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“What is Wrong With You People That You are Happy Someone has Covid” Impoliteness in the Coronavirus Pandemic Era

“What is Wrong With You People That You are Happy Someone has Covid” Impoliteness in the... Whilst the coronavirus pandemic keeps threatening the world at large, little is yet known about the impoliteness implications of user-generated- Covid-related contents on social media such as Facebook. The aim of this study is to examine the com- ments made in response to Giuliani’s Covid- 19 diagnosis, from an impoliteness perspective. A merely qualitative analysis of a dataset of 3,000 comments evenly collected from three different news outlets (i.e., BBC, CNN, Fox News), the findings reveal that the reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis are more focused on him being a politician, than him being a human being affected by the virus. The reactions attack his actions and the actions of others within his political party, which suggests that impoliteness has a strong dependence on previous actions and political engagement. Giuliani is seen by some users to be undeserving of compassion or empathy not just on the grounds of his active involvement in attempting to overturn the presi- dential election results, but also for his disregard toward mask wearing in public spheres. Not all the users, however, appreci- ate the attacks against Giuliani. Through metadiscursive comments, some users not just feel the need to treat Giuliani as a human being, but more importantly remind fellow users that Covid-19 should be a concern for all. What is particularly criti- cal about these metacomments is that while the users advocate for civil interactions, they mostly do not condone Giuliani’s actions. This so because these users understand what should be obligatory, permissible, or forbidden on the human level under the circumstances. Keywords Facebook, impoliteness, politics, polarized discourse, Covid-19 were more open to and welcoming of mask wearing, Introduction Republicans took a reluctant stance toward the issue, The year 2020 is best remembered as the year of the out- making the US response to the outbreak one of the most break. Detected in China in late 2019, Covid-19 soon controversial and polarized issues from the earlier days became an international emergency by March 2020. The of 2020. Then-conservative President Trump even down- damage brought about by the outbreak became a hard- played the pandemic as early as February 2020, called it ship felt worldwide, as lockdowns became the norm in a hoax and barely wore a mask throughout 2020, which most countries globally. The management of such a dis- led the Democrats to see in the pandemic an opportunity astrous pandemic tested the world nations’ leaderships to criticize the Republicans and energize their electoral and set the tone for political discourse over issues such base. From the start of 2020 to its end, Covid-19 in the as mask wearing, test distribution, length of lockdowns, US went from a merely public health issue to becoming health recommendations and guidelines, travel restric- tions, etc. In the USA where 2020 was also known as the Universidad Europea de Canarias, Madrid, Spain presidential election year, the abovementioned issues became even more salient as they resurged the conflicts Corresponding Author: between traditional and progressive values which have Jean Mathieu Tsoumou, Universidad Europea de Canarias, C. Tajo, s/n, long divided Democrats and Republicans (Garce´ s- 28670 Villaviciosa de Odo´n, Madrid, Spain. Conejos Blitvich, 2010). For example, whilst Democrats Email: jeanmathieu.tsoumou@universidadeuropea.es Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open a political challenge. Being a superpower struggling to intends to provide empirical responses to the following contain the virus while the death toll keeps skyrocketing questions. across the country (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- 2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/pastreports/11062020.html), How does impoliteness unfold in Facebook com- the US response to the outbreak and its implications ahead ments triggered by Giuliani’s diagnosis? of the US presidential election scheduled for November 3, On what grounds are the reactions to the diagnosis 2020, caught the attention of the rest of the world both based across the three news outlets? through international news outlets such as BBC, France 24 as well as on social media such as Twitter, Instagram, The remaining sections of this paper are organized in the Facebook, etc. Millions of people worldwide carefully following way. The overview of the literature is provided followed the pandemic crisis as it unfolded on social in section 2. The research method is explained in section media and live TVs. Contents and statistics on the 3. The analysis of the findings is carried out in section 4. devastation induced by the virus became constantly The conclusions drawn from the analysis are provided in available and reported live on both traditional news the last section. stations and social media. In the particular case of social media, for instance, the more alarming the pan- demic got, the more polarizing the reactions became, Overview of the Literature especially when it came to prominent politicians being The consensus in the literature is that social media such diagnosed with Covid-19 (Tsoumou, 2022). as Facebook have the capacity and power to shape politi- Within impoliteness literature, polarization implies, cal and health discourse and attract new forms of engage- according to Andersson (2022, p. 490), ‘‘contradiction ment (Tsoumou, 2020, 2022; Velasquez & Rojas, 2017). (verbal and non-verbal) attacks, criticisms, etc., which The popularity and benefits of social media, however, sometimes violate the norms of appropriate social beha- come with interactive costs and challenges related to the vior (or even civility), create an atmosphere of negative norms of interaction, given that interactions about topics emotion, and attack the participants’ self-image and/or such as politics tend to promote interactional friction social identity’’ (See also Culpeper, 2011; Tsoumou, and impoliteness (Andersson, 2021; Tsoumou, 2022). In 2022). However, the extent to which such polarization other words, participation on social media, especially shapes individuals’ reactions to politicians’ Covid diag- when the interaction occurs in international contexts, nosis as well as the grounds on which they base such poses the challenge over what is (in)appropriate. One reactions on social media such as Facebook have not form of conduct may be judged appropriate by some, but been fully explained from an impoliteness perspective. offensive by others. Another point that is often raised in As such, this paper examines impoliteness in comments the literature is that social media tend to have a strong reacting to Giuliani’s COVID diagnosis on Fox News, emotional focus which makes them prone to all forms of CNN, and BBC Facebook pages. It aims to understand how impoliteness unfolds and the grounds on which it is expressions, including compliments, grief, appraisal, based. The data were collected on December 6, 2020, mourning, condolences, etc. (Oz et al., 2017; Rossetto while Giuliani (full name ‘‘Rudolph William Louis et al., 2015; Theodoropoulou, 2015; Wagner, 2018; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020). Since impoliteness can be linked to Giuliani’’) was the Attorney to the then-President of the emotion (Culpeper, 2011), interaction on social media United States, Donald Trump. Giuliani was one of the can help understand better, as Tsoumou (2022, p. 2) puts lawyers appointed by Trump to challenge the 2020-US- it, ‘‘the virtual nature of individuals’ apprehension and November-3rd-election results. Besides, Rudy Giuliani has been in the public eye for countless years, including management of emotionally charged topics such as being the New York City mayor between 1994 and 2001, death, illnesses, natural catastrophes, as well as other life- launching a campaign for the US senate 2000 and for the changing experiences such as weddings, birthdays, gra- presidency in 2008. Rudy Giuliani is and has been a duations, etc.’’ However, despite this growing interest in Republican for many years. As I argued elsewhere analyzing users’ reactions on social media, very few stud- (Tsoumou, 2022, p. 12), ‘‘at the time of a COVID-19- ies have attempted to examine reactive responses to an emotionally charged topic (i.e., illness) in a polarizing induced pandemic as well as a looming presidential elec- context (Tsoumou, 2022). This paper hopes to contribute tion, any positive COVID-19 test results of the Trump’s allies had both political and public health implications toward redressing this imbalance by analyzing reactions and ramifications.’’ This makes Facebook interactions to Giuliani’s Covid diagnosis across three international about Rudy Giuliani’s diagnosis a suitable set of data news outlet Facebook pages, namely Fox News, CNN, for the analysis of impoliteness. Consequently, this paper and BBC Facebook pages. Tsoumou 3 Facebook Interaction and Political Discussion the totality of individual’s experiences of a particular cul- ture and situational norms refer to the totality of individ- Thanks to its affordances, Facebook has become a popu- ual’s experiences of a particular situation in a particular lar social media to express not just distress and achieve- culture. However, the situational norms are not just part ments which usually prompt support, wishes, appraisal, of the cultural norms, but together, they amount to a per- etc. (Li et al., 2019; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020), but also son’s knowledge of what is normal in certain kinds of political engagement, criticisms, threats, etc. As situations in a certain culture (O’Driscoll, 2020). Studies Tsoumou (2022, p. 4) points out ‘‘while emotional sup- on social media posts and subsequent reactions at indi- port is commonplace on social media, so are conflictive vidual nation level emphasize the situatedness and cul- and impolite interactions, especially in polarizing and tural nature of criticisms, verbal attacks within specific politically-driven exchanges where the dissociation from national borders, even when the topic of discussion has others is a substantial part of a polarized positioning.’’ international ramifications. Andersson (2022, p. 509), for As pointed out earlier, the question over what is socially example, points out ‘‘the pertinence of value positions (in)appropriate on Facebook is often a dilemma for and the participants’ efforts to enact, negotiate, and users involved in discussions about controversial topics demonstrate their allegiance to specific values when (i.e., politics). The argument usually made is that the reacting to the pandemic of Covid-19 on the official notion of politics involves groups in adversarial relation- Facebook page of the Swedish national public televi- ships, and to advantage one group often by definition sion.’’ In the context of Spanish politics, Bou-Franch will disadvantage the other group (Andersson, 2022; (2021, p. 290) reports that ‘‘the meanings of disrespectful- Tsoumou, 2022). However, it is not my argument here ness and childishness in political debates are reported to that every political discussion on Facebook revolves be connected to breaches in appropriate behavior regard- around impoliteness (attacks, criticisms, etc.), as ing turn-taking and topic management and social expec- Facebook can also serve as a social media on which opi- tations associated with the role of political leaders.’’ nions about politics may contribute to enhance political However, one cannot overlook the fact that when fac- discourse. Moreover, attacks in politically related discus- ing global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, sions are not just present on Facebook alone. Research global warming, etc., the tendency is often for some shows that other social media such as YouTube, Twitter, nations to take example of how-to response from super- etc., are also home to impoliteness. Lorenzo-Dus et al. power countries. This usually generates international (2011), for instance, not only report dissociating cases interest to countries that want to appeal their responsive where the users dissociate from others, they also uncov- actions to the superpower models. For instance, the ered an emergence of ‘‘(sic) larger and more transient interest the American experiment has had around the subgroups emerged therein, whose members did not world is undeniable. The idea that America rests on solid always make explicit the distance existing between them and permanent democratic principles that guarantee and (an)other member(s)/sub-groups’’ (p. 2587). freedom and protection of basic rights for all is usually Furthermore, researchers tend to concur over the fact seen as the right pathway for allies around the globe, that while posts on Facebook intend to call for reactions especially in Europe. It is in this context that the US (be it verbal or non-verbal) from fellow users, such reac- struggles to contain the virus while the death toll kept tions are often influenced by various factors such as the skyrocketing across the country in 2020 and the implica- context of the exchange, the topic of conversation or tions of the US response to the outbreak ahead of the even the type of audience (Tsoumou, 2020, 2021a). For US presidential election scheduled for November 3, example, it has been shown that polite and friendly reac- 2020, not just generated interest to the rest of the world, tions tend to be pervasive in interactions and posts about but favored international engagement in translocality birthday wishes, and condolences, whereas reactions to digital environments. Defined as ‘‘the complex ways in topics such as gun control, politics, and sports tend be which diverse local practices come together in global more hostile and impolite (Oz et al., 2017; spaces’’ (Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich & Bou-Franch, 2018, Theodoropoulou, 2015; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020). Concretely, Zhou and Jurgens (2020) report that tweets p. 5), Translocality environments are, for example, reacting to White House posts were more impolite Facebook pages held by international news outlets such regarding same-sex marriage than there were about other as the BBC, CNN, FOX News, etc. These pages are issues such as gun control. open internationally and capable of reaching commu- Previous studies reiterate the argument that impolite- nities with different languages, backgrounds, cultures, histories and whose members only come together online ness revolves around the notion of norms which can be with the sole interest of informing and being informed of cultural or situational (Culpeper, 2011; O’Driscoll, 2020). According to O’Driscoll (2020), cultural norms refer to what is going on around the world. Investigating norms 4 SAGE Open and the particularities of interaction in these translocality the premise that this utterance will actually be perceived Facebook environments could further our understanding as such not just by the addressee alone, but all those of impoliteness beyond national borders. involved (maybe involved) in the interaction. Yet, individuals’ evaluation of social actions, espe- cially on Facebook—which is a polylogual interaction— Impoliteness as a Social Practice depends on the participation status of the participants, also known as footing (Goffman, 1981). Footing refers Impoliteness research has witnessed a discursive turn in to the roles and responsibilities of participants or the the last two decades. This has evolved toward analyzing social capacity in which a participant is presumed to be longer fragments of authentic discourse with the premise acting in the interaction (O’Driscoll, 2020). According to that impoliteness is a social practice carried out through Haugh and Ka´ da´ r (2013), these roles and responsibilities (conversational) assessments made by interactants on the include animator (or utterer) which refers to the person grounds of shared moral order (Haugh, 2013). Haugh producing talk, an author is the entity that creates or and Ka´ da´ r (2013, p. 6) argue that the basis of impolite- designs the talk, a principal which is the party responsible ness evaluations is ‘‘the accountability of social actions for that talk, and a figure is the character portrayed and pragmatic meanings vis-a` -vis the moral order,’’ within the talk. These roles and responsibilities may which is understood as a ‘‘set of expectancies through affect the perspectives from which impoliteness is evalu- which social actions and meanings are recognizable as ated and perceived. For example, an animator may pro- such, and consequently are inevitably open to moral eva- duce an utterance that is only perceived as impolite or luation.’’ In order words, as individuals, we recognize offensive by the author, rather than by the intended tar- and know the difference between good and bad. Our get. Put differently, social media (i.e., Twitter and reaction to any transgression of social norms rests on the Facebook) have a policy based on which they sanction knowledge of the form and content of the transgression. offensive behaviors not because the targets of such Such reactions represent our perceptions and apprehen- offenses complain, but because these acts go against the sion of social actions vis a vis the moral order. We take policy of the platform. Trump, for example, has been other people responsible for their actions on the grounds banned from Twitter for violating the platform policy. of what is morally (in)acceptable or (in)appropriate in a The notion of footing is particularly salient in the case particular context. Viewing (im)politeness as a social of the data analyzed in this paper, as these roles can practice implies that (a) (metapragmatic) evaluations broadly be distributed as follows: the animators are the constitute reactions that strongly depend on prior social users engaged in the interaction the comment threads, actions of the person or conduct being evaluated; (b) any the author here is Facebook, the principals are the three (metapragmatic) assessment is rooted in the moral order News outlets and the figure is Giuliani who is portrayed that orient individuals’ action to deontic order (i.e., what within the talk. In this context, while author, principal, participants think is ‘‘obligatory, permissible, or forbid- and figure seem to have a static and unique role, the ani- den)’’ (Stevanovic & Pera¨ kyla¨ , 2012, p. 289). mators can be categorized into those that produce impo- The term evaluation is crucial when defining impolite- liteness utterances (producers of comments) and those ness as a social practice, since impoliteness behaviors that morally see and evaluate these utterances as impolite depend on the perception, experience and evaluation by (producer of metacomments). Evaluations of impolite- not just individuals involved in the interaction alone, but ness in this context needs to be situated vis-a` -vis not only anyone close enough to experience such behavior. Evaluation is what gives an utterance a positive or nega- simply speakers or hearers, but also relative to a complex tive value. Put differently, what makes people perceive array of production and reception footings (Haugh, 2013). particular behaviors as impolite is the value accorded to Time and space are also of particular importance in them in a particular community (O’Driscoll, 2020) and understanding impoliteness as a social practice in the the salience of this value in a given interaction in a par- sense that evaluative moments within a particular inter- ticular context. action are usually underpinned by the different under- However, when examining impoliteness, one has to be standing of time and space (Haugh & Ka´ da´ r, 2013). In aware of not just the importance of the hearer’s evalua- tion (Eelen, 2001), but also the alignment individuals other words, impoliteness evaluations are usually situ- take up to themselves and others present as expressed in ated. Such situatedness is conditioned by time and space. the way they manage the production and reception of an Any understanding of impoliteness is therefore relative utterance (Haugh, 2013). For example, the perception of to time and space. In this way, impoliteness evaluations Giuliani as deserving of compassion or not is both are practices that emerge in an interaction in a particular period of time. This is critical to the present paper in that socially and interactively meaningful, since the produc- the interaction under study takes place in a particular tion of any ((im)polite) comment in this context rests on Tsoumou 5 space (Facebook) and during a particular time (the evaluation is one way to study impoliteness’’, since, Covid-19 pandemic and the US post-election period). In ‘‘impoliteness occurs not so much when the speaker other words, analyzing impoliteness in Facebook interac- produces behavior but rather when the hearer evaluates tion dealing with Covid-19 is, in other words, a search to that behavior.’’ With this in mind, a thorough meta- determine the salience of impoliteness as it emerges and pragmatic examination of each corpus is carried out so its motive values in the context of the 2020 pandemic. as to determine users’ own evaluation of the ongoing flow of interventions within the comment threads (see subsection 4.1). Detecting Impoliteness Across the Corpora Recent developments in impoliteness research have Method shown that impoliteness behaviors can be interpreted from the scientific standpoint (second order), from lay It is now widely accepted that any investigation into persons’ standpoint (first order) or from a hybrid human behavior on Facebook requires a reflection on approach, which is the combination of the above (Bou- the questions of privacy, confidentiality, and informed Franch, 2021; Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich, 2022). This dis- consent (Bolander & Locher, 2019). As a result, precau- tinction sparks from the mere idea that impoliteness tions have to be taken in order to avoid inflicting harm behaviors are contested social actions which can be dif- to individuals being investigated. In this vein, the ferently understood and interpreted (Haugh & Ka´ da´ r, research design in this paper carefully follows the guide- 2013; Kleinke & Bo¨ s, 2015). Taking each Facebook com- lines for online research (Spilioti & Tagg, 2017) in accor- ment as a unit of analysis, I examine impoliteness by dance with calls for attention to ethical considerations in combining a metapragmatic analysis with a merely lin- pragmatics and social media research (Bolander & guistic analysis so as to guarantee a hybrid approach Locher, 2019). In this regard, 6 months prior to the col- which benefits from Culpeper’s (2011, 2016) notion of lection of the data analyzed in this paper, I had been impoliteness formulae (second order) and lay users’ inter- conducting a field observation of the Trump administra- pretation of impoliteness (first order). In other words, a tion handling of the pandemic and its implications in the comment is deemed impolite not just by the way it is dis- 2020-US elections. To narrow down this task, I carefully cursively constructed and linguistically formulated, but selected three Facebook pages belonging to two competi- also by the (re)evaluation it receives in the flow of the tive news outlets within the USA (Fox News and CNN) interaction across the three corpora. The task is to read and one foreign news outlet (BBC News). Part of the each comment in each corpus and systematically identify data—that is, the reactions from BBC Facebook page— these formulae that operate as ‘‘multiword collocations has already been published in separate paper (See which are stored and retrieved holistically rather than Tsoumou, 2022). When I first started the observation being generated de novo with each use’’ (Kecskes, 2016, process, I reached out to the administrators of these p. 62). For example, you are stupid is a formulaic expres- pages to express my interest in studying the comments sion of insult (Culpeper, 2011). Impoliteness comments on their pages. Therefore, I did not filter the comment are not just acts that threaten or attack the addressee, threads or single out irrelevant comments for the simple and the idea behind conventionalized formulae is, as reason the purpose of the study is to analyze naturally O’Driscoll (2020, p. 18) argues, ‘‘that by virtue of peo- occurring data. In this context, the news about Giuliani ple’s experience of the regularity of their occurrence in testing positive was initially announced via Twitter by particular co-texts and/or metadiscourse around (im)po- Donald Trump, whom I personally followed on Twitter. lite language, they come to be associated with impolite- Therefore, as soon as I got the notification of Trump’s ness in people’s minds.’’ These formulae, which are tweet about Giuliani’s positive test, I logged onto the usually semantically tagged for context (Culpeper, 2011), abovementioned Facebook pages, and as soon as Fox are prepackaged expressions which are readily available News, CNN, and the BBC reported the news on as a means of causing offense and, by the same token, Facebook, I decided to start the collection process while are comparatively readily interpreted as offensive. observing how the interaction unfolds and how the inter- Insults, criticisms, threats, silencers, dismissals are exam- play between politeness and impoliteness becomes salient ples of conventionalized impoliteness formulae (see sub- and worth investigating. For the sake of fairness, I section 4.1.). evenly collected 1,000 first Facebook comments from Finally, whilst Hampel (2015, p. 104) argues that each of the three abovementioned pages (see Figure 1) ‘‘individuals’ perceptions of appropriate or polite beha- on December 06, 2020. As the posts went viral in just vior also play a vital role since differing expectations 4 minutes with over 14K likes and thousands of com- and interpretations of (im)politeness may lead to con- ments, all the corpora were collected within the first flicts’’, Haugh (2013, p. 58) emphasizes that ‘‘the 30 minutes of the publication. 6 SAGE Open Figure 1. It is important to point out the motive for choosing analysis of findings as well as the examination of the these three news outlets. Based on the traditional politi- users’ political standings for future research. After all, cal standings, Fox News page is a pro-republican, pro- impoliteness is about the quality of the interaction, conservative, and pro-Trump news page. CNN is a pro- rather than the frequencies of actions. On the other democratic, pro-liberal, and almost anti-Trump news hand, keeping in mind that Facebook algorithms have outlet. Finally, as a foreign TV broadcast, the BBC is the power to arrange comments, the 3,000 Facebook neutral when dealing with US-related issues and would comments were gathered in a chronological manner from generate an equilibrium of between well-wishing and ill- the oldest to the most recent. The process of data collec- wishing comments. In this context and since impoliteness tion consisted of copying and pasting the comments onto implies verbal attacks and criticisms, one may attempt to a .doc file. argue that there is likelihood for users to act more antag- Understandably, there are a number of drawbacks as onistically on the CNN Facebook page than on the Fox well as advantages about this type of data. One issue News one. However, this expectation may be misleading about the nature of these data is that (1) the on the grounds that we may assume that we know where protagonist—that is, Giuliani—is absent from the devel- the updates are posted from, but it is hard to determine opment of the conversation within the Facebook thread, where the reactions are posted from. These three (2) the researcher bears no physical contact with the par- Facebook pages have a strong outreach which goes ticipants. Additionally, the copying and pasting of the beyond the national borders and situate them at an inter- data, identification and classification of the comments national scale which, one may argue, defies nationally were carried out in a pen-and-paper fashion. One of the known political standings. Moreover, unlike Facebook methodological advantages about this type of data, how- pages held by politicians which often encourage the par- ever, is that the data are readily available and can, as a ticipation and engagement of followers or users with result, be easily and conveniently collected. This easiness clear political and party-line commitment (Tsoumou, consisted of simply copying the comments from the news 2020), pages held by news outlets are consulted by a outlet page and posting them into a .doc file. Another broader audience, which sometimes has no specific polit- advantage is its accessibility. To the day of the writing of ical allegiances. Therefore, in the absence of self-reported this paper, the data source remains available to the public. information—which I could have gathered through Moreover, what is particularly important about this type of interviews with the users—I avoid exploring the data data is that it provides the researcher with an opportunity with the presumption that Facebook users reacting on to carry out a real time investigation of three different sets the Fox news page are all conservative and those on of interactions dealing with the exact same issue at the same CNN pages would have progressive values. For this rea- time, which otherwise would be impossible. son and for the sake of space, this paper will only carry As for ethical considerations, Bolander and Locher out a qualitative analysis while leaving a quantitative (2019, p. 85) insist that ‘‘in an attempt to not cause our Tsoumou 7 interlocutors harm – an intent which is at the heart of Results and Analysis ethically sound research – we must be mindful of the The analysis of the results will first start with a second- complexity of the research process, and do our level best order examination of impoliteness as it manifests across to reflect upon the best ways to work with data without the corpora, before elaborating on the first-order percep- causing harm to our interlocutors.’’ In this vein, the data tion that arises therein. for the present paper were gathered without the research- er’s participation in the on-going interactions and with- out previously informing the participants. My Determining Impoliteness Strategies Across the participation was merely observational. In addition, it is Corpora (Second Order) true that online data remain a source of long-time debate There are multiple ways to act impolitely in a particular as regards their nature, as some scholars consider online interaction. In this subsection I take a second order materials to be fundamentally private, and copyright approach so as to examine the linguistic items used in protected which requires researchers to give credit to the expressing impoliteness. In excerpt 1, for instance, copyright holders by eventually asking them for consent U_BBC_198 refers to Giuliani as an idiot Lawyer; as far as the copyright law is concerned (Villi & U_CNN_201 used morons, idiots, and con to describe the Matikainen, 2016). There are, however, scholars who Republican leadership; U_FOX_624 goes even further as counter argue that any materials left online are public. to call fellow users evil, sickos, and nasty. As such, they can be used without asking for any consent from owners (Kozinets, 2015). In this paper, I follow this Excerpt 1: second line of ideas. Therefore, given that the comments U_BBC_198: Poor Public that was exposed to the Idiots here analyzed were posted for public display, no consent Lawyer. was sought from the users prior to the data collection. In U_CNN_201: Dear Republicans, It must be really embar- fact, as mentioned earlier, to the date of the writing of rassing to call yourself a republican at this point. Morons, this paper, the data remain publicly available on the idiots, and con men, make up the Republican ‘‘leadership.’’ Facebook pages of the news outlets. Nevertheless, I Time to jump ship and salvage what’s left of your dignity. ensured that all the details related to the users’ identities U_FOX_624: There are some very EVIL people in this be removed in the analysis. Likewise, I employed U to world.. I can’t stand Obama, Harris and Biden but I don’t represent both the user and the rank of their interven- wish them illness either.SICKOS! Nasty, nasty h people. tions within the threads in each corpus. Throughout the analysis, the findings are presented in the following The disregard in excerpt 1 intends to scornfully abuse, order. Comments from the BBC (U_BBC_) appear first downgrade and control the addressee. It becomes offen- in each excerpt analyzed, followed by comments from sive and defiance of expectations given both the fact that CNN (U_CNN_). Comments from FOX News the interaction is about a matter of life or death—which (U_FOX_) are presented last. morally requires compassion—as well as the fact that the Finally, a multimodal analysis is critical in carrying comments obey conventionalized impoliteness formulae any investigation on social media, especially Facebook. associated with offensiveness by virtue of their prepon- This rests on the argument that multimodal and mainly derant use for causing offense (Culpeper, 2011). The textual discourse are inseparable and emotionally choice of linguistic items (i.e., idiot, moron, con, evil, sickos, and nasty), otherwise known as offense genera- charged in digital discourse. Studying impoliteness tors (O’Driscoll, 2020), shows a deliberate desire to cause implies analyzing individuals’ emotional representation pain, humiliate the target and implicitly establish a sort of social actions. With this in mind, I meticulously inves- tigated all instances where users hashtag fellow users of dominance at the expense of others. What is com- within the interaction so as to determine items directed monly shared about these comments is, however, that at Giuliani’s diagnosis and those used as reactions to the they start by a poor evaluation of previous actions from comments previously made by fellow users within the which the insulting remarks become the consequences of. threads. When a user addresses a fellow user by means In other words, they are not initial actions by themselves. of a hashtag, this is displayed within parentheses in the For instance, U_BBC_198 starts by expressing his sor- analysis. Likewise, all the excerpts are reproduced here row about anyone who may have been in closer contact as they were naturally uttered by the users with errors with Giuliani whom U_BBC_198 called an idiot. and infelicities so as to keep their naturally occurring U_CNN_201 takes aim at the conduct of the forms. Finally, I took into account the display of emojis Republicans vis-a` -vis the pandemic. U_FOX_624 is criti- in the analysis. cal of fellow users engaged in the interaction whom the 8 SAGE Open user refers to as sickos and nasty. U_FOX_624 sees the about the target that may be resisted by the latter in impropriety of the attacks targeting Giuliani. U624 dis- (Haugh & Chang, 2019). approves negative comments that target a fellow being The orientations of the comments here emphasize the affected by the virus regardless of the divergence of point argument that being at once a politician and an attorney of views. Being the results of previous actions, these acts to the then-President of the United States, Giuliani’s all involve pointing out some kind of fault (i.e., weak- diagnosis cannot be detached from the management of ness, failing, misdemeanor, or mistake), and expressing the pandemic (or the lack thereof) from the sitting disapproval of that fault (Haugh & Chang, 2019). administration. In excerpt 3, for instance, U_BBC_449 Whether they are genuine or not, the negative evalua- and U_CNN_151 rhetorically implies that Trump is tions and fault finding in excerpt 1 rest on the moral untrustworthy and no one should rely upon him for order that stems from the idea that ‘‘being in closer con- accurate news, whereas U_FOX_85 raises suspicions tact with people while maskless’’ is an irresponsible act around the fact that only Republicans have come down during the Covid-19 pandemic or ‘‘laughing at someone with the virus so far (as was the case of U_FOX_530 in in pain’’ is antisocial. excerpt 3). The interests of these items are not Giuliani’s However, since impoliteness is a contested social phe- health; rather, these acts serve the political interests of nomenon, whether the insults, described here based on a the participants in the interaction. second-order standpoint, are perceived as such requires Excerpt 3 first-order interpretations or reactions from the targets U_BBC_449: ‘‘Trump says???’’ Couldn’t you find a reliable or anyone capable of seeing such offense. This will be source? dealt with in subsection 4.2. From now, the focus will be U_CNN_151: Why is trump announcing that? Why would on exploring other second-order manifestations of impo- anyone believe him! There are many things wrong with liteness found across the corpora. Rudy that’s evident! In excerpt 2, for example, U_BBC_251 utters a poor U_FOX_85: How come none of the prominent evaluation of the Trump presidency, describing it as a 4- DEMONCRAPS In DC or anywhere else don’t get year-failure, before comparing Trump to a chimpanzee. Covid?????? Has anyone asked that question?? Kind of fishy Likewise, U_CNN_118 takes aim at the administration if you ask me h by negatively evaluating the quality of the job done. Finally, the criticism uttered by U_FOX_530 comes in a The questions in this except index the clash of priori- form of complaint, as the user believes that the rates of ties of the users across the three corpora, as BBC and Covid-19 infections are politically one-sided, as it seems CNN users mainly attack the credibility of Trump and strange to this user that only Republicans have come his administration with respect to the information they down with the virus so far. This is a way to create room release to the public, whereas from Fox news users tend for speculation on a conspiracy against Republicans and to drag Democrats into the reason the virus only affects potentially create doubt about the existence of the virus. Republicans, even if the disproportion in terms of infec- tion rates is relatively understandable given that the Excerpt 2 Republicans were reluctant to implement some and U_BBC_251: there’s just been 4 years of a disaster. A chim- appeal to Covid-19 measures such as mask wearing. panzee could do a better job than Trump In excerpt 4, U_BBC_238 condescends to Giuliani as U_CNN_118: Pretty much the whole administration got it, unstable and incoherent. Likewise, U_CNN_555 treats speaks volumes about their indifference and where we are at. Trump administration officials as hard-learner individu- U_FOX_530: Very strange it’s only Republicans that get sick als. Finally, U_FOX_189 describes Giuliani as a disgra- ceful person. The orientations of the pointed criticisms across the three corpora are revealing in the sense that the users in Excerpt 4 the BBC and CNN tend to attack Trump and his admin- U_BBC_238: Probably explains why Giuliani has been mak- istration, whereas most acts of criticisms in Fox news are ing less sense than normal lately. uttered in a form of complaints and accusations directed U_CNN_555: They don’t seem to be learning anything!!! / at the democratic party. However, what is commonly U_CNN_574: That’s what happens when you are reckless! shared is that all criticisms are a way to single out an U_FOX_189: One of America’s most toxic men. Rudys fall addressee’s fault or wrongdoing while soliciting reasons from grace is beyond pathetic for the state of affairs for which the addressee is held responsible. All of this is done not just to cause hurt feel- Describing Giuliani as making less sense, a difficult ings, but also convey expectations that the target will do learner or a toxic person falling from grace is undoubt- something to remedy the fault, pass moral judgment on edly a takedown. Regardless of the perspective these others, or display claims to have expertise or knowledge comments are approached, referring to someone battling Tsoumou 9 Covid-19 as ‘‘making less sense than normal lately’’ or argue that disregarding Giuliani’s illness this way is a calling someone ‘‘reckless’’ or ‘‘toxic’’ is far from being a marked behavior in the sense that understanding, show- positive description of Giuliani. The same argument can ing compassion, and emotional support are the appropri- be made for excerpt 5 in which U_BBC_726 indirectly ate conduct in the context of a dreadful pandemic. orders Republican politicians to wear masks, However, it is important to highlight the variation in U_CNN_877 makes an order for Giuliani to be isolated, terms of the motives behind each dismissive comment. and U_FOX_35 asks Giuliani to stay home. For example, unlike U_BBC_72 who uttered a short dis- missing expression ‘‘Get lost, Rudi,’’ U_CNN_377 and Excerpt 5 U_FOX_676 elaborate on the reason for their dismissal U_BBC_726: Let your GOP folks to mask up of Giuliani. Concretely, while U_CNN_271 appears to U_CNN_877: Get him isolated and trace his close contacts be more concerned about people other than Giuliani, U_FOX_35: stay home since you felt it was not important U_FOX_676 takes issue against the attention Giuliani’s enough to mask up test is getting. Some reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis focus on his The polarization of views over the issue of mask wear- involvement in attempting to overturn the results of the ing becomes the grounds on which these comments are election. In excerpt 7, for instance, all the comments uttered, as the users enforce the idea that Giuliani’s own intend to silence Giuliani and have him kept away from irresponsibility for not wearing masks is what opened the public eye. These users believe that the diagnosis is the door for him to catch the virus, and if he does not an opportunity not to hear Giuliani anymore. isolate himself, he may end up spreading the virus fur- ther. However, although masking up can be beneficial to Excerpt 7 Giuliani in terms of preventing or fighting the virus, U_BBC_409: So maybe, finally, at last Giuliani will shut up ordering GOP folks (which includes Giuliani) to mask for a while at least up is certainly a form of condescending behavioral prac- U_CNN_835: Someone should take him home and lock the tices through which the users attempt to patronize the doors. interaction. The use of expressions—such as let your U_FOX_242: Now he can quarantine 14 days and shut his GOP folks to mask up, get him isolated and trace his close lying mouth up.God works in mysterious ways. contacts and stay home since you felt it was not important Framing silencers such as shut up in a life-threatening enough to mask up—shows the lack of consideration for context is certainly humiliating and aggressive, as it others, as the implying intent is to treat GOP folks as shows an explicit lack of consideration for Giuliani’s stupid, less important and irresponsible. It is however sense of worth and dignity. Undermining Giuliani’s sense important to highlight that there remains room to inter- of identity challenges the notion of social and moral nor- pret the comments in excerpt 5 as somewhat uttered for mality which often motivates the expectation of sympa- the benefit of the addressee, especially if one sees these thy in moments of despair. The absence of this sense of comments as an appropriate way to raise awareness on moral normality toward a suffering individual, thus, the issue of mask wearing, self-isolation and contact tra- cing, which all contribute to lifesaving in the context of a becomes indexical and marked, as this amounts to a fail- pandemic. ure to appropriately attend to others’ needs, which is an The antagonism around the appropriate conduct dur- affront to the addresser and the addressee. ing the pandemic generated dismissive comments across The polarization of views about the pandemic leads the corpora. In excerpt 6, for instance, U_BBC_72 expli- some users to question the seriousness of Giuliani’s diag- citly uttered ‘‘get lost Rudi,’’ whereas U_CNN_271 and nosis. In excerpt 8, U_CNN_364 and U_FOX_7 appear to encroach upon fellow users by downplaying the con- U_CNN_377 as well as U_FOX_676 express their disin- cern over Covid-19. terest in the news about the diagnosis. Excerpt 6 Excerpt 8 U_BBC_72: Get lost, Rudi . U_CNN_364: We all will get it sometime. It is what it is. U_CNN_271: Do you really think most of us care?Deal Can’t shut the World down. with it! / U_CNN_377: I could careless about Rudy what I U_FOX_7: He will be fine. Lots of people I know have had do care about are the people he infected and that might die. it and been fine. 99% recovery rate sheeple. Stop letting the U_FOX_676: Who cares! Nobody advertises when I catch a mainstream state run communist media lead you around by virus! your short and curlies! Whether these comments were expressed with panic- The clash of expectations leads to an expression of disinterest in Giuliani’s diagnosis. One may, for example, avoiding intentions through which U_CNN_364 and 10 SAGE Open U_FOX_7 attempt to camouflage the seriousness and the case of U_BBC_284, U_CNN_27 ends the comment harmfulness of the pandemic, the use of such lexical with the suspension of three face-with-tear-of-joy emoji, stances as ‘‘Can’t shut the World down. and Stop letting generating laughter reactions from U_CNN_ 28 and the mainstream state run communist media lead you U_CNN_30. Moreover, U_FOX_176 reuses Trump’s infamous phrase ‘‘It will go away like a miracle’’ with around by your short and curlie,’’ however, indexes the two face-with-tear-of-joy emoji so as to poke fun at need to control fellow users’ way of thinking. As can be Giuliani’s diagnosis. All these comments are classic pro- seen, the focus of the comments in excerpt 9 shifts from vocative forms of social action that invite specific forms Giuliani’s diagnosis to the debate on how to behave in of response from participants (Haugh, 2017, p. 209). the midst of the pandemic. Against the prosocial end of these comments, however, Likewise, across Fox News and CNN a recurrent way not all the users found this humorous. U_BBC_889 is to resurge the traditional political conflicts is through against poking fun as he/she aggressively alarms that accusing users with opposing views as responsible for there might be something wrong with all those who are Giuliani’s positive diagnosis. In excerpt 9, for instance, happy when someone tests positive for Covid-19. It is U_CNN_119 and U_FOX_254 accuse the Democrats as likewise the belief of U_CNN_90 that making fun of responsible for Giuliani’s health shortcomings. others’ health condition is juvenile. Finally, U_FOX_209 Excerpt 9 conveys that it is abnormal and evil to laugh at others’ U_CNN_119: Democrats infected him because he’s been so misfortune. For these users teasing comments become successful in his efforts to over turn the election results! disrespectful forms of cruelty, which arguably amounts U_FOX_254: I’ve been saying for a while that leftist would to social rejection and can result in emotional harm. find a way to get the virus to him. Excerpt 10 Interestingly enough, other-blaming comments such U284: Giuliani is filing a law suit in the Supreme Court to as those in excerpts 9 are solely pervasive in Fox News overturn his positive test /U_BBC_285 (Addressing and CNN corpora with zero incidence in the BBC cor- U_BBC_284’s comment): The best one yet/ U_BBC_286 (Addressing U_BBC_284’s comment) lol. /U_BBC_295 pus. One plausible explanation is that the main concern (Addressing U_BBC_284’s comment) kajajajaaaaaaaa/ for the users commenting on the BBC page is the threat U_BBC_889: What is wrong with you people that you are that the virus represents for Giuliani’s health and the rest happy someone has covid, bunch of disgusting humans. of human beings, rather than the political divide of the U_CNN_27: he’ll call the lab and tell them to overturn the US. Another explanation may be that, being a foreign results / U_CNN_28 (Addressing U_CNN_27’s com- news outlet, the users may not be as enthusiastic about ment): I wouldn’t wish the virus on anyone, but your com- engaging themselves in the promotion of conspiracy the- ment wins on the internet today! /U_CNN_29 (Addressing ories as are the US citizens themselves. U27’s comment) I don’t think the situation is funny, but I Some of the impolite comments are uttered with teas- did laugh../U_CNN_30 (Addressing U_CNN_29’s com- ment): no you’re not. I laughed too. At this point, if we don’t ing intent so as to convey two opposing interactional laugh, we’ll cry and laughter is better for the heart and soul. meanings: prosocial (or non-aggressive) and antisocial Laugh on!/U90: Making fun of anybody’s health scare is juve- (or aggressive) (Culpeper, 2011). In the former case, teas- nile. No matter who it is.. Be better people. ing is used for an affectionate, playful or joking end, U_FOX_176: Giuliani has been taken to the hospital. It will whereas, in the latter case, teasing is used for a hostile, go away like a miracle. h let us know how that works out aggressive or malicious end. Excerpt 10 illustrates the for ya Rudy. /U_FOX_207: The flu will go away by Easter interplay between both prosocial and antisocial ends. As h h/ U_FOX_209: Those laughing about this are obvi- U_BBC_284 utters ‘‘Giuliani is filing a law suit in the ously evil and vile! Supreme Court to overturn his positive test ’’ in which the user ends the comment by means of a face-with-tear- The two ends of these teasing comments show how of-joy emoji, the teasing comment becomes a way of conflicts unfold across the corpora between sympathizers affectionately poking fun at Giuliani while enhancing who perceive teasing comments as offensive, hurtful and positive feeling and relational quality among fellow users evil, and detractors—willing to derive joy and pleasure who may find the utterance amusing as well. Building at the expense of Giuliani’s health. It is also important upon this, the reactions of U285: The best one yet, U286: to highlight the fact that the comments, as shown in lol and U292: kajajajaaaaaaaa subscribes to the playful excerpt 10, are all designed) in ways that invite some nature of this teasing. A similar example is found in kind of affective response (or set of responses) on the CNN where U27 mockingly asserts ‘‘he [Giuliani]’ll call part of fellow users (Haugh & Chang, 2019). These affec- the lab and tell them to overturn the results .’’ As in tive responses here range from amusement—displayed Tsoumou 11 through the use of laughter—through to offense and U149: (Addressing U_FOX_148)That is incorrect. Surgica masks reduce the chance of transmission of particles contain- anger. Calling those laughing as evil and vile certainly ing viruses from people between 70% and 98.5%. Their effec- comes from anger, even if the comment is itself an impo- tiveness is VERY high. lite act for the use of offense generators (i.e., evil, vile). At this point, there is no doubt that Giuliani’s diagno- One fact that stands out in the way users utter the sis is a polarized topic about which the users are in a comments is that the disagreement does not seem to constant antagonism on how to react. This is why strate- restrict addressees’ action-environment as it would be the gies such as agreement and disagreement are not just case in a power-asymmetric environment (see Locher, commonplace across the three corpora, but more impor- 2010). In other words, the sequences of disagreements tantly they play a substantial role in negotiating relation- found in the corpora do not necessarily call for some ships. However, while agreement may build rapport kind of reaction from the party disagreed with. I found between interactants, disagreement is generally no sequences across the corpora in which the disagree- accounted for as a face-threatening act which, depending ment between two users is framed in a back-and-forth on the degree, may cause conflict or simply damage the manner that could amount to confrontation and conflict future dynamics of the interaction. In excerpt 11, for even though there is a clear clash of interests and goals in instance, U_BBC_303 discards the need to offer sympa- every instance where disagreement occurs. Perhaps this thy to Giuliani. However, the reactive comment made by has to do with both the digital and multi-participant nat- U_BBC_307 to U_BBC_303’s act offers an opposing ures of this interaction. opinion. As a way of avoiding any conflictual misunder- standing, U_BBC_307 starts the comment in a way that seems to approve U_BBC_303’s utterance in an effort to Impoliteness as the Struggle Over the Norms of mitigate the impact of the disagreement, before elaborat- Interaction (First Order) ing on his/her differing opinion by giving the reason for the disagreement with the hedge ‘‘but maybe.’’ As pointed out at the outset, impoliteness rests on indi- U_BBC_307’s disagreeing comment shows to some viduals’ perceptions of (in)appropriate behavior. This extent the consideration U_BBC_307 has with respect to perception is achieved through speech acts (i.e., com- plaint, criticism, etc.) considered to be social actions with U_BBC_303’s feeling. Another example of disagreement implication on the (co-) constituting relation among indi- is found in CNN where U_CNN_159 expresses disagree- viduals. In this subsection, the focus is on the first-order ment over the efficacy of mask wearing in preventing the spread of the virus. Likewise, in Fox News, U_FOX_148 interpretation of the flow on the interaction across the questions the relevance of mask wearing and hand wash- corpora. ing in preventing from catching the virus, pointing to the In excerpt 12, the intent of the three comments is not fact he/she had already been diagnosed with the virus to react to Giuliani’s diagnosis per se; rather they are reactions to the behavior underlining the interventions of even after having followed these guidelines. fellow users. In other words, the mere belief in these U_FOX_149, however, offers a different perspective in three comments is that there are comments within each the mask-wearing discussion, by firstly expressing the corpus that are evaluated by U_BBC_89, U_CNN_153, explicit disagreement (i.e., That is incorrect), before ela- and U_FOX_93 as sarcastically expressing joy and hap- borating on his/her reasons which rests on the effective- piness about Giuliani’s diagnosis. These users’ under- ness of surgical masks in reducing the chance of transmission. standing of the diagnosis is that Covid-19 is an issue to take seriously, and no one should joke about another Excerpt 12 person’s positive diagnosis as has been the intention of U_BBC_303: . Deserves no sympathy."/ U_BBC_ some comments within the thread. Additionally, there is 307(Addressing U_BBC_303’s comment): quite true, but another commonly shared element attached about these maybe for humanity’s sake, we shouldn’t rejoice. comments; that is, they are not just commenting on the U_CNN_159: Rest giuliani. Standing up for the truth, rooting disease as such, but they target the contents of what has out the wrong, his mask wouldn’t have stopped the spread of been uttered in the preceding comments. In other words, covid anyway. Show other places where it’s working. Display the targets of these comments are fellow users within the the standardization of mask use and design nationwide. interaction. Moreover, the fact that these three meta- U_FOX_148: That’s his choice but it’s still not funny for an pragmatic comments occur at turns 89 (BBC News), 153 elderly person to get the virus. I wear a mask, wash my hands (CNN), and 93 (Fox News) respectively suggests that religiously and I still got it months ago. Masks really don’t do much, but we should at least try these users had read and understood the preceding 12 SAGE Open comments, and from this understanding, they take aim however, appreciate the attacks targeting Giuliani. at fellow users’ interventions so as to protect Giuliani’s Through metadiscursive comments, some users not just dignity as a human being. feel the need to treat Giuliani as a human being, but more importantly remind fellow users that Covid-19 Exceprt 13 should be a concern for all. What is particularly critical U_BBC_89: What is wrong with you people that you are about these metacomments is that while the users advo- happy someone has covid. cate for civil interactions, they mostly do not condone U_CNN_153: These comments are hilarious. I have to admit Giuliani’s actions. The reason for this is arguably the sal- they made me laugh. However Covid is not funny at all and ience of the moral order which implicitly shapes these I hope the dude gets well. Unfortunately, Im sure he’s spread users’ understanding of what should be obligatory, per- this to MANY others and some people don’t have stellar missible, or forbidden under the circumstances, regard- healthcare access. less of Giuliani’s prior actions. These users ground their U_FOX_93: Really don’t know how people who are react- ing to this with laughter can honestly live with themselves. awareness of what should be the appropriate conduct in It’s not just your own countryman who’s come down with a situation of despair such as dealing with Covid-19 and #COVID19 but your fellow man too and you all find it describe fellow users’ conducts as the type of behavior amusing. How can you people be so callous. against which they identify themselves. How they see themselves as human beings is different from how they The awareness in the minds of the lay users of what is see others. Comments conveying a laughing attitude are, the appropriate behavior under the circumstance of posi- for instance, metapragmatically singled out as being dis- tive Covid-19 diagnosis is evident. Such appropriate con- courteous and impolite (see excerpt 13). duct implies that Covid-19 is no laughing matter. The The findings also further our understanding of the comments are an acknowledgment of the dramatic loss increasing polarization of social political discourse on of human life worldwide and the reminder that the risk Facebook (Bou-Franch, 2021; Tagg, 2017) and its direct for anyone (including those engaged in the interaction) to relations to the Covid-19 pandemic (Andersson, 2022). get infected or potentially die from this virus is real. This The reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis show how the oppo- metapragmatic accounts, on the other hand, for the epis- sition between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’ turns an issue of life or temological fact that what is really at play in the three death into an opportunity to resurge traditional political corpora is the struggle over the norms of interaction. divisions, making the diagnosis becomes a real opportu- Some users find Giuliani’s diagnosis as an issue akin to nity for ‘‘us’’ to compete against ‘‘them.’’ In excerpt 1, for compassion, whilst others take the situation as a gratify- instance, the insulting comment posted by U_CNN_201 ing opportunity to generate laughter and happiness. takes aim at the Republican leadership for their supposed mismanagement of the pandemic. In excerpt 10, U_FOX_176 reuses Trump’s infamous phrase ‘‘it will go Conclusions away like a miracle’’ as a way to poke fun at Giuliani’s This paper set out to examine impoliteness in Facebook expense. These comments show how individuals can overlook delicate situations and be bluntly dismissive of generated by Giuliani’s Covid test and provide empirical other individuals in need for political interests. These responses to the following questions: How does impolite- behaviors do not however go unsanctioned on the ness unfold in Facebook comments triggered by grounds of what is morally right and wrong. The perva- Giuliani’s diagnosis? On what grounds are the reactions to the diagnosis based across the three news outlets? An siveness of metacomments in these translocality environ- examination of the comments reveals that the reactions ments calling out marked behaviors and interpreting the to Giuliani’s diagnosis are more focused on him being a context of the interaction and the situation itself as some- politician, rather than him being a human being affected thing which requires respect, understanding and compas- sion shows that even in open-ended platforms there is an by the virus. The reactions attack his actions and the implicit expectation grounded on the ‘‘seen but unno- actions of others within his political party, which sug- ticed’’ (Haugh, 2013); that is, the idea that behaving gests that impoliteness in this context has a strong depen- dence on previous actions and political engagement. politely or understanding someone in a delicate situation Giuliani is seen to be undeserving of compassion or is what every member of a society is entitled to know or empathy not just on the grounds of his active involve- describe and communicate. As a social practice, impolite- ment in attempting to overturn the presidential election ness rests not just on individuals’ perception of them- results (see excerpt 10), but also due to his disregard selves as social beings, their expectations grounded on toward mask wearing in public spheres. Political polari- the difference between right and wrong as well as the zation is, in other words, what shapes and motivates the position they take in a given interaction, but it also negative reactions in this context. Not all the users, depends on an implicit shared understanding of the Tsoumou 13 values and meaning of the interaction as a representation contexts. In terms of the situatedness of the norms of the of a given society. interaction, impoliteness behaviors analyzed here are Furthermore, when looking into the nature per se of social actions that are situated within a particular social impolite comments across the three corpora, the revela- or relational network (Bou-Franch, 2021; Haugh & tion is that there is a difference in terms of the orienta- ´ ´ Kadar, 2013; Tsoumou, 2022). The meaning of impolite- tions of the attacks and how the users portray Giuliani. ness in these corpora is connected to breaches in appro- For instance, most criticisms in the CNN and the BBC priate behavior regarding the topic management and corpora merely convey two main sets of concerns. On social expectations associated with the impact of Covid- the one hand, users question the seriousness and integrity 19. In terms of identity (co-)construction, impoliteness of Trump in delivering the news about Giuliani’s diagno- here plays a role in the way interactants tend to position sis, presupposing Trump to be a liar and untrustworthy. themselves with respect to others (Andersson, 2021). Just The second set of comments in CNN and BBC corpora as Andersson (2022) reported, the findings in this paper are not merely concerned about Giuliani’s health; rather show that offensive language marks and negotiates dif- they tend to raise concerns about the safety of the people ferent value positions in Facebook interaction about with whom Giuliani may have been in contact, raising Covid-19. the question of whether those people are safe. However, Finally, the present paper is certainly limited in terms within Fox News, most comments tend to express doubts of its focus as it examines impoliteness alone, without over the fact that Republican Politicians are the only pol- considering politeness comments. With the understand- iticians being infected by the virus, raising suspicion and ing that impoliteness in a context of life-or-death situa- conspiracies. This difference in orientation of the inten- tion is just part of the overall practice, future research tions is a revelation of not just the political polarization shall explore the polite comments so as to see both their of users’ views but, more importantly, it opens the win- contents as well as their forms, and contrast the results. dow to how the coronavirus pandemic has shaped the It would also be interesting to explore similarities and political expressions of Facebook users. differences of the present findings in other platforms. The roles of participants in these interactions are also Finally, the relevance of classic sociolinguistic variables salient. Not only there are varied targets the reactions of the users as well as their competence in English should orient to, but mostly, the users perceiving or evaluating be explored in future research so as to determine the con- comments as offensive, which is conveyed through meta- nection between these variables and impoliteness prac- discursive comments, are individuals other than Giuliani tices on Facebook. himself. The impolite meaning arises here not because the main targets are either offended or not, but because Author Note the interpretation of comments as offensive rests on the This research was conducted while Jean Mathieu Tsoumou was third party’s understanding of such offense through talk- at Universidad Europea de Canarias. The author is now at in interaction. This stresses the view that impoliteness Universidad Europea de Madrid. evaluation is not a matter of the dyadic addressee- addresser alone (Eelen, 2001), rather it is the bystanders’ interpretation and evaluation, supporting Haugh’s (2013, Declaration of Conflicting Interests p. 56) argument that the ‘‘evaluation of impoliteness The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect needs to be situated vis-a` -vis not only simply speakers or to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. hearers, but also relative to a complex array of produc- tion and reception footings, the co-constitution of which Funding is itself and morally implicative activity in interact.’’ The author received no financial support for the research, Moreover, the findings as presented in this paper go authorship, and/or publication of this article. along with what has already put forward in previous studies on individuals’ reactions to Covid-19 on Facebook. 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Deontic authority in Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2010). A genre approach to the interaction: The right to announce, propose, and decide. study of im-politeness. International Review of Pragmatics, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45, 297–321. 2, 46–94. Tagg, C., Seargent, P., & Brown, A. A. (2017). Taking offence Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2022). Moral emotions, good on social media. Conviviality and conviviality and communica- moral panics, social regulation, and online public shaming. tion on Facebook. Springer Nature, Palgrave McMillan. Language & Communication, 84, 61–75. Theodoropoulou, I. (2015). Politeness on Facebook: The case Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich, P., & Bou-Franch, P. (Eds.). (2018). of Modern Greek birthday wishes. In special issue: Rela- Introduction. In analyzing digital discourse: New insights and tional work in Facebook and discussion boards/Fora, edited future directions. Palgrave Mcmillan. by Locher, Miriam A., Brook Bolander, & Nicole Ho¨ hn. 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(Im)politeness on Facebook during the tial properties of criticisms in initial interactions: Implica- Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Politeness Research: Lan- tions for examining (im) politeness across cultures. Russian guage, Behaviour, Culture, 19, 249–284. https://doi.org/10. Journal of Linguistics, 23(4), 904—929. 1515/pr-2021-0008 Haugh, M., & Ka´ da´ r, D. Z. (2013). Understanding politeness. Velasquez, A., & Rojas, H. (2017). Political expression on social Cambridge University Press. media: The role of communication competence and expected Kecskes, I. (2016). Can intercultural pragmatics bring some outcomes. Social Media + Society, 3(1), 1–13. new insight into pragmatic theories? In A. Capone & J. L. Villi, M., & Matikainen, J. (2016). Participation in social media: Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture Studying explicit and implicit forms of participation in com- and society (pp. 43–69). Springer. municative social networks. 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Spain (pp. 609–626). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png SAGE Open SAGE

