Language Aggression

This paper examines autobiographical reports of acts of (non-)verbal aggression against four Greek women pioneers in education, medicine, art and dance. These aggressive acts had been launched by some of their male contemporaries against the women's efforts to occupy authority or elite positions. The analysis, which falls within the scope of historical (im)politeness research (Kádár and Culpeper 2010), focuses specifically on the rarely addressed issue of how the autobiographers discursively deal with the narrated incidents. The four women's real-time reactions to, and post hoc appraisals of, the aggressive acts are categorized and discussed by applying and extending Bousfield's (2007) model of responses to impoliteness. Furthermore, contemporary witness and third-party contributions, offensive and defensive, are analysed in the light of relevant models (Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2013; Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2014). It is found that all four women take a dignified and defiant stance towards the recorded female-exclusionary behaviours, evidencing a common, diachronically/intergenerationally consistent self-heroizing disposition.

The current study represents an integrated model of explicit and implicit offensive language taxonomy. First, it focuses on a definitional revision and enrichment of the explicit offensive language taxonomy by reviewing the collection of available corpora and comparing tagging schemas applied there. The study relies mainly on the categories originally proposed by Zampieri et al. (2019) in terms of offensive language categorization schemata. After the explanation of semantic differences between particular concepts used in the tagging systems and the analysis of theoretical frameworks, a finite set of classes is presented, which cover aspects of offensive language representation along with linguistically sound explanations (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk et al. 2021). In the analytic procedure, offensive from non-offensive discourse is first distinguished, with the question of offence Target and the following categorization levels and sublevels. Based on the relevant data generated from Sketc...

This paper presents a novel scheme for the annotation of hate speech in corpora of Web 2.0 commentary. The proposed scheme is motivated by the critical analysis of posts made in reaction to news reports on the Mediterranean migration crisis and LGBTIQ+ matters in Malta, which was conducted under the auspices of the EU-funded C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project. Based on the realisation that hate speech is not a clear-cut category to begin with, appears to belong to a continuum of discriminatory discourse and is often realised through the use of indirect linguistic means, it is argued that annotation schemes for its detection should refrain from directly including the label ‘hate speech,’ as different annotators might have different thresholds as to what constitutes hate speech and what not. In view of this, we propose a multi-layer annotation scheme, which is pilot-tested against a binary ±hate speech classification and appears to yield higher inter-annotator agreement. Motivating the postulatio...

This paper presents a novel scheme for the annotation of hate speech in corpora of Web 2.0 commentary. The proposed scheme is motivated by the critical analysis of posts made in reaction to news reports on the Mediterranean migration crisis and LGBTIQ+ matters in Malta, which was conducted under the auspices of the EU-funded C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project. Based on the realisation that hate speech is not a clear-cut category to begin with, appears to belong to a continuum of discriminatory discourse and is often realised through the use of indirect linguistic means, it is argued that annotation schemes for its detection should refrain from directly including the label ‘hate speech,’ as different annotators might have different thresholds as to what constitutes hate speech and what not. In view of this, we propose a multi-layer annotation scheme, which is pilot-tested against a binary ±hate speech classification and appears to yield higher inter-annotator agreement. Motivating the postulatio...

The Ukrainian е-anecdotes corpus was created in order to describe structural and linguistic features of Ukrainian e-anecdotes. It contains 500 anecdotes, its volume is 18,582 tokens. Corpus-driven approach with Sketch Engine corpus management allowed to describe some linguistic and quantitative characteristics of Ukrainian e-anecdotes, to identify rare/unusual words in the corpus of e-anecdotes and interpret them, to analyze the keyword collocations and to determine linguistic and genre features of Ukrainian anecdotes, as well as to identify the ethnonymic collocations as the ethnic stereotypes markers.

