Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Online-First Articles“A history lesson, perhaps, for my novice counterpart”
The analysis of (im)politeness in political Twitter (X)
Seyed Mohammadreza Mortazavi | Allameh Tabataba’i University | Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS)In this paper, we explore how (im)politeness and face are managed by two top diplomats of the US and Iran amidst an ongoing conflict where both claim to occupy moral high grounds. To that end, 360 relevant tweets posted on the Iranian Foreign Minister and US Secretary of State’s official accounts over one year were selected and analyzed qualitatively through the theoretical lens of Culpeper’s (2011) impoliteness formulae and implicational impoliteness framework. Three overarching pragmatic functions were identified: criticizing the adversary, giving directives, and showing solidarity with allies while projecting a significant amount of face-threat to the adversary. We also identified three main strategies that they used to justify their impoliteness, namely, appeal to the moral order, appeal to common sense, and appeal to international conventions and regulations. These findings can contribute to impoliteness literature by providing insights into the pragmatic functions and justifications in political communication, where the speakers have to balance their face needs and their communicative goals.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The context of the study
- 2.1Im/politeness, diplomacy and face
- 2.2Impoliteness and the moral order
- 2.3Twitter, (im)politeness and politics
- 3.Method
- 3.1Data collection
- 3.2Theoretical framework
- 3.3Analytical procedure
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1Pragmatic and political functions of the tweets
- 4.2Impoliteness in the tweet
- 4.2.1Criticism
- 4.2.2Directives
- 4.2.3Solidarity
- 4.3Justifications
- 5.General discussion and conclusions
- Notes
-
References
References (72)
Altahmazi, Thulfiqar Hussein M.
2022 “Impoliteness in Twitter
Diplomacy: Offence Giving and Taking in Middle East Diplomatic Crises.” Journal of Politeness
Research 18 (2): 281–310. 
Ameka, Felix K., and Marina Terkourafi
2019 “What
if…? Imagining Non-Western Perspectives on Pragmatic Theory and Practice.” Journal of
Pragmatics 1451: 72–82.
Blommaert, Jan
2018 Durkheim
and the
Internet. London: Bloomsbury.
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2014a “Gender
Ideology and Social Identity Processes in Online Language Aggression against Women.” Journal of
Language Aggression and
Conflict 2 (2): 226–248.
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2014b “Conflict
Management in Massive Polylogues: A Case Study from YouTube.” Journal of
Pragmatics 731: 19–36.
Bousfield, Derek
2007 “Impoliteness,
Preference Organization and
Conductivity.” Multilingua 26 (1): 1–33.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1978 “Universals
in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena.” In Questions and
Politeness, edited by E. Goody, 56–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1987 Politeness:
Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall
2005 “Identity
and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse
Studies 7(4–5): 585–614.
Chilton, Paul
1990 “Politeness,
Politics and Diplomacy.” Discourse &
Society 1 (2): 201–224.
Clarke, Isobelle, and Jack Grieve
2019 “Stylistic
Variation on the Donald Trump Twitter Account: A Linguistic Analysis of Tweets Posted between 2009 and
2018.” PLoS
ONE 14 (9): 1–27.
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.
Culpeper, Jonathan
2005 “Impoliteness
and Entertainment in the Television Quiz Show: The Weakest Link
.” Journal of
Politeness
Research 1 (1): 35–72.
2011 Impoliteness:
Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan, and Claire Hardaker
2017 “Impoliteness.” In The
Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, edited by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 199–225. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Danziger, Roni, and Mia Schreiber
2021 “Digital
Diplomacy: Face Management in MFA Twitter Accounts.” Policy and
Internet 13 (4): 586–605.
Dayter, Daria
2014 “Self-Praise
in Microblogging.” Journal of
Pragmatics 611: 91–102.
Dobs, Abby Mueller, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2013 “Impoliteness
in Polylogal Interaction: Accounting for Face-Threat Witnesses’ Responses.” Journal of
Pragmatics 531: 112–130.
Eelen, Gino
2001 A
Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome.
Eisenberg, Ann
1992 “Conflicts
between Mothers and Their Young Children.” Merrill-Palmer
Quarterly 38 (1): 21–43.
