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(Im)politeness and Moral Order in Online Interactions
Edited by Chaoqun Xie
[Benjamins Current Topics 107] 2020
► pp. 67–97

“Ya bloody drongo!!!”

Impoliteness as situated moral judgement on Facebook

This sutdy explores impoliteness-related discourse on Facebook as a form of expressing situated moral judgement. The analysis focuses on negative and aggressive comments as a response to one public post that claims the non-existence of Australia. The content of the post indicates the threat to national identity of anyone who associates themselves with the country. As a result, a large number of impolite comments were made. A qualitative analysis of the dataset (limited to one month from the post’s publication) reveals four main strategies that are used in order to express the judgement of the post’s inappropriateness and repair the wrongdoing. Those range from insults of the author’s mental abilities and suspicion of drug use to violence-related discourse (e.g., death threats) and counter-attack of the author’s national identity. This study, thus, aims to contribute to a growing area of research into online impoliteness.
Keywords: impoliteness, situated moral judgement, wrongdoing, CMC, Facebook, national identity, face
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Impoliteness-related discourse in computer-mediated interactions
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Post participation on Facebook
  • 4.Impoliteness-related discourse as a form of situated moral judgement: A case study of a Facebook post
    • 4.1“Australia is not real”: National face/Identity threat
    • 4.2“Ya bloody drongo!!!”: Impoliteness as situated moral judgement
      • 4.2.1Insult (question knowledge/mental abilities)
      • 4.2.2Suspect someone of illegal behaviour or metal disability
      • 4.2.3Use violence-related discourse
      • 4.2.4Counter-attack the national face and identity
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.107.ip.00013.sin
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