In current research on face analysis questions of who and what should be interpreted, as well as how, are of central interest. In English language research, this question has led to a debate on the concepts of P1 (laypersons, representing the "emic" perspective) and P2 (researchers, representing the "etic"). In our view, two points seem critical: a) are P1 and P2 sufficiently well described to be of use in the broader analytical context that is face analysis today? And b) what contribution does this distinction make towards a greater understanding of the data? From our research on facework in Spanish and address forms in European Portuguese, we view P1 and P2 as being far more complex than the literature suggests, with subgroups (different types of laypersons and researchers, respectively). At the micro-level we will describe the roles each subgroup plays in the interpretative process; at the macro-level we discuss how P1 and P2 are integrated into the global interpretation of face. While researchers of face analysis work typically consider P1 and P2 as independent categories, we believe the contributions of P1 and P2 cannot be disassociated. Both must be taken into account in the global analysis and final interpretative framework.

The Ukrainian е-anecdotes corpus was created in order to describe structural and linguistic features of Ukrainian e-anecdotes. It contains 500 anecdotes, its volume is 18,582 tokens. Corpus-driven approach with Sketch Engine corpus management allowed to describe some linguistic and quantitative characteristics of Ukrainian e-anecdotes, to identify rare/unusual words in the corpus of e-anecdotes and interpret them, to analyze the keyword collocations and to determine linguistic and genre features of Ukrainian anecdotes, as well as to identify the ethnonymic collocations as the ethnic stereotypes markers.

The article focuses on Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech and its recontextualisation 50 years later in view of the rising anti-immigration sentiment and Brexit campaign. Having discussed the dynamics of the threat construction process and its role in shaping public attitudes to migration and policies related to it across time and space, we proceed to analyse Powell’s speech in terms of lexical, grammatical, and discursive fear-inciting devices and strategies. While doing so we draw on the insights from neuroscientific research on the role of lexis in fear stimulation and functional-cognitive models of grammatical structure. The second part of our analysis is meant to demonstrate how the semiotic potential of cyberspace and social media, along with multimodal integration of various forms, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity they enable, endow fear-inciting discourse with new spatiotemporal and affective qualities. To this end we examine one of the most popular YouTube videos...

In current research on face analysis questions of who and what should be interpreted, as well as how, are of central interest. In English language research, this question has led to a debate on the concepts of P1 (laypersons, representing the "emic" perspective) and P2 (researchers, representing the "etic"). In our view, two points seem critical: a) are P1 and P2 sufficiently well described to be of use in the broader analytical context that is face analysis today? And b) what contribution does this distinction make towards a greater understanding of the data? From our research on facework in Spanish and address forms in European Portuguese, we view P1 and P2 as being far more complex than the literature suggests, with subgroups (different types of laypersons and researchers, respectively). At the micro-level we will describe the roles each subgroup plays in the interpretative process; at the macro-level we discuss how P1 and P2 are integrated into the global interpretation of face. While researchers of face analysis work typically consider P1 and P2 as independent categories, we believe the contributions of P1 and P2 cannot be disassociated. Both must be taken into account in the global analysis and final interpretative framework.

This article discusses findings of a qualitative study on strategies of othering observed in anti-immigrant discourse, by analysing selected examples from the UK and Polish media, together with data collected from interviews with migrants. The purpose is to identify discursive strategies of othering, which aim to categorise, denigrate, oppress and ultimately reject the stigmatised or racialised ‘other’. We do not offer a systematic comparison of the data from the UK and Poland; instead, we are interested in what is common in the discursive practices of these two countries/contexts. In using newspaper together with interview data, we are combining representation and experience in identifying not only strategies of othering, but also how these are perceived by and affect the othered individuals. The paper uses the following data: 40 newspaper articles – 20 from the UK and 20 from Poland, and 19 interviews – 12 from Poland and 7 from the UK. The analysis that follows identifies five sh...