Frame, Alex, and Gilles Brachotte
2015 “Le
Tweet Stratégique: Use of Twitter as a PR Tool by French Politicians.” Public Relations
Review 41 (2): 278–287.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, and Maria Sifianou
2017 “(Im)Politeness
and Identity.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic
(Im)Politeness, edited by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 227–256. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2021 “Morality
in Sociopragmatics.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Sociopragmatics, edited by Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár, and Marina Terkourafi, 385–407. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel, Harold
1964 “Studies
of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities.” Social
Problems 31: 225–250.
Goffman, Erving
1967 Interaction
Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face
Behavior. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Graham, Sage Lambert
2007 “Disagreeing to Agree:
Conflict, (Im)Politeness and Identity in a Computer-Mediated Community.” Journal of
Pragmatics 39 (4): 742–759.
Harris, Sandra
2001 “Being
Politically Impolite: Extending Politeness Theory to Adversarial Political
Discourse.” Discourse &
Society 12 (4): 451–472.
Haugh, Michael
2013 “Im/Politeness,
Social Practice and the Participation Order.” Journal of
Pragmatics 581: 52–72.
Hemphill, Libby, Jahna Otterbacher, and Matthew A. Shapiro
2013 “What’s
Congress Doing on Twitter?” In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on
Computer Supported Cooperative Work,
CSCW, 877–886. ACM.
Hoffmann, Christian R.
Horgan, Mervyn
2019 “Everyday
Incivility and the Urban Interaction Order.” Journal of Language Aggression and
Conflict 7 (1): 32–55.
Kampf, Zohar
2016a “All
the Best! Performing Solidarity in Political Discourse.” Journal of
Pragmatics 931: 47–60.
2016b “Rhetorical
Bypasses: Connecting with the Hearts and Minds of People on the Opponent’s Side.” Journal of
Multicultural
Discourses 11 (2): 149–163.
Kampf, Zohar, Lee Aldar, Roni Danziger, and Mia Schreiber
2019 “The
Pragmatics of Amicable Interstate Communication.” Intercultural
Pragmatics 16 (2): 123–151.
Kampf, Zohar, Dana Chudy, Roni Danziger, and Mia Schreiber
2020 “ ‘Wait
with Falling in Love’: Discursive Evaluation of Amicable Messages Conveyed by
Opponents.” Journal of Language and Social
Psychology 40 (2): 188–213.
Kampf, Zohar, and Roni Danziger
2018 “ ‘You
Dribble Faster than Messi and Jump Higher than Jordan’: The Art of Complimenting and Praising in Political
Discourse.” Journal of Politeness
Research 15 (1): 1–23.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C.
2004 “Introducing
Polylogue.” Journal of
Pragmatics 36(1): 1–24.
Khosravinik, Majid
2014 “Critical
Discourse Analysis, Power, and New Media Discourse.” In Why Discourse
Matters: Negotiating Identity in the Mediatized World, edited by Monika Kopytowska and Yusuf Kalyango, 287–306. New York:Peter Lang. [URL]
Kountouri, Fani, and Andreas Kollias
2023 “Polarizing
Publics in Twitter through Organic Targeting Tactics of Political Incivility.” Frontiers in
Political Science 51.
Leech, Geoffrey N.
1983 Principles
of
Pragmatics. London: Routledge.
Locher, Miriam A.
2015 “Interpersonal Pragmatics and
its Link to (Im)Politeness Research.” Journal of
Pragmatics 861: 5–10.
Locher, Miriam A., and Brook Bolander
2015 “Humour
in Microblogging: Exploiting Linguistic Humour Strategies for Identity Construction in Two Facebook Focus
Groups.” In Participation in Public and Social Media
Interactions, edited by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec, 135–155. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Makki, Mohammad, and Andrew S. Ross
2021 “ ‘We
were Cocked & Loaded to retaliate’: An appraisal-based Study of Dichotomies in Trump’s Tweets about
Iran.” Journal of Language Aggression and
Conflict 11 (1): 1–24.
Makki, Mohammad, and Michele Zappavigna
2022 “Out-Grouping
and Ambient Affiliation in Donald Trump’s Tweets about
Iran.” Pragmatics 32 (1): 104–130.
Malthus, Miriam
2019 “ ‘Yes,
He Is, at Least, Entertaining.’” Journal of Language Aggression and
Conflict 7 (2): 210–239.
Marwick, Alice E., and danah boyd
2011 “I
Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined
Audience.” New Media &
Society 13 (1): 114–133.
