Twitter and the Real Academia Española: perspectives on impoliteness
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Dale A. Koike
Dale A. Koike is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research interests include Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics, in both native Spanish and Portuguese speaker contexts, and as applied to Second Language Acquisition. She is the editor or co-editor of several volumes on Pragmatics and Dialogue, and co-authored a textbook on Spanish Applied Linguistics. She has published in venues such as the
Journal of Pragmatics ,Modern Language Journal ,Foreign Language Annals , andJournal of Spanish Language Teaching , and is series editor for the Routledge Spanish and Lusophone linguistics line of research.
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Víctor Garre León
Víctor Garre León is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on pragmatics, second language acquisition and heritage language learning. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Spain) and an MA in Hispanic Studies from West Virginia University.
and
Gloria Pérez Cejudo
Gloria Pérez Cejudo is a graduate student at the University of Cordoba (Spain). Her research interests focus on pragmatics and second language acquisition. She holds an MA in Hispanic Studies from Boston College and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.
Abstract
This study presents first- and second-order approaches to impoliteness as found in the Twitter feed of the Real Academia Española, the official Spanish-language institution of the Hispanic world. We argue that impoliteness must be viewed from the perspective of the individual, reflecting their background experiences and knowledge, while also acknowledging norms of their communities. We collected 56 reactive tweets in threads among different users, generating dialogues of different opinions of (dis)agreement. Fourteen participant-viewers rated each user’s tweet and provided judgments and comments on the impoliteness on a 5-point scale. Our results indicate some commonalities among subgroups in terms of politeness norms (e.g., insults), but also show individual differences in terms of expectations (e.g., not doing one’s job). The results suggest the limitations of previous impoliteness frameworks, which apply mostly to face-to-face interactions. Our research points to a need to develop a framework of impoliteness to account for the complexity of the interactions in social media and consider an analysis at individual and community levels.
About the authors
Dale A. Koike is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research interests include Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics, in both native Spanish and Portuguese speaker contexts, and as applied to Second Language Acquisition. She is the editor or co-editor of several volumes on Pragmatics and Dialogue, and co-authored a textbook on Spanish Applied Linguistics. She has published in venues such as the Journal of Pragmatics, Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, and Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, and is series editor for the Routledge Spanish and Lusophone linguistics line of research.
Víctor Garre León is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on pragmatics, second language acquisition and heritage language learning. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Spain) and an MA in Hispanic Studies from West Virginia University.
Gloria Pérez Cejudo is a graduate student at the University of Cordoba (Spain). Her research interests focus on pragmatics and second language acquisition. She holds an MA in Hispanic Studies from Boston College and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.
Mean scores per tweet.
| Tweet # | Mean score | Tweet # | Mean score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.64 | 29 | 1.07 |
| 2 | 3.07 | 30 | 1.29 |
| 3 | 2.93 | 31 | 1.07 |
| 4 | 2.86 | 32 | 1.00 |
| 5 | 2.71 | 33 | 2.93 |
| 6 | 1.14 | 34 | 1.21 |
| 7 | 1.86 | 35 | 1.07 |
| 8 | 1.14 | 36 | 1.14 |
| 9 | 1.29 | 37 | 1.29 |
| 10 | 1.21 | 38 | 1.29 |
| 11 | 2.64 | 39 | 1.36 |
| 12 | 1.00 | 40 | 1.89 |
| 13 | 1.36 | 41 | 1.43 |
| 14 | 1.00 | 42 | 1.43 |
| 15 | 1.79 | 43 | 1.21 |
| 16 | 2.07 | 44 | 1.79 |
| 17 | 1.50 | 45 | 1.79 |
| 18 | 2.07 | 46 | 1.50 |
| 19 | 3.64 | 47 | 1.79 |
| 20 | 1.71 | 48 | 2.21 |
| 21 | 2.43 | 49 | 1.29 |
| 22 | 2.14 | 50 | 2.29 |
| 23 | 3.0 | 51 | 3.64 |
| 24 | 1.14 | 52 | 2.93 |
| 25 | 3.86 | 53 | 3.21 |
| 26 | 2.07 | 54 | 2.00 |
| 27 | 1.29 | 55 | 4.64 |
| 28 | 1.21 | 56 | 3.71 |
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial: where we have been and where we are going
- Research Articles
- Euphemism in laxative TV commercials: at the crossroads between politeness and persuasion
- Teachers and supervisors negotiating face during critical account requests in post observation feedback
- Politeness as normative, evaluative and discriminatory: the case of verbal hygiene discourses on correct honorifics use in South Korea
- Duelling contexts: how action misalignment leads to impoliteness in a courtroom
- Sassy Sasha?: The intersectionality of (im)politeness and sociolinguistics
- Politeness in professional contexts: foreign-language teacher training
- Twitter and the Real Academia Española: perspectives on impoliteness
- I wanted to honour your journal, and you spat in my face: emotive (im)politeness and face in the English and Russian blind peer review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial: where we have been and where we are going
- Research Articles
- Euphemism in laxative TV commercials: at the crossroads between politeness and persuasion
- Teachers and supervisors negotiating face during critical account requests in post observation feedback
- Politeness as normative, evaluative and discriminatory: the case of verbal hygiene discourses on correct honorifics use in South Korea
- Duelling contexts: how action misalignment leads to impoliteness in a courtroom
- Sassy Sasha?: The intersectionality of (im)politeness and sociolinguistics
- Politeness in professional contexts: foreign-language teacher training
- Twitter and the Real Academia Española: perspectives on impoliteness
- I wanted to honour your journal, and you spat in my face: emotive (im)politeness and face in the English and Russian blind peer review
