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Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media: New contexts and new insights
Edited by María Elena Placencia and Zohreh R. Eslami
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 313] 2020
► pp. 165–186

Chapter 7
#Lovely country, #wonderful people

Diplomatic compliments and praise on Twitter

| The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
| The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Considering the popularity of Twitter in digital diplomacy, this paper explores how international politicians enhance sociability by performing online compliments and praise. Drawing on 480 amicable actions collected from 14 accounts of foreign-affair actors, we analyze the prevalence, content, form, and functions of diplomatic expressions of positive evaluation. Our findings indicate that although having important functions on interpersonal, national, and international levels, compliments and praise are uncommon actions in digital diplomacy. We suggest that the lack of diplomatic “approbation protocol” and the perils of context collapse on Twitter encourage international actors to perform solidarity by other means. We also propose that the mediated and diplomatic contexts extend the traditional definition of compliments and blur differences in cultural speaking styles.

Keywords: digital diplomacy, political discourse, public speech acts, compliments, praise, twitter, context collapse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The language of sociability in international relations
  • 3.Everyday and public compliments and praise
  • 4.The communicative challenge of complimenting in social media
  • 5.Data and method
  • 6.Doing sociability in IR via compliments and other amicable actions
  • 7.Tweeting diplomatic compliments: Content, form and functions
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.313.07dan
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