Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2020

This paper analyses a snapshot of a conflictive Greek YouTube polylogue dealing with the issue of public online female nudity and the norms pertaining to both the act itself and its verbal critique. The said polylogue contains a markedly high proportion of lay (im)politeness/(in)appropriateness evaluations (Locher and Watts 2005). By quantifying and critically analyzing key lexical impoliteness (Culpeper 2011) and metapragmatic markers contained in the evaluations, I identify the ways in which the norms of online verbal behaviour are discursively negotiated amongst the polylogue participants, focusing especially on the arguments and justifications underlying the suggested norms. It is found that, firstly, the notions of (im)politeness/(in)appropriateness emerge as open to fierce, yet heavily argument-supported discursive dispute; secondly, sexualized slang functions both as an object of critique and as an extremely versatile rhetorical instrument serving metapragmatic argumentation; and, thirdly, online (im)politeness/(in)appropriateness is construed not as a superficial matter of netiquette, but as a deeply ethical and political-ideological controversy, especially regarding speech liberty and political correctness.

This paper reports on a large-scale study on how “enemies” are linguistically constructed by Greece’s radical right. The research combines corpus linguistics approaches and insights from critical discourse analysis, with the aim of analysing the referential/nomination and predication strategies used to delineate “others” as outgroups. Drawing on a 90 million-word corpus comprising the full set of texts from 13 radical right web-based platforms from 2001 to 2019, the research identifies and statistically classifies principal designators and qualifiers. By closely examining their diachronic variations and correlation with significant sociopolitical events, we critically categorise and discuss the empirical findings and thus unveil topics, as well as aspects of the argumentation, pooled by Greece’s radical right in their discursive constructions.

This study examines the opaque reproduction of racism in an online, anti-racist campaign officially aiming to denounce hate speech and challenge widespread stereotypes concerning migrants. In particular, we investigate the video clips of the #StopMindBorders campaign launched by the Greek branch of the International Organization for Migration. We specifically concentrate on the liquid racism attested in these video clips, namely a highly ambivalent form of racism encouraged in the mass media and usually hard to detect, as it involves multiple interpretations, some of which may not be assessed as racist (Weaver 2016). The multimodal critical analysis of the representation of migrants reveals that these video clips tacitly promote migrants’ linguocultural assimilation as a prerequisite for their acceptance in the host country. In this sense, although the anti-racist campaign under scrutiny attempts to refute discourses of aggression and mainstream stereotypes against migrants, it ends up naturalizing hate speech and reproducing assimilative and monoculturalist ideologies.

Previous research on extremist discourse has revealed that racism is linguistically shaped by its socio-cultural context. For instance, a comparison between Greek Cypriot and Greek online data indicated that the two communities use different linguistic means and strategies to express their aversion to the Other, and that Greek comments are more overtly insulting than Greek Cypriot comments (Baider and Constantinou 2017a; Assimakopoulos and Baider 2019). The present study focuses on how irony is used to disseminate hate speech, albeit covertly. Our dataset comprises online Greek and Greek Cypriot comments posted on social media and collected during the same period of time (2015- 2016) within an EU project. We use concepts such as verisimilitude and overt untruthfulness to deconstruct ironic racist comments. We conclude that irony in both datasets fulfils three socio-pragmatic functions: it serves to insult or humiliate members of groups targeted for their ethnic identity; it creates or reinforces negative feelings against such groups; it promotes beliefs that could be used to legitimate their mistreatment. Regarding socio-cultural differences, it emerges that the use of the Greek Cypriot vernacular and the appeal to indigenous in-group social stereotypes influence the way irony shapes racist comments and reinforces in-group membership.

A growing line of research focuses on users’ discussions on social networking sites regarding the causes and consequences of the Greek crisis, as well as on online impoliteness in polarised political debates. Following this trend, I set out to examine how vocatives meant to address non-present interactants (such as politicians or collectivised others) are employed by Greek Facebook and YouTube users to delegitimate their perceived political opponents and attribute blame for the country’s problematic politico-economic situation. I am focusing both on standardly impolite vocatives (personalised negative vocatives) and on superficially polite vocatives (vocatives of mock-endearment and mock-deference), examining their structure and purpose in comments discussing the critical period of the 2015 Greek referendum and subsequent elections. Findings suggest that users exploit norms of standardised politeness and cultural expectations within the Greek interactional context to denigrate their political opponents. Additionally, capitalising on salient discourses on the Greek crisis and on the Greek historical past, on the political content of their discussions, and on the affordances of social media, they take advantage of taboo themes typically associated with impoliteness to name the culprits behind the troublesome everyday Greek reality.

In the context of the Greek economic crisis during the years 2009–2019, the aim of the present study is to discuss language aggression and derogatory forms of speech attested in user polylogues commenting on instances of parliamentary discourse uploaded to computer mediated communication networks. Within the framework of (im)politeness research (Culpeper 2005, 2011; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010a; Haugh 2013; Lorenzo-Dus, et al. 2011; Mitchell and Haugh 2015), we investigate the correlation between impoliteness and abusive verbal discourse in both domains, i.e. parliamentary sittings and social media commentary. We explore their potential to establish a common ground in viewing political issues and determining ideological polarizations. We also attempt a preliminary analysis of swear words and derogatory references to Greek political personnel and their instrumentalisation for the division of the readership into those who support and those who oppose different political agendas.