Cover not available
Article published In:
Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 2:2 (2019) ► pp.173–205

Self-denigration and the mixed messages of ‘ugly’ selfies in Instagram

| University of Birmingham

This paper sets out a new, multimodal account (both visual and verbal analysis) of how self-denigration is conveyed through ‘ugly selfies’ as posted to the photo-sharing site Instagram. Drawing on 226 Instagram posts categorised by the poster themselves with the hashtag #uglyselfie, the visual analysis compared the persons and setting in the selfie, the person’s facial expression (eye brow position, mouth expression), eye gaze and camera angle. The verbal analysis included the self-denigration found in the image caption and the rapport enhancing or threatening responses found in the comments to the image posted by others. Ugly selfies are found to convey various types of self-denigration, including self-deprecation and self-mockery. The difference between self-deprecation and self-mockery are explained by the types of ‘mixed messages’ generated by the images. In self-deprecation, the mixed messages arise from a contrast between the visual image and the verbal caption. In self-mockery, the mixed messages arise from contrasts within the image itself, where visual exaggeration and incongruity lead to a jocular interpretation of the ugly selfie. Although the focus in this paper is on self-denigration and selfie-taking, the analysis of mixed messages can be used to analyse many different forms of politeness strategies and many kinds of images shared with increasing frequency and importance on social media sites.

Keywords: self-denigration, self-deprecation, self-mockery, selfies, humour, Instagram, ugly selfies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Selfie-taking as a new context for self-denigration
    • 1.2The subtypes of self-denigration: Self-deprecation and self-mockery
      • 1.2.1Prototypical self-deprecation
      • 1.2.2Self-deprecation as ‘trouble talk’
      • 1.2.3Self-mockery
    • 1.3Ugly selfies
  • 2.Analysing Instagram ‘post events’
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data analysis: Coding scheme and protocols
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Persons and content
    • 4.2Camera angle and filters
    • 4.3Facial expression
      • 4.3.1Eye gaze
      • 4.3.2Eye brow position
      • 4.3.3Mouth expression
    • 4.4Verbal analysis of the caption
    • 4.5Responses to the ‘ugly selfie’: Comments
  • 5.The subtypes of self-denigration found in the Instagram post events
    • 5.1Prototypical self-deprecation
    • 5.2Self-deprecation as ‘Trouble talk’
    • 5.3Self-deprecation reframed as self-praise
    • 5.4Self-mockery
  • 6.Conclusion and directions for further research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00035.pag
References
Abidin, Crystal
2016 “Aren’t these just young, rich women doing vain things online ? Influencer selfies as subversive frivolity.” Social Media and Society 2(2): 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Adami, Elisabetta, and Carey Jewitt
2016 “Special issue: Social media and the visual.” Visual Communication 15(3): 263–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Monica, and Jingjing Jiang
2018 “Teens’ social media habits and experiences.” Pew Research Center. Available at: [URL] (accessed 10 January 2019).
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2013 “Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications.” International Journal of Bilingualism 19(2): 185–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore, Jodi Eisterhold, Jennifer Hay, and Isabella Poggi
2003 “Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm.” Humor 16(2): 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balakrishnan, Janarthanan, and Mark D. Griffiths
2018 “An exploratory study of selfitis and the development of the selfitis behavior scale.” International Journal of Mental Health Addiction 161: 722–736. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Jessica
2014 “With some selfies, the uglier the better.” New York Times, 21 February 2014. Available at: [URL] (accessed 26 November 2018).
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Patricia Bou-Franch, and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
2013 “Identity and impoliteness: The expert in the talent show Idol .” Journal of Politeness Research 9(1): 97–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolander, Brook, and Miriam Locher
2014 “Doing sociolinguistic research on computer-mediated data: A review of four methodological issues.” Discourse, Context & Media 31: 14–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, Michael Haugh, and Valeria Sinkeviciute
2017 “(Im)politeness and mixed messages”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 323–355. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dayter, Daria
2014 “Self-praise in microblogging.” Journal of Pragmatics 611: 91–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta
2016 “ ‘I has seen Image Macros!’ Advice Animal memes as visual-verbal jokes.” International Journal of Communication 101: 660–688.Google Scholar
Forceville, Charles
2005 “Visual representations of the idealized cognitive model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie .” Journal of Pragmatics 37(1): 69–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Francesconi, Sabrina
2011 “Multimodally expressed humour shaping Scottishness in tourist postcards.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 9(1): 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuoli, Matteo
2018 “A stepwise method for annotating APPRAISAL.” Functions of Language 25(2): 229–258. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2010 “Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(8): 2106–2119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet
1986 “Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English.” Anthropological Linguistics 28(4): 485–508.Google Scholar
Hu, Yuheng, Lydia Makikonda, and Subbarao Kambhampati
2014 “What we Instagram: A first analysis of Instagram photo content and user types.” In Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 595–598. Palo Alto: The AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell
1972 “Models of the interaction of language and social life.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John Gumperz, and Dell Hymes, 35–71. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, Inc.Google Scholar
Kim, Mary Shin
2015 “The complexity and variability of self-deprecation in Korean conversation.” Pragmatics and Society 6(3): 398–420. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kofoed, Jette, and Malene Charlotte Larsen
2016 “A snap of intimacy: Photo-sharing practices among young people on social media.” First Monday 21(11). Available at: [URL] (accessed 20 April 2018). DOI logo
Landis, J. Richard, and Gary G. Koch
1977 “The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data.” Biometics 33(1): 159–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maíz-arévalo, Carmen
2013 “ ‘Just click “Like”’ : Computer-mediated responses to Spanish compliments.” Journal of Pragmatics 511: 47–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Machin, David, Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, and Tommaso Milani
2016 “Doing critical multimodality in research on gender, language and discourse.” Gender and Language 10(3): 301–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matley, David
2018a “ ‘This is NOT a #humblebrag, this is just a #brag’: The pragmatics of self-praise, hashtags and politeness in Instagram posts.” Discourse, Context & Media 221: 30–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018b “ ‘Let’s see how many of you mother fuckers unfollow me for this’: The pragmatic function of the hashtag #sorrynotsorry in non-apologetic Instagram posts.” Journal of Pragmatics 1331: 66–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth
2019 “Group selfies and snapchat: From sociality to synthetic collectivisation.” Discourse, Context & Media 281: 79–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Placencia, María Elena, Amanda Lower, and Hebe Powell
2016 “Complimenting behaviour on Facebook: Responding to compliments in American English.” Pragmatics and Society 7(3): 339–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schnurr, Stephanie, and Angela Chan
2011 “When laughter is not enough. Responding to teasing and self-denigrating humour at work.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(1): 20–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen
2002 “Managing interpersonal rapport: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations.” Journal of Pragmatics 341: 529–545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tabacaru, Sabina, and Maarten Lemmens
2014 “Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding.” European Journal of Humour Research 2(2): 11–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tiggeman, Marika, and Mia Zaccardo
2018 “ ‘Strong is the new skinny’: A content analysis of #fitspiration images on Instagram.” Journal of Health Psychology 23(8): 1003–1011. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veum, Aslaug, and Linda Victoria Moland Undrum
2018 “The selfie as a global discourse.” Discourse & Society 29(1): 86–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walkinshaw, Ian, Nathaniel Mitchell, and Sophiaan Subhan
2019 “Self-denigration as a relational strategy in lingua franca talk: Asian English speakers.” Journal of Pragmatics 1391: 40–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Ruoxu, Fan Yang, and Michel M. Haigh
2017 “Let me take a selfie: Exploring the psychological effects of posting and viewing selfies and groupies on social media.” Telematics and Informatics 34(4): 274–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yu, Changrong
2013 “Two interactional functions of self-mockery in everyday English conversations : A multimodal analysis.” Journal of Pragmatics 50(1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yus, Francisco
2018 “Identity-related issues in meme communication.” Internet Pragmatics 1(1): 113–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele
2016 “Social media photography: construing subjectivity in Instagram images.” Visual Communication 15(3): 271–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zare, Javad
2016 “Self-mockery: A study of Persian multi-party interactions.” Text and Talk 36(6): 789–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Sumin, and Michele Zappavigna
2018 “Beyond the self: Intersubjectivity and the social semiotic interpretation of the selfie.” New Media & Society 20(5): 1735–1754. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 14 other publications