This article discusses findings of a qualitative study on strategies of othering observed in anti-immigrant discourse, by analysing selected examples from the UK and Polish media, together with data collected from interviews with migrants. The purpose is to identify discursive strategies of othering, which aim to categorise, denigrate, oppress and ultimately reject the stigmatised or racialised ‘other’. We do not offer a systematic comparison of the data from the UK and Poland; instead, we are interested in what is common in the discursive practices of these two countries/contexts. In using newspaper together with interview data, we are combining representation and experience in identifying not only strategies of othering, but also how these are perceived by and affect the othered individuals. The paper uses the following data: 40 newspaper articles – 20 from the UK and 20 from Poland, and 19 interviews – 12 from Poland and 7 from the UK. The analysis that follows identifies five sh...

Interest in non-academic ways of understanding of im/politeness has so far been evident primarily in analyses of the sequential development of real-life interactions. However, understandings of im/politeness can be found in other sources such as related articles in on-line newspapers and their ensuing comments. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to this rather neglected area in im/politeness research, thus placing emphasis on the underexplored societal rather than individual level of im/politeness. The data to be investigated comes from two on-line articles and the comments they received. The articles appeared in a popular Greek free press on-line newspaper, LIFO, in 2014 and 2017 and were written by the same journalist. Both articles and ensuing comments express lay understandings of impoliteness and are discussed in the paper in terms of van Dijk’s (1998, 2006a, b) ideological discourse analysis and ‘ideological square’ that revolves around positive self-presentation and ...

This paper exemplifies the use of aggression as impoliteness in computermediated, or digital communication in Brazilian Portuguese, while looking into the performance of such linguistic actions in the context of a discussion about class discrimination. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between linguistic aggression as impoliteness, and identity as observed in a Facebook campaign page about a Brazilian university. The page under consideration was devised as an open platform to disseminate and call attention to examples of discriminatory behaviors experienced by students from peripheric communities attending an elite university in Rio de Janeiro. These students were at the center of a controversy, as they were supposedly brought to this institution through social programs promoted by the previous, leftist oriented governments. This paper examines the use of linguistic aggression as impoliteness, such as name calling and overt disagreement (LoRenzo-DUS; BLiTvich; BoU-FRanch, 2011), to communicate different opinions about, or argue against, the perceived instances of discrimination supplied by the students in the campaign and subsequently discussed by the participants in their posts. These impoliteness strategies ratify identities in the context of the discussion, marking in and outside group members, as the participants 1) align against, or 2) justify, the described behaviors.

Peer-to-peer businesses such as Airbnb have recently given rise to new travel trends in which electronic word of mouth, in the form of online consumer reviews (OCRs, henceforth), is the main trust mechanism with a threefold purpose: to make informed decisions regarding accommodation, gain good reputation, and manage the relational component as continuity from the offline stage of the experience. In the light of the above, this study will analyse 120 reviews (60 positive and 60 negative) written by Airbnb travellers and linked to three different emotional orientations: delighted/satisfied, ambivalent/neutral, and dissatisfied/disappointed. Taking an illocutionary and stylistic domain perspective, the reviews will be examined to understand how users manage relational work (Watts 1989, Locher and Watts 2005, Locher 2006, Locher and Watts 2008), and to ascertain what is likely to be the ‘norm’ in this particular genre (i.e., OCRs) and for the particular Virtual Community of Practice (VC...

