Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 8:1 (2020) ► pp.29–56

#shutdownjnu vs #standwithjnu

A study of aggression and conflict in political debates on social media in India

 | Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, India
In February 2016, one of the premier Universities of higher education in India, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), suddenly came into the limelight for allegedly raising anti-India slogans at one of the protest cultural programmes in the campus. In this paper, I present a study of the co-emergence and spread of the two opposing hashtags in the context of the controversy – #shutdownjnu and #standwithjnu. The study is based on data collected from Twitter over a period of 2 years from February 2016 – February 2018. I present a quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of the emergence and use of these two hashtags on Twitter and understand these in terms of the process of enregisterment and how conflict (and consequently aggression) became normative and conventionalised in the context of these hashtags. I also take a comparative look at the enregisterment of the two hashtags and argue that despite similar conditions, enregisterment is not guaranteed.
Keywords: aggression, enregisterment, conventionalisation, social media, Hindi, JNU
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1Aggression and conflict on social media
    • 2.2Enregisterment and conventionalisation
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Data annotation
    • 3.3Analytical procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Emergence and spread of the conflicting hashtags
    • 4.2Co-occurrence of aggression with the hashtags
    • 4.3Conventionalisaton via enregisterment
      • 4.3.1Stage 1: The initiation stage
      • 4.3.2Stage 2: The expansion stage
      • 4.3.3Stage 3: The redefinition stage
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00028.kum
References (51)
References
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bolander, Brook. 2012. “Disagreements and Agreements in Personal/Diary Blogs: A Closer Look at Responsiveness.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(12): 1607–1622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich. 2018. “Relational Work in Multimodal Networked Interactions on Facebook.” Internet Pragmatics 1(1): 134–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coesemans, Roel, and Barbara De Cock. 2017. “Self-reference by Politicians on Twitter: Strategies to Adapt to 140 Characters.” Journal of Pragmatics 1161: 37–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conway, Bethany A., Kate Kenski, and Di Wang. 2015. “The Rise of Twitter in the Political Campaign: Searching for Intermedia Agenda-setting Effects in the Presidential Primary.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 20(4): 363–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2010. “Conventionalised Impoliteness Formulae”. Journal of Pragmatics 42(12): 3232–3245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Impoliteness Using Language to Cause Offense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Danet, Brenda. 2013. “Flaming and Linguistic Impoliteness on a Listserv.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 639–664. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Darics, Erika. 2010. “Politeness in Computer-mediated Discourse of a Virtual Team.” Journal of Politeness Research 61: 129–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Cock, Barbara, and Andrea Pizarro Pedraza. 2018. “From Expressing Solidarity to Mocking on Twitter: Pragmatic Functions of Hashtags Starting with #jesuis across Languages.” Language in Society 471: 197–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2010. “The YouTubification of Politics, Impoliteness and Polarization.” In The Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. by Rotimi Taiwo, 540–563. USA: IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Politics, ‘Lies’ and YouTube: A Genre Approach to Assessments of Im/politeness on Obama’s 9/9/2009 Presidential Address.” In New Perspectives on (Im)politeness and Interpersonal Communication, ed. by Lucía Fernández-Amaya, Maria de la O Hernández López, Reyes Gómez Morón, Manuel Padilla Cruz, Manuel Mejias Borrero, and Mariana Relinque Barranca, 62–90. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2013. “Relational Work in Anonymous, Asynchronous Communication: A Study of (Dis)Affiliation in YouTube.” In Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics, ed. by Istvan Kecskes, and Jesus Romero-Trillo, 343–366. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, Sage L., and Claire Hardaker. 2017. “(Im)politeness in Digital Communication.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 785–814. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, Sage L. 2007. “Disagreeing to Agree: Conflict, (Im)Politeness and Identity in a Computer-mediated Community.” Journal of Pragmatics 39(4): 742–759. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2010. “When is an Email Really Offensive? Argumentativity and Variability in Evaluations of Impoliteness.” Journal of Politeness Research 61: 7–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel, and Siân Robinson Davies. 2016. “Ritual, Aggression, and Participatory Ambiguity: A Case Study of Heckling.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 4(2): 202–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., Michael Haugh, and Wei-Lin Melody Chang. 2013. “Aggression and Perceived National Face Threats in Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese CMC Discussion Boards.” Multilingua 32(3): 343–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaul, Asha, and Vaibhavi Kulkarni. 2010. “Gender and Politeness in Indian Emails.” In The Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. by Rotimi Taiwo, 389–410. USA: IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kreis, Ramona. 2017. The ‘Tweet Politics’ of President Trump. Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 607–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kumar, Ritesh. 2014. “Politeness in Hindi Online Texts: Pragmatic and Computational Aspects.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University.Google Scholar
