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Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 6:1 (2018) ► pp.26–57

Uncivil Twitter

A sociopragmatic analysis

| Leiden University, The Netherlands
| City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
| University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA
| Salisbury University, USA
| University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA
| University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA
| University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA
| University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA

Using four tweets by Steven Salaita about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that resulted in the retraction of his academic job offer in September 2014 as our case study, we investigate the role of Twitter in the shaping and reception of the controversial messages. Our analysis combines Gricean pragmatics with im/politeness and hate-speech research to reveal a complex layering of potential meanings stemming from what is linguistically encoded in each tweet. Their construal as hate speech, in particular, depends on which of these potential meanings critics chose to focus upon. We account for this finding by considering the diversity of potential audiences of a tweet and suggest that the effects of context collapse on implicated meanings can be especially detrimental. Competition for attention among incoming tweets, Twitter’s central affiliative function and applicable length restrictions can, nevertheless, place a premium on communicating such meanings.

Keywords: freedom of speech, impoliteness, language aggression, hate speech, context collapse, implicatures
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A (brave, new) world of Twitter affordances
  • 3.Civility, im/politeness and hate speech
  • 4.A sociopragmatic analysis of Salaita’s tweets
    • 4.1“You may be too refined to say it”
      • 4.1.1The socio-political context
      • 4.1.2The co-text
      • 4.1.3Linguistic analysis
    • 4.2Jeffrey Goldberg’s story and the shiv
      • 4.2.1The socio-political context
      • 4.2.2The co-text
      • 4.2.3Linguistic analysis
    • 4.3“You are an awful human being”
      • 4.3.1The socio-political context: “right now”
      • 4.3.2The co-text and linguistic analysis
    • 4.4“Antisemitism” and anti-Semitism
      • 4.4.1The socio-political context
      • 4.4.2The co-text and linguistic analysis
  • 5.Conclusion: If you play with Twitter, you may get burned (and why)
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00002.ter
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