Volume 6, Issue 1

The analysis in this paper centres on an email exchange between a lecturer and a student at the University of Auckland which resulted in the dismissal of that lecturer. This dismissal gave rise to significant controversy, both off- and online, as to whether the email itself was simply “intemperate” and “angry”, or more seriously “offensive” and “racist”. Through a close analysis of the interpretations of the emails by the lecturer and student, as well as online evaluations made on blogs and discussion boards, it becomes apparent that the inherent discursivity of evaluations of impoliteness arises not only from different perceptions of norms, but also from the ways in which commentators position themselves vis-à-vis these evaluations. It also emerges that the relative level of discursive dispute is mediated by the technological and situational characteristics of the CMC medium in which these evaluations occurred. It is concluded that research into various forums of online interaction provides a unique window into the inherent variability and argumentativity of perceptions of offensive behaviour, as a public record of discursive disputes surrounding particular alleged violations of norms of appropriateness can be (re)scrutinized in such forums.

This study explores how impoliteness affects Japanese bulletin board system (BBS) communities. It finds that impoliteness, defined as intentional face-attack, has different effects on interactions, depending on the community's implicit norms and the forms in which impoliteness is communicated. The function of honorifics is identified as placing psychological distance between people, while that of non-use is to place interactants in psychological proximity. If non-honorifics are used to express impoliteness in a community where honorifics are the unmarked norm of linguistic practices among people in distanced relationships, it has a marked effect on the community and could lead to community dissolution. This is because the psychological distance indicated by honorifics is ignored by the non-honorifics and the face-attack is perceived more directly and strongly. On the other hand, if impoliteness is communicated in non-honorifics, a style conforming to implicit norms of language practices among people who share “joking relationships” (Takiura, The Japanese Journal of Language in Society 11: 23–38, 2008), it does not have a marked effect on the community. Technological and organizational factors originating from website establishment and management are considered as contributing to the differences in participants' behaviors and relationships they share in the two communities. This study is expected to contribute to discussion on norms of appropriate behavior in Japanese contexts.

This paper reports on an ongoing project in the area of intentional impoliteness as perceived by the participants and as marked in discourse in the asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) context. We focus on occurrences of “impolite talk” and examine the context bound nature of communicative strategies adopted by the interactants in order to deliberately do impoliteness. We also analyze how impoliteness is lexicalized in relation to the inherent characteristics of the CMC context. Specifically, this paper draws on a sample of data from two Communities of Practice (CofP): Greek students and professional academics. 200 posts were collected from interactions where dispute occurred. Special attention is paid to the use of spelling and punctuation and one interactional discourse particle, namely [re] (untranslatable), in unmitigated confrontational disagreement that breaches the norms of unmarked behaviour in the two CofPs. Our preliminary findings show that (im)politeness is firmly embedded in the micro (discourse) and macro (social) context. The impoliteness strategies employed by the interactants indicate different judgements of what constitutes marked behaviour and are contingent on factors such as the overall purpose of communication, the co-constructed norms of the forum, the relationship between participants and the dynamic group identities which the interactants call upon in any given situation.

Displaying a positive face when joining an online community, i. e., demonstrating the will that one's face wants be desirable to fellow interlocutors (Brown and Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, 1987), can be a key to success for integration. A new member will often have to comply with the appropriate behaviour (a set of specific rules and codes adopted by the community of practice that he or she is joining) if s/he wants to be included and not rejected. And acceptance is particularly important for a marginal population such as transvestites. The data that I am working with in this article is drawn from “texts of introduction” written by members of a virtual community of transvestites for a French-speaking website. The goal of the website is clearly to establish an international community for its members. I use these introductory texts to address linguistic ideology and representations, especially regarding gender. Expectations about feminine talk and politeness, such as cooperation and avoidance of rude language (Holmes, Women, men and politeness, Longman, 1995), which can be related to the notion of verbal hygiene that Cameron (Applied Linguistics 15: 382–398, 1994: 383) defines as “ways of using language [which] are functionally, aesthetically, or morally preferable to others”, will be focused on in particular. Furthermore, I will show how, through this writing exercise, members participate in building a sense of community.

This paper investigates the connection between linguistic impoliteness and identity in computer-mediated communication through the examination of reader responses to ideas and views expressed by professional journalists in the online media. The study finds that respondents may use linguistic impoliteness strategically to communicate disagreements, to argue against an out-group's ideological views, or to discredit ideological opponents. The analysis of reader responses within a social psychological theory of identity indicates that the use of impoliteness is linked to the respondent's identification of him/herself with a group and its ideological position and his/her willingness to act toward the achievement of a goal desired within that group.

Drawing on the newest findings of politeness research, this paper proposes an interactionally grounded approach to computer-mediated discourse (CMD). Through the analysis of naturally occurring text-based synchronous interactions of a virtual team the paper illustrates that the interactional politeness approach can account for linguistic phenomena not yet fully explored in computer-mediated discourse analysis. Strategies used for compensating for the lack of audio-visual information in computer-mediated communication, strategies to compensate for the technological constraints of the medium, and strategies to aid interaction management are examined from an interactional politeness viewpoint and compared to the previous findings of CMD analysis. The conclusion of this preliminary research suggests that the endeavour to communicate along the lines of politeness norms in a work-based virtual environment contradicts some of the previous findings of CMD research (unconventional orthography, capitalization, economizing), and that other areas (such as emoticons, backchannel signals and turn-taking strategies) need to be revisited and re-examined from an interactional perspective to fully understand how language functions in this merely text-based environment.