Where we have been going (Karen) In 2010 Derek Bousfield and I were honoured to take over editorship of the journal. At that point it had been in existence for 5 years and was already very successful in developing and expanding the field of politeness studies and in bringing together in one place key theoretical debates and empirical studies. By this time, it was already unusual for papers based on purely Gricean approaches to politeness to be published since, under Chris Christie's original editorship, the journal had been instrumental in moving politeness theory on from the Brown and Levinson approach. Instead, papers in the journal tended to assume a discursive approach and to explore such concepts as face, identity, relational work, and impoliteness as valid themes. It was also common for papers to analyse politeness in a variety of contexts (both historical and contemporary) and languages and from the perspective of different disciplines. 2015 saw the publication of the 10th Anniversary special issue, at which point I was sole editor, with Isabelle van der Bom as editorial assistant (and guest editor of the special issue). In their introduction to the special issue van der Bom and Grainger (2015) note that politeness research had by then been identified as coming in "waves" of theoretical and ontological orientation, with most contributions falling into the second "discursive" wave or the third "sociological/interactional" wave. The second wave tended to focus on first order definitions of politeness and the evaluation of interactions by participants themselves. The later third wave (Grainger 2011) has been characterized by Haugh (2018) as taking the middle ground between traditional politeness theories, combining some of the insights from the first Gricean wave with those of the discursive second wave such that

This article discusses findings of a qualitative study on strategies of othering observed in anti-immigrant discourse, by analysing selected examples from the UK and Polish media, together with data collected from interviews with migrants. The purpose is to identify discursive strategies of othering, which aim to categorise, denigrate, oppress and ultimately reject the stigmatised or racialised ‘other’. We do not offer a systematic comparison of the data from the UK and Poland; instead, we are interested in what is common in the discursive practices of these two countries/contexts. In using newspaper together with interview data, we are combining representation and experience in identifying not only strategies of othering, but also how these are perceived by and affect the othered individuals. The paper uses the following data: 40 newspaper articles – 20 from the UK and 20 from Poland, and 19 interviews – 12 from Poland and 7 from the UK. The analysis that follows identifies five sh...

Interest in non-academic ways of understanding of im/politeness has so far been evident primarily in analyses of the sequential development of real-life interactions. However, understandings of im/politeness can be found in other sources such as related articles in on-line newspapers and their ensuing comments. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to this rather neglected area in im/politeness research, thus placing emphasis on the underexplored societal rather than individual level of im/politeness. The data to be investigated comes from two on-line articles and the comments they received. The articles appeared in a popular Greek free press on-line newspaper, LIFO, in 2014 and 2017 and were written by the same journalist. Both articles and ensuing comments express lay understandings of impoliteness and are discussed in the paper in terms of van Dijk’s (1998, 2006a, b) ideological discourse analysis and ‘ideological square’ that revolves around positive self-presentation and ...

In current research on face analysis questions of who and what should be interpreted, as well as how, are of central interest. In English language research, this question has led to a debate on the concepts of P1 (laypersons, representing the "emic" perspective) and P2 (researchers, representing the "etic"). In our view, two points seem critical: a) are P1 and P2 sufficiently well described to be of use in the broader analytical context that is face analysis today? And b) what contribution does this distinction make towards a greater understanding of the data? From our research on facework in Spanish and address forms in European Portuguese, we view P1 and P2 as being far more complex than the literature suggests, with subgroups (different types of laypersons and researchers, respectively). At the micro-level we will describe the roles each subgroup plays in the interpretative process; at the macro-level we discuss how P1 and P2 are integrated into the global interpretation of face. While researchers of face analysis work typically consider P1 and P2 as independent categories, we believe the contributions of P1 and P2 cannot be disassociated. Both must be taken into account in the global analysis and final interpretative framework.

The present paper aims to report on the preliminary findings from the initial stages of ongoing research on hate speech in Lithuanian online comments. Comments are marked strongly by such phenomena as flaming and trolling; therefore, in this genre we can expect a high degree of hostility, obscenity, high incidence of insults and aggressive lexis, which can inflict harm to individuals or organizations. The goal of the current research is thus to make an attempt to identify some features of verbal aggression in Lithuanian by applying the principles and instruments of corpus linguistics, which proved to be a useful approach when dealing with such issues as trolling. It is expected that further analysis of those features will help to identify and define formal linguistic criteria that could facilitate identification of hate speech in public discourse. The data has been obtained from the Lithuanian corpus of user-generated comments collected from one major Lithuanian portal, www.delfi.lt. The corpus consists of all the comments posted in the year 2014 and in total includes 17,909 comments, which make up 1,160,109 words. For the initial data analysis, linguistic aspects, such as wordlists, collocations, and formulaic language, were analysed by using the AntConc software. The interpretations of the results are still very tentative, but what the initial findings show is that aggressive lexis does not feature among the most frequent and most salient features of comments, since aggressive rhetoric often resorts to creative language use, which emerges mainly through content analysis.

