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Article published In:
Hate Speech in Online Media
Edited by Anton Granvik, Mélanie Buchart and Hartmut Lenk
[Internet Pragmatics 6:2] 2023
► pp. 173–196

Haters in the spotlight

Gender and socially unacceptable Facebook comments

| CY Cergy Paris University | University of Ljubljana
| University of Ljubljana
| University of Ljubljana | Jožef Stefan Institute | Institute of Contemporary History

This study investigates the interplay between commenters’ gender and their language use in Slovene socially unacceptable Facebook comments by inspecting the frequency of opinion markers and impoliteness triggers, and the pragmatic functions of opinion markers which were investigated according to a newly developed typology. The analysis shows statistically significant differences between men and women in their formulation of opinions and use of impoliteness triggers. Comments written by men are characteristically formed as fact-like covert opinions and contain explicit impoliteness triggers (e.g., insults). Comments written by women are formed as overt opinions explicitly encoding subjectivity and include implicit impoliteness triggers (e.g., tropes). A common feature is the use of opinion markers as self-oriented face-saving devices. But while men use opinion markers to explicitly communicate their desire to save face, women use them to perform face-saving implicitly.

Keywords: hate speech, impoliteness, gender, opinion, implicitness, speech acts, social media
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Covert and overt opinions
    • 2.2Functions of opinion markers
    • 2.3Impoliteness and gender
  • 3.Data and annotation
    • 3.1Sample
    • 3.2Annotation
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Gender and formulation of opinions
    • 4.2Gender and discursive functions of opinion markers
    • 4.3Gender and frequency of impoliteness triggers
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00093.pah
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