Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Online First

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.

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.

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.

This paper examines the factors that influence the outcome of exchanges containing refusals, focusing specifically on the role of irony. For this purpose, we analyse spontaneous conversations in English (SPICE-Ireland Corpus and Spoken BNC) within a discursive framework ( Eelen 2001 ; Mills 2003 ; Watts 2003 ) that considers the negotiation of opposing views as well as relationships between interlocutors. We propose a model that relies on the crucial distinction we draw between the ‘positional’ and the ‘interpersonal’ level, pointing at mismatches between the two when it comes to the presence of conflict. We determine the presence and (non-)resolution of interpersonal conflict based on evidence of relational work ( Locher and Watts 2008 ) and show that although there is no fixed trajectory from irony type ( Kapogianni 2011 , 2018 ) to interpersonal effect, some ironies are more interpersonally risky than others.

In recent years, travellers have increasingly opted for sharing economy businesses, such as Airbnb. In contrast to other platforms for travellers, the Airbnb review system is characterised by its positivity bias, which implies that most of the users post enthusiastically positive reviews. Posting a negative review is the exception, which makes it a highly sensitive task in relational terms.

In light of the above, this study aims to examine 60 reviews with negative valence in order to understand: first, which aspects of the experience make airbnbers feel dissatisfied; second, the extent to which relational concerns and authenticity make an impact on both dissatisfaction and rapport orientation; and third, how rapport concerns (i.e., face and rights and obligations) are managed in reviews with negative valence. The results show that a large number of users tried to repair rapport, while others neglected or challenged rapport. The difference in tone and intention was motivated by the presence/absence of the relational component (i.e., association rights), which had an impact on the varying importance given to other faults. The present study intends to bring to the fore the importance of rapport management when posting sensitive information in an online system in which the management of communicative skills lies at its core.