The chapter aims to provide a comprehensive overview of impoliteness and conflict research in Spanish, assess it critically, and suggest new areas of possible development for the field. The overview unveils two main foci of interest among researchers; namely, studies that seek to theorize impoliteness and studies that analyze mediated cases of impoliteness, either via traditional or digital media. After reviewing the field, four main issues, both theoretical and methodological, related to the bulk of the research under scrutiny are identified and discussed; namely, approaches, units of analysis, data, and reflexivity and interdisciplinarity. Further, suggestions are offered regarding several under-researched areas, mostly related to metapragmatics, issues of nomenclature, conventionalization, morality, qualitative tools of analysis, and ethical considerations, all of which can help advance the field. Resúmen Este capítulo presenta una revisión amplia de la investigación realizada sobre descortesía en español, la evalúa críticamente y sugiere posibles áreas de desarrollo para el campo. En la 2 revisión se identificaron dos focos principales de interés: estudios que se centran en teorizar la (des)cortesía y otros que analizan diferentes tipos de descortesía mediatizada en medios tradicionales y digitales. En lo que concierne a la evaluación, la investigación sobre descortesía se valoró con respecto a los enfoques y datos utilizados, las unidades de análisis y cuestiones de interdisciplinariedad y de reflexividad. El capítulo concluye con recomendaciones para avanzar el campo del estudio de la descortesía en español relacionadas con áreas que de investigación que no han recibido mucho interés hasta la fecha, tales como la metapragmática, moralidad o consideraciones éticas, entre otros.

FORMATION OF STUDENT`S ARGUMENTATION SKILLS AS A WAY OF COUNTERACTING PROPAGANDA INFLUENCE, MYTHOLOGIZATION AND LINGUISTIC AGGRESSION
Olena Taranenko
Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University (Vinnitsa), Department of Journalism
Academic Yangel Str. 4, Vinnitsa, Ukraine
[email protected]
The article analyzes the experience of experimental programs and training exercises made by teachers of the Department of Journalism of the Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University in the international scientific project "Aggression and Argumentation: Conflict Discourse and it`s Language Solution" ("Aggression and Argumentation: Conflict Discipline and Ihre Sprachliche Verhandlung" ), which is being implemented jointly with the Institute of Slavic Studies at Dresden Technical University (Germany).
We based it at the professional standards of journalism, the rules of conflict-sensitive journalism and the laws of communicative logic and we offer a special course, which includes three thematic blocks with the necessary media competencies.
The first part of the course involves studying the mechanism of propaganda influence, the danger of the journalism transformation into propaganda and studying the widespread manipulation in modern media.
The second part includes preventive abilities and skills of transfering it into materials created by students. In this thematic block students studying the mechanisms of remitiologization as an effective instrument of massization, emotional pseudo-argumentation, substitution of theses and arguments through mythological constructs, creation and rooting of stereotypes, etc.
The third block contains the study of common forms of linguistic aggression in modern media and political discourse. Also it contains information about the student`s ability to conduct a professional discussion in the analytic genres of journalism and in various types of public controversy.
The experimental special course was tested in the educational process of student`s studying at the specialty "Journalism", in different thematic blocks of disciplines "Introduction to the specialty", "Communicative logic", "Analytical genres of journalism", "The theory of mass communication". Also it was tested during the International Media School which was organized by the Department of Journalism of Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University in March 2017.
Key words: mediacompetence, argumentation, mythologization, propaganda, language aggression.