Internet Pragmatics - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2024

Abstract

This article explores the role of evaluative language in the identification of emotions in–and psychophysiological responses to–Twitter complaints and compliments by the readers of these messages. Three hypotheses were tested in this research. First, in line with recent experimental work in French, we expected the presence of negative evaluative language in complaints to increase perceived dissatisfaction, impoliteness, and offensiveness by the reader. Second, assuming the negativity bias hypothesis, stronger psychophysiological responses should be found in complaints compared to compliments. Third, readers’ psychophysiological responses should be stronger for complaints and compliments including evaluative language. To test these hypotheses, we used a reading task involving cardiovascular reactivity measurements and a questionnaire. We found that perceived customer dissatisfaction, impoliteness and offensiveness were higher in complaints with vs. without evaluative language. We did not find an effect of the negativity bias on cardiovascular reactivity. Rather, compliments with evaluative language elicited larger cardiac slowing compared to complaints (with or without evaluative language) and compliments without evaluative language. As the stimuli is our study concern a railway company (which is mostly the target of criticism and complaints on Twitter), participants may have reacted more to the sort of feedback they would not expect the company to receive. Future research will be necessary to establish whether our findings still hold in the case of companies that achieve a better balance between negative and positive feedback.

Abstract

The paper explores the interplay of impoliteness, ethnic/religious humor and multimodality in online contexts. The argument advanced in the paper is that anti-Muslim memes are instantiations of ethno-religious humor that creatively incorporate linguistic impoliteness and visual dysphemism in manners that potentially propagate Islamophobia online. The analysis of a specialized corpus of memes suggests that multimodal impoliteness in these memes is mainly triggered by marked implicitness, reinforced by visual reference to targets. The humor-generating incongruity in these memes is often based on the anomalous juxtaposition of verbal and visual cues expressing ethnic and religious stereotypes, in ways that make the values expressed in these stereotypes easily acceptable. Such multimodal impoliteness creatively incorporates entertainment with emotional coercion, aiming at like-minded participants in the potential presence of targets. This constitutes a form of plausibly deniable incitement, meant to instigate attitude change and intimidate the victims, which consequently blurs the conceptual distinction between jocular abuse, impoliteness and hate speech.

Abstract

Existing research across the diverse field(s) of ‘discourse studies’ has started to explore the communicative orders and sequential practices surrounding emoji use (Skovholt, Grønning and Kankaanranta 2014; Herring and Dainas 2017; Gibson, Huang and Yu 2018; Sampietro 2019). However, researchers have not yet systematically analysed one of the demonstrable phenomena of emoji, which is their ambiguity as meaning-making devices (Miller et al. 2016; Jaeger et al. 2017). This study draws on Conversation Analysis to explore the issue of ambiguity in the use of one particular type of emoji, the wink (e.g., 😉, 🥴, 😜). Drawing on a data corpus of text conversations in Danish and in Spanish by users of the dating app ‘Tinder’, the analysis explores the phenomena of ambiguity in relation to the practice of flirting. The paper highlights four possible sources of ambiguity: idiosyncratic use, semiotic references, sequential placement, and relationship to ambiguous textual actions. The paper ends with reflections on possible future areas of research in the study of emoji and communication.

Abstract

The study aims to examine how the interactional and interactive linguistic aspects are utilized to qualify the discoursal propositions of Arabic clickbaits to secure viewers’ responsive clicks to thumbnails. To this end, one hundred Arabic YouTube clickbait headlines were selected from five Arabic channels that are owned by independent unofficial entertainment institutions. The data came from a period of one year covering 2021. The data covered different domains such as crafts, sports, entertainment, and science. To examine how the headlines are constructed, we drew on two complementary theoretical frameworks, namely, Machin and Mayer’s (2012) framework of verbal processes and participants, and Hyland’s (2005) interactional and interactive meta-discourse framework. It was found that clickbait creators structured their texts interactionally using more enticing attitude and engagement markers, and self-mentions to emphasize a closer relationship with the viewers so as to persuade them to click the baits. This tendency was further heightened by the frequent use of interactive compositional selections attained by deliberately leaving parts of the headlines opaque realized by the frequent use of consecutive dots, cataphoric markers, and viewer-attitude connective signals. Likewise, the discoursal process selection has never been neutral, as clickbait writers frequently used negative mental and material processes to spark viewers’ curiosity to react and click the bait. YouTube clickbait headlines can have the effect of frustrating viewers and/or decreasing their satisfaction. Thus, this research will hopefully contribute to the detection and isolation of clickbaits as a step required to raise viewers’ awareness of the enticing headlines and as a further step to demote them.

Abstract

Rooted in African postcolonial pragmatics, this research pays particular attention to the strategic use of code-switching and other linguistic strategies for relationship maintenance in instant messaging communities that constitute translanguaging spaces. To this end, by means of a quantitative and computer-mediated communication discourse analysis, we examine the naturally-occurring interactions, on WhatsApp, of a group of 74 former university classmates who studied Spanish Philology in the mid-2000s at a Cameroonian university. The close observation of the group’s interactional strategies for relationship maintenance shows that members construct their online famille – their new social space for self-presentation – by means of (1) sociolinguistic and pragmatic norms drawn from indigenisation; (2) kinship terms as forms of address, in English and Spanish in texts mainly in French; and (3) the inclusion of religious terms as a politeness strategy. The use of Spanish as the tie-sign of the group is not as relevant as initially expected.

This article reviews Offensive Language: Taboo, Offence and Social Control978-1-3501-6967-8978-1-3501-6969-2

This article reviews OKAY across Languages: Toward a Comparative Approach to Its Use in Talk-in-Interaction978-90-272-0815-6978-90-272-6028-4