“What is Wrong With You People That You are Happy Someone has Covid” Impoliteness in the Coronavirus Pandemic Era

SAGE Open , Volume 13 (1): 1 – Mar 1, 2023

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References (67)

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© The Author(s) 2023
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2158-2440
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10.1177/21582440231161040
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Abstract

Whilst the coronavirus pandemic keeps threatening the world at large, little is yet known about the impoliteness implications of user-generated- Covid-related contents on social media such as Facebook. The aim of this study is to examine the com- ments made in response to Giuliani’s Covid- 19 diagnosis, from an impoliteness perspective. A merely qualitative analysis of a dataset of 3,000 comments evenly collected from three different news outlets (i.e., BBC, CNN, Fox News), the findings reveal that the reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis are more focused on him being a politician, than him being a human being affected by the virus. The reactions attack his actions and the actions of others within his political party, which suggests that impoliteness has a strong dependence on previous actions and political engagement. Giuliani is seen by some users to be undeserving of compassion or empathy not just on the grounds of his active involvement in attempting to overturn the presi- dential election results, but also for his disregard toward mask wearing in public spheres. Not all the users, however, appreci- ate the attacks against Giuliani. Through metadiscursive comments, some users not just feel the need to treat Giuliani as a human being, but more importantly remind fellow users that Covid-19 should be a concern for all. What is particularly criti- cal about these metacomments is that while the users advocate for civil interactions, they mostly do not condone Giuliani’s actions. This so because these users understand what should be obligatory, permissible, or forbidden on the human level under the circumstances. Keywords Facebook, impoliteness, politics, polarized discourse, Covid-19 were more open to and welcoming of mask wearing, Introduction Republicans took a reluctant stance toward the issue, The year 2020 is best remembered as the year of the out- making the US response to the outbreak one of the most break. Detected in China in late 2019, Covid-19 soon controversial and polarized issues from the earlier days became an international emergency by March 2020. The of 2020. Then-conservative President Trump even down- damage brought about by the outbreak became a hard- played the pandemic as early as February 2020, called it ship felt worldwide, as lockdowns became the norm in a hoax and barely wore a mask throughout 2020, which most countries globally. The management of such a dis- led the Democrats to see in the pandemic an opportunity astrous pandemic tested the world nations’ leaderships to criticize the Republicans and energize their electoral and set the tone for political discourse over issues such base. From the start of 2020 to its end, Covid-19 in the as mask wearing, test distribution, length of lockdowns, US went from a merely public health issue to becoming health recommendations and guidelines, travel restric- tions, etc. In the USA where 2020 was also known as the Universidad Europea de Canarias, Madrid, Spain presidential election year, the abovementioned issues became even more salient as they resurged the conflicts Corresponding Author: between traditional and progressive values which have Jean Mathieu Tsoumou, Universidad Europea de Canarias, C. Tajo, s/n, long divided Democrats and Republicans (Garce´ s- 28670 Villaviciosa de Odo´n, Madrid, Spain. Conejos Blitvich, 2010). For example, whilst Democrats Email: jeanmathieu.tsoumou@universidadeuropea.es Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open a political challenge. Being a superpower struggling to intends to provide empirical responses to the following contain the virus while the death toll keeps skyrocketing questions. across the country (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- 2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/pastreports/11062020.html), How does impoliteness unfold in Facebook com- the US response to the outbreak and its implications ahead ments triggered by Giuliani’s diagnosis? of the US presidential election scheduled for November 3, On what grounds are the reactions to the diagnosis 2020, caught the attention of the rest of the world both based across the three news outlets? through international news outlets such as BBC, France 24 as well as on social media such as Twitter, Instagram, The remaining sections of this paper are organized in the Facebook, etc. Millions of people worldwide carefully following way. The overview of the literature is provided followed the pandemic crisis as it unfolded on social in section 2. The research method is explained in section media and live TVs. Contents and statistics on the 3. The analysis of the findings is carried out in section 4. devastation induced by the virus became constantly The conclusions drawn from the analysis are provided in available and reported live on both traditional news the last section. stations and social media. In the particular case of social media, for instance, the more alarming the pan- demic got, the more polarizing the reactions became, Overview of the Literature especially when it came to prominent politicians being The consensus in the literature is that social media such diagnosed with Covid-19 (Tsoumou, 2022). as Facebook have the capacity and power to shape politi- Within impoliteness literature, polarization implies, cal and health discourse and attract new forms of engage- according to Andersson (2022, p. 490), ‘‘contradiction ment (Tsoumou, 2020, 2022; Velasquez & Rojas, 2017). (verbal and non-verbal) attacks, criticisms, etc., which The popularity and benefits of social media, however, sometimes violate the norms of appropriate social beha- come with interactive costs and challenges related to the vior (or even civility), create an atmosphere of negative norms of interaction, given that interactions about topics emotion, and attack the participants’ self-image and/or such as politics tend to promote interactional friction social identity’’ (See also Culpeper, 2011; Tsoumou, and impoliteness (Andersson, 2021; Tsoumou, 2022). In 2022). However, the extent to which such polarization other words, participation on social media, especially shapes individuals’ reactions to politicians’ Covid diag- when the interaction occurs in international contexts, nosis as well as the grounds on which they base such poses the challenge over what is (in)appropriate. One reactions on social media such as Facebook have not form of conduct may be judged appropriate by some, but been fully explained from an impoliteness perspective. offensive by others. Another point that is often raised in As such, this paper examines impoliteness in comments the literature is that social media tend to have a strong reacting to Giuliani’s COVID diagnosis on Fox News, emotional focus which makes them prone to all forms of CNN, and BBC Facebook pages. It aims to understand how impoliteness unfolds and the grounds on which it is expressions, including compliments, grief, appraisal, based. The data were collected on December 6, 2020, mourning, condolences, etc. (Oz et al., 2017; Rossetto while Giuliani (full name ‘‘Rudolph William Louis et al., 2015; Theodoropoulou, 2015; Wagner, 2018; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020). Since impoliteness can be linked to Giuliani’’) was the Attorney to the then-President of the emotion (Culpeper, 2011), interaction on social media United States, Donald Trump. Giuliani was one of the can help understand better, as Tsoumou (2022, p. 2) puts lawyers appointed by Trump to challenge the 2020-US- it, ‘‘the virtual nature of individuals’ apprehension and November-3rd-election results. Besides, Rudy Giuliani has been in the public eye for countless years, including management of emotionally charged topics such as being the New York City mayor between 1994 and 2001, death, illnesses, natural catastrophes, as well as other life- launching a campaign for the US senate 2000 and for the changing experiences such as weddings, birthdays, gra- presidency in 2008. Rudy Giuliani is and has been a duations, etc.’’ However, despite this growing interest in Republican for many years. As I argued elsewhere analyzing users’ reactions on social media, very few stud- (Tsoumou, 2022, p. 12), ‘‘at the time of a COVID-19- ies have attempted to examine reactive responses to an emotionally charged topic (i.e., illness) in a polarizing induced pandemic as well as a looming presidential elec- context (Tsoumou, 2022). This paper hopes to contribute tion, any positive COVID-19 test results of the Trump’s allies had both political and public health implications toward redressing this imbalance by analyzing reactions and ramifications.’’ This makes Facebook interactions to Giuliani’s Covid diagnosis across three international about Rudy Giuliani’s diagnosis a suitable set of data news outlet Facebook pages, namely Fox News, CNN, for the analysis of impoliteness. Consequently, this paper and BBC Facebook pages. Tsoumou 3 Facebook Interaction and Political Discussion the totality of individual’s experiences of a particular cul- ture and situational norms refer to the totality of individ- Thanks to its affordances, Facebook has become a popu- ual’s experiences of a particular situation in a particular lar social media to express not just distress and achieve- culture. However, the situational norms are not just part ments which usually prompt support, wishes, appraisal, of the cultural norms, but together, they amount to a per- etc. (Li et al., 2019; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020), but also son’s knowledge of what is normal in certain kinds of political engagement, criticisms, threats, etc. As situations in a certain culture (O’Driscoll, 2020). Studies Tsoumou (2022, p. 4) points out ‘‘while emotional sup- on social media posts and subsequent reactions at indi- port is commonplace on social media, so are conflictive vidual nation level emphasize the situatedness and cul- and impolite interactions, especially in polarizing and tural nature of criticisms, verbal attacks within specific politically-driven exchanges where the dissociation from national borders, even when the topic of discussion has others is a substantial part of a polarized positioning.’’ international ramifications. Andersson (2022, p. 509), for As pointed out earlier, the question over what is socially example, points out ‘‘the pertinence of value positions (in)appropriate on Facebook is often a dilemma for and the participants’ efforts to enact, negotiate, and users involved in discussions about controversial topics demonstrate their allegiance to specific values when (i.e., politics). The argument usually made is that the reacting to the pandemic of Covid-19 on the official notion of politics involves groups in adversarial relation- Facebook page of the Swedish national public televi- ships, and to advantage one group often by definition sion.’’ In the context of Spanish politics, Bou-Franch will disadvantage the other group (Andersson, 2022; (2021, p. 290) reports that ‘‘the meanings of disrespectful- Tsoumou, 2022). However, it is not my argument here ness and childishness in political debates are reported to that every political discussion on Facebook revolves be connected to breaches in appropriate behavior regard- around impoliteness (attacks, criticisms, etc.), as ing turn-taking and topic management and social expec- Facebook can also serve as a social media on which opi- tations associated with the role of political leaders.’’ nions about politics may contribute to enhance political However, one cannot overlook the fact that when fac- discourse. Moreover, attacks in politically related discus- ing global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, sions are not just present on Facebook alone. Research global warming, etc., the tendency is often for some shows that other social media such as YouTube, Twitter, nations to take example of how-to response from super- etc., are also home to impoliteness. Lorenzo-Dus et al. power countries. This usually generates international (2011), for instance, not only report dissociating cases interest to countries that want to appeal their responsive where the users dissociate from others, they also uncov- actions to the superpower models. For instance, the ered an emergence of ‘‘(sic) larger and more transient interest the American experiment has had around the subgroups emerged therein, whose members did not world is undeniable. The idea that America rests on solid always make explicit the distance existing between them and permanent democratic principles that guarantee and (an)other member(s)/sub-groups’’ (p. 2587). freedom and protection of basic rights for all is usually Furthermore, researchers tend to concur over the fact seen as the right pathway for allies around the globe, that while posts on Facebook intend to call for reactions especially in Europe. It is in this context that the US (be it verbal or non-verbal) from fellow users, such reac- struggles to contain the virus while the death toll kept tions are often influenced by various factors such as the skyrocketing across the country in 2020 and the implica- context of the exchange, the topic of conversation or tions of the US response to the outbreak ahead of the even the type of audience (Tsoumou, 2020, 2021a). For US presidential election scheduled for November 3, example, it has been shown that polite and friendly reac- 2020, not just generated interest to the rest of the world, tions tend to be pervasive in interactions and posts about but favored international engagement in translocality birthday wishes, and condolences, whereas reactions to digital environments. Defined as ‘‘the complex ways in topics such as gun control, politics, and sports tend be which diverse local practices come together in global more hostile and impolite (Oz et al., 2017; spaces’’ (Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich & Bou-Franch, 2018, Theodoropoulou, 2015; Zhou & Jurgens, 2020). Concretely, Zhou and Jurgens (2020) report that tweets p. 5), Translocality environments are, for example, reacting to White House posts were more impolite Facebook pages held by international news outlets such regarding same-sex marriage than there were about other as the BBC, CNN, FOX News, etc. These pages are issues such as gun control. open internationally and capable of reaching commu- Previous studies reiterate the argument that impolite- nities with different languages, backgrounds, cultures, histories and whose members only come together online ness revolves around the notion of norms which can be with the sole interest of informing and being informed of cultural or situational (Culpeper, 2011; O’Driscoll, 2020). According to O’Driscoll (2020), cultural norms refer to what is going on around the world. Investigating norms 4 SAGE Open and the particularities of interaction in these translocality the premise that this utterance will actually be perceived Facebook environments could further our understanding as such not just by the addressee alone, but all those of impoliteness beyond national borders. involved (maybe involved) in the interaction. Yet, individuals’ evaluation of social actions, espe- cially on Facebook—which is a polylogual interaction— Impoliteness as a Social Practice depends on the participation status of the participants, also known as footing (Goffman, 1981). Footing refers Impoliteness research has witnessed a discursive turn in to the roles and responsibilities of participants or the the last two decades. This has evolved toward analyzing social capacity in which a participant is presumed to be longer fragments of authentic discourse with the premise acting in the interaction (O’Driscoll, 2020). According to that impoliteness is a social practice carried out through Haugh and Ka´ da´ r (2013), these roles and responsibilities (conversational) assessments made by interactants on the include animator (or utterer) which refers to the person grounds of shared moral order (Haugh, 2013). Haugh producing talk, an author is the entity that creates or and Ka´ da´ r (2013, p. 6) argue that the basis of impolite- designs the talk, a principal which is the party responsible ness evaluations is ‘‘the accountability of social actions for that talk, and a figure is the character portrayed and pragmatic meanings vis-a` -vis the moral order,’’ within the talk. These roles and responsibilities may which is understood as a ‘‘set of expectancies through affect the perspectives from which impoliteness is evalu- which social actions and meanings are recognizable as ated and perceived. For example, an animator may pro- such, and consequently are inevitably open to moral eva- duce an utterance that is only perceived as impolite or luation.’’ In order words, as individuals, we recognize offensive by the author, rather than by the intended tar- and know the difference between good and bad. Our get. Put differently, social media (i.e., Twitter and reaction to any transgression of social norms rests on the Facebook) have a policy based on which they sanction knowledge of the form and content of the transgression. offensive behaviors not because the targets of such Such reactions represent our perceptions and apprehen- offenses complain, but because these acts go against the sion of social actions vis a vis the moral order. We take policy of the platform. Trump, for example, has been other people responsible for their actions on the grounds banned from Twitter for violating the platform policy. of what is morally (in)acceptable or (in)appropriate in a The notion of footing is particularly salient in the case particular context. Viewing (im)politeness as a social of the data analyzed in this paper, as these roles can practice implies that (a) (metapragmatic) evaluations broadly be distributed as follows: the animators are the constitute reactions that strongly depend on prior social users engaged in the interaction the comment threads, actions of the person or conduct being evaluated; (b) any the author here is Facebook, the principals are the three (metapragmatic) assessment is rooted in the moral order News outlets and the figure is Giuliani who is portrayed that orient individuals’ action to deontic order (i.e., what within the talk. In this context, while author, principal, participants think is ‘‘obligatory, permissible, or forbid- and figure seem to have a static and unique role, the ani- den)’’ (Stevanovic & Pera¨ kyla¨ , 2012, p. 289). mators can be categorized into those that produce impo- The term evaluation is crucial when defining impolite- liteness utterances (producers of comments) and those ness as a social practice, since impoliteness behaviors that morally see and evaluate these utterances as impolite depend on the perception, experience and evaluation by (producer of metacomments). Evaluations of impolite- not just individuals involved in the interaction alone, but ness in this context needs to be situated vis-a` -vis not only anyone close enough to experience such behavior. Evaluation is what gives an utterance a positive or nega- simply speakers or hearers, but also relative to a complex tive value. Put differently, what makes people perceive array of production and reception footings (Haugh, 2013). particular behaviors as impolite is the value accorded to Time and space are also of particular importance in them in a particular community (O’Driscoll, 2020) and understanding impoliteness as a social practice in the the salience of this value in a given interaction in a par- sense that evaluative moments within a particular inter- ticular context. action are usually underpinned by the different under- However, when examining impoliteness, one has to be standing of time and space (Haugh & Ka´ da´ r, 2013). In aware of not just the importance of the hearer’s evalua- tion (Eelen, 2001), but also the alignment individuals other words, impoliteness evaluations are usually situ- take up to themselves and others present as expressed in ated. Such situatedness is conditioned by time and space. the way they manage the production and reception of an Any understanding of impoliteness is therefore relative utterance (Haugh, 2013). For example, the perception of to time and space. In this way, impoliteness evaluations Giuliani as deserving of compassion or not is both are practices that emerge in an interaction in a particular period of time. This is critical to the present paper in that socially and interactively meaningful, since the produc- the interaction under study takes place in a particular tion of any ((im)polite) comment in this context rests on Tsoumou 5 space (Facebook) and during a particular time (the evaluation is one way to study impoliteness’’, since, Covid-19 pandemic and the US post-election period). In ‘‘impoliteness occurs not so much when the speaker other words, analyzing impoliteness in Facebook interac- produces behavior but rather when the hearer evaluates tion dealing with Covid-19 is, in other words, a search to that behavior.’’ With this in mind, a thorough meta- determine the salience of impoliteness as it emerges and pragmatic examination of each corpus is carried out so its motive values in the context of the 2020 pandemic. as to determine users’ own evaluation of the ongoing flow of interventions within the comment threads (see subsection 4.1). Detecting Impoliteness Across the Corpora Recent developments in impoliteness research have Method shown that impoliteness behaviors can be interpreted from the scientific standpoint (second order), from lay It is now widely accepted that any investigation into persons’ standpoint (first order) or from a hybrid human behavior on Facebook requires a reflection on approach, which is the combination of the above (Bou- the questions of privacy, confidentiality, and informed Franch, 2021; Garce´ s-Conejos Blitvich, 2022). This dis- consent (Bolander & Locher, 2019). As a result, precau- tinction sparks from the mere idea that impoliteness tions have to be taken in order to avoid inflicting harm behaviors are contested social actions which can be dif- to individuals being investigated. In this vein, the ferently understood and interpreted (Haugh & Ka´ da´ r, research design in this paper carefully follows the guide- 2013; Kleinke & Bo¨ s, 2015). Taking each Facebook com- lines for online research (Spilioti & Tagg, 2017) in accor- ment as a unit of analysis, I examine impoliteness by dance with calls for attention to ethical considerations in combining a metapragmatic analysis with a merely lin- pragmatics and social media research (Bolander & guistic analysis so as to guarantee a hybrid approach Locher, 2019). In this regard, 6 months prior to the col- which benefits from Culpeper’s (2011, 2016) notion of lection of the data analyzed in this paper, I had been impoliteness formulae (second order) and lay users’ inter- conducting a field observation of the Trump administra- pretation of impoliteness (first order). In other words, a tion handling of the pandemic and its implications in the comment is deemed impolite not just by the way it is dis- 2020-US elections. To narrow down this task, I carefully cursively constructed and linguistically formulated, but selected three Facebook pages belonging to two competi- also by the (re)evaluation it receives in the flow of the tive news outlets within the USA (Fox News and CNN) interaction across the three corpora. The task is to read and one foreign news outlet (BBC News). Part of the each comment in each corpus and systematically identify data—that is, the reactions from BBC Facebook page— these formulae that operate as ‘‘multiword collocations has already been published in separate paper (See which are stored and retrieved holistically rather than Tsoumou, 2022). When I first started the observation being generated de novo with each use’’ (Kecskes, 2016, process, I reached out to the administrators of these p. 62). For example, you are stupid is a formulaic expres- pages to express my interest in studying the comments sion of insult (Culpeper, 2011). Impoliteness comments on their pages. Therefore, I did not filter the comment are not just acts that threaten or attack the addressee, threads or single out irrelevant comments for the simple and the idea behind conventionalized formulae is, as reason the purpose of the study is to analyze naturally O’Driscoll (2020, p. 18) argues, ‘‘that by virtue of peo- occurring data. In this context, the news about Giuliani ple’s experience of the regularity of their occurrence in testing positive was initially announced via Twitter by particular co-texts and/or metadiscourse around (im)po- Donald Trump, whom I personally followed on Twitter. lite language, they come to be associated with impolite- Therefore, as soon as I got the notification of Trump’s ness in people’s minds.’’ These formulae, which are tweet about Giuliani’s positive test, I logged onto the usually semantically tagged for context (Culpeper, 2011), abovementioned Facebook pages, and as soon as Fox are prepackaged expressions which are readily available News, CNN, and the BBC reported the news on as a means of causing offense and, by the same token, Facebook, I decided to start the collection process while are comparatively readily interpreted as offensive. observing how the interaction unfolds and how the inter- Insults, criticisms, threats, silencers, dismissals are exam- play between politeness and impoliteness becomes salient ples of conventionalized impoliteness formulae (see sub- and worth investigating. For the sake of fairness, I section 4.1.). evenly collected 1,000 first Facebook comments from Finally, whilst Hampel (2015, p. 104) argues that each of the three abovementioned pages (see Figure 1) ‘‘individuals’ perceptions of appropriate or polite beha- on December 06, 2020. As the posts went viral in just vior also play a vital role since differing expectations 4 minutes with over 14K likes and thousands of com- and interpretations of (im)politeness may lead to con- ments, all the corpora were collected within the first flicts’’, Haugh (2013, p. 58) emphasizes that ‘‘the 30 minutes of the publication. 6 SAGE Open Figure 1. It is important to point out the motive for choosing analysis of findings as well as the examination of the these three news outlets. Based on the traditional politi- users’ political standings for future research. After all, cal standings, Fox News page is a pro-republican, pro- impoliteness is about the quality of the interaction, conservative, and pro-Trump news page. CNN is a pro- rather than the frequencies of actions. On the other democratic, pro-liberal, and almost anti-Trump news hand, keeping in mind that Facebook algorithms have outlet. Finally, as a foreign TV broadcast, the BBC is the power to arrange comments, the 3,000 Facebook neutral when dealing with US-related issues and would comments were gathered in a chronological manner from generate an equilibrium of between well-wishing and ill- the oldest to the most recent. The process of data collec- wishing comments. In this context and since impoliteness tion consisted of copying and pasting the comments onto implies verbal attacks and criticisms, one may attempt to a .doc file. argue that there is likelihood for users to act more antag- Understandably, there are a number of drawbacks as onistically on the CNN Facebook page than on the Fox well as advantages about this type of data. One issue News one. However, this expectation may be misleading about the nature of these data is that (1) the on the grounds that we may assume that we know where protagonist—that is, Giuliani—is absent from the devel- the updates are posted from, but it is hard to determine opment of the conversation within the Facebook thread, where the reactions are posted from. These three (2) the researcher bears no physical contact with the par- Facebook pages have a strong outreach which goes ticipants. Additionally, the copying and pasting of the beyond the national borders and situate them at an inter- data, identification and classification of the comments national scale which, one may argue, defies nationally were carried out in a pen-and-paper fashion. One of the known political standings. Moreover, unlike Facebook methodological advantages about this type of data, how- pages held by politicians which often encourage the par- ever, is that the data are readily available and can, as a ticipation and engagement of followers or users with result, be easily and conveniently collected. This easiness clear political and party-line commitment (Tsoumou, consisted of simply copying the comments from the news 2020), pages held by news outlets are consulted by a outlet page and posting them into a .doc file. Another broader audience, which sometimes has no specific polit- advantage is its accessibility. To the day of the writing of ical allegiances. Therefore, in the absence of self-reported this paper, the data source remains available to the public. information—which I could have gathered through Moreover, what is particularly important about this type of interviews with the users—I avoid exploring the data data is that it provides the researcher with an opportunity with the presumption that Facebook users reacting on to carry out a real time investigation of three different sets the Fox news page are all conservative and those on of interactions dealing with the exact same issue at the same CNN pages would have progressive values. For this rea- time, which otherwise would be impossible. son and for the sake of space, this paper will only carry As for ethical considerations, Bolander and Locher out a qualitative analysis while leaving a quantitative (2019, p. 85) insist that ‘‘in an attempt to not cause our Tsoumou 7 interlocutors harm – an intent which is at the heart of Results and Analysis ethically sound research – we must be mindful of the The analysis of the results will first start with a second- complexity of the research process, and do our level best order examination of impoliteness as it manifests across to reflect upon the best ways to work with data without the corpora, before elaborating on the first-order percep- causing harm to our interlocutors.’’ In this vein, the data tion that arises therein. for the present paper were gathered without the research- er’s participation in the on-going interactions and with- out previously informing the participants. My Determining Impoliteness Strategies Across the participation was merely observational. In addition, it is Corpora (Second Order) true that online data remain a source of long-time debate There are multiple ways to act impolitely in a particular as regards their nature, as some scholars consider online interaction. In this subsection I take a second order materials to be fundamentally private, and copyright approach so as to examine the linguistic items used in protected which requires researchers to give credit to the expressing impoliteness. In excerpt 1, for instance, copyright holders by eventually asking them for consent U_BBC_198 refers to Giuliani as an idiot Lawyer; as far as the copyright law is concerned (Villi & U_CNN_201 used morons, idiots, and con to describe the Matikainen, 2016). There are, however, scholars who Republican leadership; U_FOX_624 goes even further as counter argue that any materials left online are public. to call fellow users evil, sickos, and nasty. As such, they can be used without asking for any consent from owners (Kozinets, 2015). In this paper, I follow this Excerpt 1: second line of ideas. Therefore, given that the comments U_BBC_198: Poor Public that was exposed to the Idiots here analyzed were posted for public display, no consent Lawyer. was sought from the users prior to the data collection. In U_CNN_201: Dear Republicans, It must be really embar- fact, as mentioned earlier, to the date of the writing of rassing to call yourself a republican at this point. Morons, this paper, the data remain publicly available on the idiots, and con men, make up the Republican ‘‘leadership.’’ Facebook pages of the news outlets. Nevertheless, I Time to jump ship and salvage what’s left of your dignity. ensured that all the details related to the users’ identities U_FOX_624: There are some very EVIL people in this be removed in the analysis. Likewise, I employed U to world.. I can’t stand Obama, Harris and Biden but I don’t represent both the user and the rank of their interven- wish them illness either.SICKOS! Nasty, nasty h people. tions within the threads in each corpus. Throughout the analysis, the findings are presented in the following The disregard in excerpt 1 intends to scornfully abuse, order. Comments from the BBC (U_BBC_) appear first downgrade and control the addressee. It becomes offen- in each excerpt analyzed, followed by comments from sive and defiance of expectations given both the fact that CNN (U_CNN_). Comments from FOX News the interaction is about a matter of life or death—which (U_FOX_) are presented last. morally requires compassion—as well as the fact that the Finally, a multimodal analysis is critical in carrying comments obey conventionalized impoliteness formulae any investigation on social media, especially Facebook. associated with offensiveness by virtue of their prepon- This rests on the argument that multimodal and mainly derant use for causing offense (Culpeper, 2011). The textual discourse are inseparable and emotionally choice of linguistic items (i.e., idiot, moron, con, evil, sickos, and nasty), otherwise known as offense genera- charged in digital discourse. Studying impoliteness tors (O’Driscoll, 2020), shows a deliberate desire to cause implies analyzing individuals’ emotional representation pain, humiliate the target and implicitly establish a sort of social actions. With this in mind, I meticulously inves- tigated all instances where users hashtag fellow users of dominance at the expense of others. What is com- within the interaction so as to determine items directed monly shared about these comments is, however, that at Giuliani’s diagnosis and those used as reactions to the they start by a poor evaluation of previous actions from comments previously made by fellow users within the which the insulting remarks become the consequences of. threads. When a user addresses a fellow user by means In other words, they are not initial actions by themselves. of a hashtag, this is displayed within parentheses in the For instance, U_BBC_198 starts by expressing his sor- analysis. Likewise, all the excerpts are reproduced here row about anyone who may have been in closer contact as they were naturally uttered by the users with errors with Giuliani whom U_BBC_198 called an idiot. and infelicities so as to keep their naturally occurring U_CNN_201 takes aim at the conduct of the forms. Finally, I took into account the display of emojis Republicans vis-a` -vis the pandemic. U_FOX_624 is criti- in the analysis. cal of fellow users engaged in the interaction whom the 8 SAGE Open user refers to as sickos and nasty. U_FOX_624 sees the about the target that may be resisted by the latter in impropriety of the attacks targeting Giuliani. U624 dis- (Haugh & Chang, 2019). approves negative comments that target a fellow being The orientations of the comments here emphasize the affected by the virus regardless of the divergence of point argument that being at once a politician and an attorney of views. Being the results of previous actions, these acts to the then-President of the United States, Giuliani’s all involve pointing out some kind of fault (i.e., weak- diagnosis cannot be detached from the management of ness, failing, misdemeanor, or mistake), and expressing the pandemic (or the lack thereof) from the sitting disapproval of that fault (Haugh & Chang, 2019). administration. In excerpt 3, for instance, U_BBC_449 Whether they are genuine or not, the negative evalua- and U_CNN_151 rhetorically implies that Trump is tions and fault finding in excerpt 1 rest on the moral untrustworthy and no one should rely upon him for order that stems from the idea that ‘‘being in closer con- accurate news, whereas U_FOX_85 raises suspicions tact with people while maskless’’ is an irresponsible act around the fact that only Republicans have come down during the Covid-19 pandemic or ‘‘laughing at someone with the virus so far (as was the case of U_FOX_530 in in pain’’ is antisocial. excerpt 3). The interests of these items are not Giuliani’s However, since impoliteness is a contested social phe- health; rather, these acts serve the political interests of nomenon, whether the insults, described here based on a the participants in the interaction. second-order standpoint, are perceived as such requires Excerpt 3 first-order interpretations or reactions from the targets U_BBC_449: ‘‘Trump says???’’ Couldn’t you find a reliable or anyone capable of seeing such offense. This will be source? dealt with in subsection 4.2. From now, the focus will be U_CNN_151: Why is trump announcing that? Why would on exploring other second-order manifestations of impo- anyone believe him! There are many things wrong with liteness found across the corpora. Rudy that’s evident! In excerpt 2, for example, U_BBC_251 utters a poor U_FOX_85: How come none of the prominent evaluation of the Trump presidency, describing it as a 4- DEMONCRAPS In DC or anywhere else don’t get year-failure, before comparing Trump to a chimpanzee. Covid?????? Has anyone asked that question?? Kind of fishy Likewise, U_CNN_118 takes aim at the administration if you ask me h by negatively evaluating the quality of the job done. Finally, the criticism uttered by U_FOX_530 comes in a The questions in this except index the clash of priori- form of complaint, as the user believes that the rates of ties of the users across the three corpora, as BBC and Covid-19 infections are politically one-sided, as it seems CNN users mainly attack the credibility of Trump and strange to this user that only Republicans have come his administration with respect to the information they down with the virus so far. This is a way to create room release to the public, whereas from Fox news users tend for speculation on a conspiracy against Republicans and to drag Democrats into the reason the virus only affects potentially create doubt about the existence of the virus. Republicans, even if the disproportion in terms of infec- tion rates is relatively understandable given that the Excerpt 2 Republicans were reluctant to implement some and U_BBC_251: there’s just been 4 years of a disaster. A chim- appeal to Covid-19 measures such as mask wearing. panzee could do a better job than Trump In excerpt 4, U_BBC_238 condescends to Giuliani as U_CNN_118: Pretty much the whole administration got it, unstable and incoherent. Likewise, U_CNN_555 treats speaks volumes about their indifference and where we are at. Trump administration officials as hard-learner individu- U_FOX_530: Very strange it’s only Republicans that get sick als. Finally, U_FOX_189 describes Giuliani as a disgra- ceful person. The orientations of the pointed criticisms across the three corpora are revealing in the sense that the users in Excerpt 4 the BBC and CNN tend to attack Trump and his admin- U_BBC_238: Probably explains why Giuliani has been mak- istration, whereas most acts of criticisms in Fox news are ing less sense than normal lately. uttered in a form of complaints and accusations directed U_CNN_555: They don’t seem to be learning anything!!! / at the democratic party. However, what is commonly U_CNN_574: That’s what happens when you are reckless! shared is that all criticisms are a way to single out an U_FOX_189: One of America’s most toxic men. Rudys fall addressee’s fault or wrongdoing while soliciting reasons from grace is beyond pathetic for the state of affairs for which the addressee is held responsible. All of this is done not just to cause hurt feel- Describing Giuliani as making less sense, a difficult ings, but also convey expectations that the target will do learner or a toxic person falling from grace is undoubt- something to remedy the fault, pass moral judgment on edly a takedown. Regardless of the perspective these others, or display claims to have expertise or knowledge comments are approached, referring to someone battling Tsoumou 9 Covid-19 as ‘‘making less sense than normal lately’’ or argue that disregarding Giuliani’s illness this way is a calling someone ‘‘reckless’’ or ‘‘toxic’’ is far from being a marked behavior in the sense that understanding, show- positive description of Giuliani. The same argument can ing compassion, and emotional support are the appropri- be made for excerpt 5 in which U_BBC_726 indirectly ate conduct in the context of a dreadful pandemic. orders Republican politicians to wear masks, However, it is important to highlight the variation in U_CNN_877 makes an order for Giuliani to be isolated, terms of the motives behind each dismissive comment. and U_FOX_35 asks Giuliani to stay home. For example, unlike U_BBC_72 who uttered a short dis- missing expression ‘‘Get lost, Rudi,’’ U_CNN_377 and Excerpt 5 U_FOX_676 elaborate on the reason for their dismissal U_BBC_726: Let your GOP folks to mask up of Giuliani. Concretely, while U_CNN_271 appears to U_CNN_877: Get him isolated and trace his close contacts be more concerned about people other than Giuliani, U_FOX_35: stay home since you felt it was not important U_FOX_676 takes issue against the attention Giuliani’s enough to mask up test is getting. Some reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis focus on his The polarization of views over the issue of mask wear- involvement in attempting to overturn the results of the ing becomes the grounds on which these comments are election. In excerpt 7, for instance, all the comments uttered, as the users enforce the idea that Giuliani’s own intend to silence Giuliani and have him kept away from irresponsibility for not wearing masks is what opened the public eye. These users believe that the diagnosis is the door for him to catch the virus, and if he does not an opportunity not to hear Giuliani anymore. isolate himself, he may end up spreading the virus fur- ther. However, although masking up can be beneficial to Excerpt 7 Giuliani in terms of preventing or fighting the virus, U_BBC_409: So maybe, finally, at last Giuliani will shut up ordering GOP folks (which includes Giuliani) to mask for a while at least up is certainly a form of condescending behavioral prac- U_CNN_835: Someone should take him home and lock the tices through which the users attempt to patronize the doors. interaction. The use of expressions—such as let your U_FOX_242: Now he can quarantine 14 days and shut his GOP folks to mask up, get him isolated and trace his close lying mouth up.God works in mysterious ways. contacts and stay home since you felt it was not important Framing silencers such as shut up in a life-threatening enough to mask up—shows the lack of consideration for context is certainly humiliating and aggressive, as it others, as the implying intent is to treat GOP folks as shows an explicit lack of consideration for Giuliani’s stupid, less important and irresponsible. It is however sense of worth and dignity. Undermining Giuliani’s sense important to highlight that there remains room to inter- of identity challenges the notion of social and moral nor- pret the comments in excerpt 5 as somewhat uttered for mality which often motivates the expectation of sympa- the benefit of the addressee, especially if one sees these thy in moments of despair. The absence of this sense of comments as an appropriate way to raise awareness on moral normality toward a suffering individual, thus, the issue of mask wearing, self-isolation and contact tra- cing, which all contribute to lifesaving in the context of a becomes indexical and marked, as this amounts to a fail- pandemic. ure to appropriately attend to others’ needs, which is an The antagonism around the appropriate conduct dur- affront to the addresser and the addressee. ing the pandemic generated dismissive comments across The polarization of views about the pandemic leads the corpora. In excerpt 6, for instance, U_BBC_72 expli- some users to question the seriousness of Giuliani’s diag- citly uttered ‘‘get lost Rudi,’’ whereas U_CNN_271 and nosis. In excerpt 8, U_CNN_364 and U_FOX_7 appear to encroach upon fellow users by downplaying the con- U_CNN_377 as well as U_FOX_676 express their disin- cern over Covid-19. terest in the news about the diagnosis. Excerpt 6 Excerpt 8 U_BBC_72: Get lost, Rudi . U_CNN_364: We all will get it sometime. It is what it is. U_CNN_271: Do you really think most of us care?Deal Can’t shut the World down. with it! / U_CNN_377: I could careless about Rudy what I U_FOX_7: He will be fine. Lots of people I know have had do care about are the people he infected and that might die. it and been fine. 99% recovery rate sheeple. Stop letting the U_FOX_676: Who cares! Nobody advertises when I catch a mainstream state run communist media lead you around by virus! your short and curlies! Whether these comments were expressed with panic- The clash of expectations leads to an expression of disinterest in Giuliani’s diagnosis. One may, for example, avoiding intentions through which U_CNN_364 and 10 SAGE Open U_FOX_7 attempt to camouflage the seriousness and the case of U_BBC_284, U_CNN_27 ends the comment harmfulness of the pandemic, the use of such lexical with the suspension of three face-with-tear-of-joy emoji, stances as ‘‘Can’t shut the World down. and Stop letting generating laughter reactions from U_CNN_ 28 and the mainstream state run communist media lead you U_CNN_30. Moreover, U_FOX_176 reuses Trump’s infamous phrase ‘‘It will go away like a miracle’’ with around by your short and curlie,’’ however, indexes the two face-with-tear-of-joy emoji so as to poke fun at need to control fellow users’ way of thinking. As can be Giuliani’s diagnosis. All these comments are classic pro- seen, the focus of the comments in excerpt 9 shifts from vocative forms of social action that invite specific forms Giuliani’s diagnosis to the debate on how to behave in of response from participants (Haugh, 2017, p. 209). the midst of the pandemic. Against the prosocial end of these comments, however, Likewise, across Fox News and CNN a recurrent way not all the users found this humorous. U_BBC_889 is to resurge the traditional political conflicts is through against poking fun as he/she aggressively alarms that accusing users with opposing views as responsible for there might be something wrong with all those who are Giuliani’s positive diagnosis. In excerpt 9, for instance, happy when someone tests positive for Covid-19. It is U_CNN_119 and U_FOX_254 accuse the Democrats as likewise the belief of U_CNN_90 that making fun of responsible for Giuliani’s health shortcomings. others’ health condition is juvenile. Finally, U_FOX_209 Excerpt 9 conveys that it is abnormal and evil to laugh at others’ U_CNN_119: Democrats infected him because he’s been so misfortune. For these users teasing comments become successful in his efforts to over turn the election results! disrespectful forms of cruelty, which arguably amounts U_FOX_254: I’ve been saying for a while that leftist would to social rejection and can result in emotional harm. find a way to get the virus to him. Excerpt 10 Interestingly enough, other-blaming comments such U284: Giuliani is filing a law suit in the Supreme Court to as those in excerpts 9 are solely pervasive in Fox News overturn his positive test /U_BBC_285 (Addressing and CNN corpora with zero incidence in the BBC cor- U_BBC_284’s comment): The best one yet/ U_BBC_286 (Addressing U_BBC_284’s comment) lol. /U_BBC_295 pus. One plausible explanation is that the main concern (Addressing U_BBC_284’s comment) kajajajaaaaaaaa/ for the users commenting on the BBC page is the threat U_BBC_889: What is wrong with you people that you are that the virus represents for Giuliani’s health and the rest happy someone has covid, bunch of disgusting humans. of human beings, rather than the political divide of the U_CNN_27: he’ll call the lab and tell them to overturn the US. Another explanation may be that, being a foreign results / U_CNN_28 (Addressing U_CNN_27’s com- news outlet, the users may not be as enthusiastic about ment): I wouldn’t wish the virus on anyone, but your com- engaging themselves in the promotion of conspiracy the- ment wins on the internet today! /U_CNN_29 (Addressing ories as are the US citizens themselves. U27’s comment) I don’t think the situation is funny, but I Some of the impolite comments are uttered with teas- did laugh../U_CNN_30 (Addressing U_CNN_29’s com- ment): no you’re not. I laughed too. At this point, if we don’t ing intent so as to convey two opposing interactional laugh, we’ll cry and laughter is better for the heart and soul. meanings: prosocial (or non-aggressive) and antisocial Laugh on!