral order, appeal to common sense, and appeal to international conventions and regulations. These findings can contribute to impoliteness literature by providing insights into the pragmatic functions and justifications in political communication, where the speakers have to balance their face needs and their communicative goals.

This article reviews Authoritarianism on the Front Page: Multimodal discourse and argumentation in times of multiple crises in Greece