Bi, Xiaoyi & Wei Ren
2023. Metapragmatic comments deconstructing the concept of self-mockery in Chinese on social media. Language & Communication 92 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Imran, Hina, Saba Rehman, Sanober Khanum & Mafia Shahzadi
2024. Association of Self-Esteem, Narcissistic Tendencies, and Selfie-Posting Behavior among Young Adults . Pakistan Journal of Health Sciences ► pp. 26 ff. DOI logo
Kádár, Dániel Z., Juliane House, Fengguang Liu & Lin Jiao
2023. Self-denigration in Chinese: An interactional speech act approach. Language & Communication 88 ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Mayahi, Nadia & Alireza Jalilifar
2022. Self-denigration in academic discourse. Functions of Language 29:3 ► pp. 300 ff. DOI logo
Mayahi, Nadia & Alireza Jalilifar
2023. The in-group ritual of self-denigration in Iranian doctoral defense sessions: applied linguists’ attitudes, functions and perceptions in focus. Journal of Politeness Research 0:0 DOI logo
Rüdiger, Sofia
2022. Intimate consumptions. Internet Pragmatics 5:1 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Rüdiger, Sofia & Susanne Mühleisen
2022. Introduction. Internet Pragmatics 5:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Shi, Xingsong, Yujie Chang & Jiawei Gao
2022. Investment in transnational identity to become microcelebrities in China: on American uploaders’ success in a Chinese video-sharing website. Language and Intercultural Communication 22:6 ► pp. 642 ff. DOI logo
Tong, Ying & Chaoqun Xie
2022. Book Review: Ruth Page, Narrative Online: Shared Stories in Social Media. Discourse & Communication 16:6 ► pp. 743 ff. DOI logo
Tong, Ying & Chaoqun Xie
2022. Self-Praise in and through Selfies: A Multimodal Perspective. In Self-Praise Across Cultures and Contexts [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Virtanen, Tuija
2022. Virtual performatives as face-work practices on Twitter: Relying on self-reference and humour. Journal of Pragmatics 189 ► pp. 134 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Yilei & Dezheng (William) Feng
2022. Identity performance and self-branding in social commerce: A multimodal content analysis of Chinese wanghong women’s video-sharing practice on TikTok. Discourse, Context & Media 50 ► pp. 100652 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun, Francisco Yus & Hartmut Haberland
2021. Introduction. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Xin & Yansheng Mao
2021. How to grapple with the green-eyed monster: A discursive approach to jealousy management in Chinese TV dramas. Language & Communication 79 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.