. 2017. “Conventionalized Politeness Structures: Empirical Evidence from Hindi/Urdu.” Journal of Politeness Research 13(2): 243–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kumar, Ritesh, Aishwarya N. Reganti, Akshit Bhatia, and Tushar Maheshwari. 2018. “Aggression-annotated Corpus of Hindi-English Code-mixed Data.” In the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC – 2018), 1425–1431.Google Scholar
Lea, Martin, Russell Spears, and Daphne de Groot. 2001. “Knowing me, Knowing you: Anonymity Effects on Social Identity Processes within Groups.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27(5): 526–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., Brook Bolander, and Nicole Höhn. 2015. “Introducing Relational Work in Facebook and Discussion Boards.” Pragmatics 25(1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2011. “On-line Polylogues and Impoliteness: The Case of Postings Sent in Response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube Video.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(10): 2578–2593. 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
Maíz Arévalo, Carmen. 2015. “Jocular Mockery in Computer-mediated Communication: A Contrastive Study of a Spanish and English Facebook Community.” Journal of Politeness Research 11(2): 289–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mak, Bernie Chun Nam, and Carmen Lee. 2015. “Swearing is E-business: Expletives in Instant Messaging in Hong Kong Workplaces.” In Digital Business Discourse, ed. by Erika Darics, 122–141. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Mak, Bernie Chun Nam, and Erika Darics. 2017. “Swearing and Instant Messaging: Changing Norms of Social Interaction in the Hong Kong Workplace Context.” In Advances in Swearing Research: New languages and New Contexts, ed. by Kristy Beers Fägersten, and Karyn Stapleton, 43–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mak, Bernie Chun Nam, and Hin Leung Chui. 2014. “Impoliteness in Facebook Status Updates: Strategic Talk among Colleagues ‘Outside’ the Workplace.” Text & Talk 34(2): 165–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Markman, Kris M. 2013. “Conversational Coherence in Small Group Chat.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 539–564. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marwick, Alice E., boyd, danah. 2010. “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13(1): 114–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Driscoll, Jim. 2013. “Situational Transformations: The Offensive-izing of an Email Message and the Publicization of Offensiveness.” Pragmatics and Society 4(3): 369–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth E. 2012. Stories and Social Media. Identities and Interaction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Planchenault, Gaëlle. 2010. “Virtual Community and Politeness: The Use of Female Markers of Identity and Solidarity in a Transvestites’ Website.” Journal of Politeness Research 6(1): 83–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reicher, Steve, Russell Spears, and Tom Postmes. 1995. “A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena.” European Review of Social Psychology 61: 161–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria, and Spridoula Bella. 2019. “Twitter, Politeness, Self-Presentation.” In Patricia Bou-Franch and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (eds.), Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions, 341–365. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinkeviciute, Valeria. 2018. “‘Ya Bloody Drongo’: Impoliteness as Situated Moral Judgement on Facebook.” Internet Pragmatics 1(2): 271–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina. 2001. “Politeness in Cypriot Greek: A Frame-Based Approach.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Generalised and Particularised Implicatures of Linguistic Politeness.” In Peter Kühnlein, Hannes Rieser, and Henk Zeevat (eds.). Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium. 149–164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “Beyond the Micro-Level in Politeness Research.” Journal of Politeness Research 1(2): 237–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turnage, Anna K. 2007. “Email Flaming Behaviors and Organizational Conflict.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1): 43–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Upadhyay, Shiv R. 2010. “Identity and Impoliteness in Computer-mediated Reader Responses.” Journal of Politeness Research 61: 105–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1998. “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press.” In Approaches to Media Discourse, ed. by Paul Garrett, and Alan Bell, 21–63. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Watts, Richard J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
West, Laura, and Anna M. Trester. 2013. “Facework on Facebook.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna M. Trester, 133–154. Washington, D.A.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Zappavigna, Michelle. 2011. “Ambient Affiliation: A Linguistic Perspective on Twitter.” New Media & Society 13(5): 788–806. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How we Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum International.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Palomino-Manjón, Patricia
2022. Feminist activism on Twitter. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 10:1 ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 january 2025. 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.