/U90: Making fun of anybody’s health scare is juve- (or aggressive) (Culpeper, 2011). In the former case, teas- nile. No matter who it is.. Be better people. ing is used for an affectionate, playful or joking end, U_FOX_176: Giuliani has been taken to the hospital. It will whereas, in the latter case, teasing is used for a hostile, go away like a miracle. h let us know how that works out aggressive or malicious end. Excerpt 10 illustrates the for ya Rudy. /U_FOX_207: The flu will go away by Easter interplay between both prosocial and antisocial ends. As h h/ U_FOX_209: Those laughing about this are obvi- U_BBC_284 utters ‘‘Giuliani is filing a law suit in the ously evil and vile! Supreme Court to overturn his positive test ’’ in which the user ends the comment by means of a face-with-tear- The two ends of these teasing comments show how of-joy emoji, the teasing comment becomes a way of conflicts unfold across the corpora between sympathizers affectionately poking fun at Giuliani while enhancing who perceive teasing comments as offensive, hurtful and positive feeling and relational quality among fellow users evil, and detractors—willing to derive joy and pleasure who may find the utterance amusing as well. Building at the expense of Giuliani’s health. It is also important upon this, the reactions of U285: The best one yet, U286: to highlight the fact that the comments, as shown in lol and U292: kajajajaaaaaaaa subscribes to the playful excerpt 10, are all designed) in ways that invite some nature of this teasing. A similar example is found in kind of affective response (or set of responses) on the CNN where U27 mockingly asserts ‘‘he [Giuliani]’ll call part of fellow users (Haugh & Chang, 2019). These affec- the lab and tell them to overturn the results .’’ As in tive responses here range from amusement—displayed Tsoumou 11 through the use of laughter—through to offense and U149: (Addressing U_FOX_148)That is incorrect. Surgica masks reduce the chance of transmission of particles contain- anger. Calling those laughing as evil and vile certainly ing viruses from people between 70% and 98.5%. Their effec- comes from anger, even if the comment is itself an impo- tiveness is VERY high. lite act for the use of offense generators (i.e., evil, vile). At this point, there is no doubt that Giuliani’s diagno- One fact that stands out in the way users utter the sis is a polarized topic about which the users are in a comments is that the disagreement does not seem to constant antagonism on how to react. This is why strate- restrict addressees’ action-environment as it would be the gies such as agreement and disagreement are not just case in a power-asymmetric environment (see Locher, commonplace across the three corpora, but more impor- 2010). In other words, the sequences of disagreements tantly they play a substantial role in negotiating relation- found in the corpora do not necessarily call for some ships. However, while agreement may build rapport kind of reaction from the party disagreed with. I found between interactants, disagreement is generally no sequences across the corpora in which the disagree- accounted for as a face-threatening act which, depending ment between two users is framed in a back-and-forth on the degree, may cause conflict or simply damage the manner that could amount to confrontation and conflict future dynamics of the interaction. In excerpt 11, for even though there is a clear clash of interests and goals in instance, U_BBC_303 discards the need to offer sympa- every instance where disagreement occurs. Perhaps this thy to Giuliani. However, the reactive comment made by has to do with both the digital and multi-participant nat- U_BBC_307 to U_BBC_303’s act offers an opposing ures of this interaction. opinion. As a way of avoiding any conflictual misunder- standing, U_BBC_307 starts the comment in a way that seems to approve U_BBC_303’s utterance in an effort to Impoliteness as the Struggle Over the Norms of mitigate the impact of the disagreement, before elaborat- Interaction (First Order) ing on his/her differing opinion by giving the reason for the disagreement with the hedge ‘‘but maybe.’’ As pointed out at the outset, impoliteness rests on indi- U_BBC_307’s disagreeing comment shows to some viduals’ perceptions of (in)appropriate behavior. This extent the consideration U_BBC_307 has with respect to perception is achieved through speech acts (i.e., com- plaint, criticism, etc.) considered to be social actions with U_BBC_303’s feeling. Another example of disagreement implication on the (co-) constituting relation among indi- is found in CNN where U_CNN_159 expresses disagree- viduals. In this subsection, the focus is on the first-order ment over the efficacy of mask wearing in preventing the spread of the virus. Likewise, in Fox News, U_FOX_148 interpretation of the flow on the interaction across the questions the relevance of mask wearing and hand wash- corpora. ing in preventing from catching the virus, pointing to the In excerpt 12, the intent of the three comments is not fact he/she had already been diagnosed with the virus to react to Giuliani’s diagnosis per se; rather they are reactions to the behavior underlining the interventions of even after having followed these guidelines. fellow users. In other words, the mere belief in these U_FOX_149, however, offers a different perspective in three comments is that there are comments within each the mask-wearing discussion, by firstly expressing the corpus that are evaluated by U_BBC_89, U_CNN_153, explicit disagreement (i.e., That is incorrect), before ela- and U_FOX_93 as sarcastically expressing joy and hap- borating on his/her reasons which rests on the effective- piness about Giuliani’s diagnosis. These users’ under- ness of surgical masks in reducing the chance of transmission. standing of the diagnosis is that Covid-19 is an issue to take seriously, and no one should joke about another Excerpt 12 person’s positive diagnosis as has been the intention of U_BBC_303: . Deserves no sympathy."/ U_BBC_ some comments within the thread. Additionally, there is 307(Addressing U_BBC_303’s comment): quite true, but another commonly shared element attached about these maybe for humanity’s sake, we shouldn’t rejoice. comments; that is, they are not just commenting on the U_CNN_159: Rest giuliani. Standing up for the truth, rooting disease as such, but they target the contents of what has out the wrong, his mask wouldn’t have stopped the spread of been uttered in the preceding comments. In other words, covid anyway. Show other places where it’s working. Display the targets of these comments are fellow users within the the standardization of mask use and design nationwide. interaction. Moreover, the fact that these three meta- U_FOX_148: That’s his choice but it’s still not funny for an pragmatic comments occur at turns 89 (BBC News), 153 elderly person to get the virus. I wear a mask, wash my hands (CNN), and 93 (Fox News) respectively suggests that religiously and I still got it months ago. Masks really don’t do much, but we should at least try these users had read and understood the preceding 12 SAGE Open comments, and from this understanding, they take aim however, appreciate the attacks targeting Giuliani. at fellow users’ interventions so as to protect Giuliani’s Through metadiscursive comments, some users not just dignity as a human being. feel the need to treat Giuliani as a human being, but more importantly remind fellow users that Covid-19 Exceprt 13 should be a concern for all. What is particularly critical U_BBC_89: What is wrong with you people that you are about these metacomments is that while the users advo- happy someone has covid. cate for civil interactions, they mostly do not condone U_CNN_153: These comments are hilarious. I have to admit Giuliani’s actions. The reason for this is arguably the sal- they made me laugh. However Covid is not funny at all and ience of the moral order which implicitly shapes these I hope the dude gets well. Unfortunately, Im sure he’s spread users’ understanding of what should be obligatory, per- this to MANY others and some people don’t have stellar missible, or forbidden under the circumstances, regard- healthcare access. less of Giuliani’s prior actions. These users ground their U_FOX_93: Really don’t know how people who are react- ing to this with laughter can honestly live with themselves. awareness of what should be the appropriate conduct in It’s not just your own countryman who’s come down with a situation of despair such as dealing with Covid-19 and #COVID19 but your fellow man too and you all find it describe fellow users’ conducts as the type of behavior amusing. How can you people be so callous. against which they identify themselves. How they see themselves as human beings is different from how they The awareness in the minds of the lay users of what is see others. Comments conveying a laughing attitude are, the appropriate behavior under the circumstance of posi- for instance, metapragmatically singled out as being dis- tive Covid-19 diagnosis is evident. Such appropriate con- courteous and impolite (see excerpt 13). duct implies that Covid-19 is no laughing matter. The The findings also further our understanding of the comments are an acknowledgment of the dramatic loss increasing polarization of social political discourse on of human life worldwide and the reminder that the risk Facebook (Bou-Franch, 2021; Tagg, 2017) and its direct for anyone (including those engaged in the interaction) to relations to the Covid-19 pandemic (Andersson, 2022). get infected or potentially die from this virus is real. This The reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis show how the oppo- metapragmatic accounts, on the other hand, for the epis- sition between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’ turns an issue of life or temological fact that what is really at play in the three death into an opportunity to resurge traditional political corpora is the struggle over the norms of interaction. divisions, making the diagnosis becomes a real opportu- Some users find Giuliani’s diagnosis as an issue akin to nity for ‘‘us’’ to compete against ‘‘them.’’ In excerpt 1, for compassion, whilst others take the situation as a gratify- instance, the insulting comment posted by U_CNN_201 ing opportunity to generate laughter and happiness. takes aim at the Republican leadership for their supposed mismanagement of the pandemic. In excerpt 10, U_FOX_176 reuses Trump’s infamous phrase ‘‘it will go Conclusions away like a miracle’’ as a way to poke fun at Giuliani’s This paper set out to examine impoliteness in Facebook expense. These comments show how individuals can overlook delicate situations and be bluntly dismissive of generated by Giuliani’s Covid test and provide empirical other individuals in need for political interests. These responses to the following questions: How does impolite- behaviors do not however go unsanctioned on the ness unfold in Facebook comments triggered by grounds of what is morally right and wrong. The perva- Giuliani’s diagnosis? On what grounds are the reactions to the diagnosis based across the three news outlets? An siveness of metacomments in these translocality environ- examination of the comments reveals that the reactions ments calling out marked behaviors and interpreting the to Giuliani’s diagnosis are more focused on him being a context of the interaction and the situation itself as some- politician, rather than him being a human being affected thing which requires respect, understanding and compas- sion shows that even in open-ended platforms there is an by the virus. The reactions attack his actions and the implicit expectation grounded on the ‘‘seen but unno- actions of others within his political party, which sug- ticed’’ (Haugh, 2013); that is, the idea that behaving gests that impoliteness in this context has a strong depen- dence on previous actions and political engagement. politely or understanding someone in a delicate situation Giuliani is seen to be undeserving of compassion or is what every member of a society is entitled to know or empathy not just on the grounds of his active involve- describe and communicate. As a social practice, impolite- ment in attempting to overturn the presidential election ness rests not just on individuals’ perception of them- results (see excerpt 10), but also due to his disregard selves as social beings, their expectations grounded on toward mask wearing in public spheres. Political polari- the difference between right and wrong as well as the zation is, in other words, what shapes and motivates the position they take in a given interaction, but it also negative reactions in this context. Not all the users, depends on an implicit shared understanding of the Tsoumou 13 values and meaning of the interaction as a representation contexts. In terms of the situatedness of the norms of the of a given society. interaction, impoliteness behaviors analyzed here are Furthermore, when looking into the nature per se of social actions that are situated within a particular social impolite comments across the three corpora, the revela- or relational network (Bou-Franch, 2021; Haugh & tion is that there is a difference in terms of the orienta- ´ ´ Kadar, 2013; Tsoumou, 2022). The meaning of impolite- tions of the attacks and how the users portray Giuliani. ness in these corpora is connected to breaches in appro- For instance, most criticisms in the CNN and the BBC priate behavior regarding the topic management and corpora merely convey two main sets of concerns. On social expectations associated with the impact of Covid- the one hand, users question the seriousness and integrity 19. In terms of identity (co-)construction, impoliteness of Trump in delivering the news about Giuliani’s diagno- here plays a role in the way interactants tend to position sis, presupposing Trump to be a liar and untrustworthy. themselves with respect to others (Andersson, 2021). Just The second set of comments in CNN and BBC corpora as Andersson (2022) reported, the findings in this paper are not merely concerned about Giuliani’s health; rather show that offensive language marks and negotiates dif- they tend to raise concerns about the safety of the people ferent value positions in Facebook interaction about with whom Giuliani may have been in contact, raising Covid-19. the question of whether those people are safe. However, Finally, the present paper is certainly limited in terms within Fox News, most comments tend to express doubts of its focus as it examines impoliteness alone, without over the fact that Republican Politicians are the only pol- considering politeness comments. With the understand- iticians being infected by the virus, raising suspicion and ing that impoliteness in a context of life-or-death situa- conspiracies. This difference in orientation of the inten- tion is just part of the overall practice, future research tions is a revelation of not just the political polarization shall explore the polite comments so as to see both their of users’ views but, more importantly, it opens the win- contents as well as their forms, and contrast the results. dow to how the coronavirus pandemic has shaped the It would also be interesting to explore similarities and political expressions of Facebook users. differences of the present findings in other platforms. The roles of participants in these interactions are also Finally, the relevance of classic sociolinguistic variables salient. Not only there are varied targets the reactions of the users as well as their competence in English should orient to, but mostly, the users perceiving or evaluating be explored in future research so as to determine the con- comments as offensive, which is conveyed through meta- nection between these variables and impoliteness prac- discursive comments, are individuals other than Giuliani tices on Facebook. himself. The impolite meaning arises here not because the main targets are either offended or not, but because Author Note the interpretation of comments as offensive rests on the This research was conducted while Jean Mathieu Tsoumou was third party’s understanding of such offense through talk- at Universidad Europea de Canarias. The author is now at in interaction. This stresses the view that impoliteness Universidad Europea de Madrid. evaluation is not a matter of the dyadic addressee- addresser alone (Eelen, 2001), rather it is the bystanders’ interpretation and evaluation, supporting Haugh’s (2013, Declaration of Conflicting Interests p. 56) argument that the ‘‘evaluation of impoliteness The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect needs to be situated vis-a` -vis not only simply speakers or to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. hearers, but also relative to a complex array of produc- tion and reception footings, the co-constitution of which Funding is itself and morally implicative activity in interact.’’ The author received no financial support for the research, Moreover, the findings as presented in this paper go authorship, and/or publication of this article. along with what has already put forward in previous studies on individuals’ reactions to Covid-19 on Facebook. 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Journal

SAGE OpenSAGE

Published: Mar 1, 2023

Keywords: Facebook; impoliteness; politics; polarized discourse; Covid-19

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