Matley, David
2018 “ ‘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.
Mendoza-Denton, N.
2008 “Language
and Identity.” In The Handbook of Language Variation and
Change, edited by Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 475–499. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mojtahed-Zadeh, Pirouz
2013 Security
and Territoriality in the Persian
Gulf. London: Routledge.
Nwoye, Onuigbo G.
1992 “Linguistic Politeness and
Socio-Cultural Variations of the Notion of Face.” Journal of
Pragmatics 18 (4): 309–328.
Oliveira, Ana Larissa Adorno Marciotto, and Monique Vieira Miranda
2022 “ ‘Calling
a Spade, a Spade’: Impoliteness and Shame on Twitter.” Journal of Research in Applied
Linguistics 13 (2): 22–32.
Parvaresh, Vahid, and Tahmineh Tayebi
2018 “Impoliteness,
Aggression and the Moral Order.” Journal of
Pragmatics 1321: 91–107.
Patton, Michael Quinn
2014 Qualitative Research &
Evaluation Methods: Integrating Theory and Practice. 2nd edn. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Pizziconi, Barbara
2015 “Teaching
and Learning (Im)Politeness: A Look at the CEFR and Pedagogical
Research.” In Teaching and Learning
(Im)Politeness, edited by Barbara Pizziconi, and Miriam A. Locher, 113–151. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Rauchfleisch, Adrian, and Julia Metag
2016 “The
Special Case of Switzerland: Swiss Politicians on Twitter.” New Media &
Society 18 (10): 2413–2431.
Reicher, Stephen D., Anne Templeton, Fergus Neville, Lucienne Ferrari, and John Drury
2016 “Core
Disgust is Attenuated by Ingroup Relations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 113 (10): 2631–2635.
Riazi, Mehdi
2016 “Thematic
Analysis”. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Research Methods in
Applied Linguistics, edited by Mehdi Riazi, 3181. New York: Routledge.
Ross, Andrew S., and David Caldwell
2020 “ ‘Going
Negative’: An appraisal Analysis of the Rhetoric of Donald Trump on Twitter.” Language
and Communication 701: 13–27.
Searle, John R.
1976 “A Classification of
Illocutionary Acts.” Language in
Society 5 (1): 1–23.
Spencer-Oatey, Helen
2007 “Theories
of Identity and the Analysis of Face.” Journal of
Pragmatics 39 (4): 639–656.
2008 “Face,
(Im)Politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally
Speaking, 2nd
edn., 11–47. New York: Continuum.
Spencer-Oatey, Helen, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2015 “The
Bases of (Im)Politeness Evaluations: Culture, the Moral Order and the East-West Divide.” East
Asian
Pragmatics 1 (1): 73–106.
Tajfel, Henry, and John Charles Turner
1986 “The
Social Identity Theory of Inter-Group Behavior.” In Psychology of
Intergroup Relations, edited by Stephen Worchel, and William G. Austin, 7–24. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Tayebi, Tahmineh, and Vahid Parvaresh
2014 “Conversational
Disclaimers in Persian.” Journal of
Pragmatics 621: 77–93.
Terkourafi, Marina
2005 “Beyond
the Micro-Level in Politeness Research.” Journal of Politeness
Research 1 (2): 237–262.
2015 “Conventionalization:
A New Agenda for Im/Politeness Research.” Journal of
Pragmatics 861: 11–18.
Terkourafi, Marina, Lydia Catedral, Iftikhar Haider, Farzad Karimzad, Jeriel Melgares, Cristina Mostacero-Pinilla, Julie Nelson, and Benjamin Weissman
Tracy, Karen
2017 “Facework
and (Im)Politeness in Political Exchanges.” In The Palgrave Handbook
of Linguistic
(Im)Politeness, 739–758. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
van Dijk, Teun
2014 Discourse
and Knowledge: A Sociocognitive
Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic
Relations
1961 Vienna, Austria: United Nations Treaty Collection. [URL]
Watts, Richard J.
2005 “Linguistic Politeness Research:
Quo Vadis?” In Politeness in Language: Studies
in its History, Theory and Practice, edited by Richard J. Watts, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich, 2nd
edn., xi–x1vii. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Wodak, Ruth
2017 “The
‘Establishment’, the ‘Élites’, and the ‘People.’” Journal of Language and
Politics 16 (4): 551–565.