Verbalisation of impoliteness in comments of German politicians in Instagram news posts

Abstract

This article focuses on the description of impoliteness in computer-mediated communication. The purpose of the study is to identify markers of verbal aggression a way of expressing impoliteness and to analyse the ways in which they are implemented. The material for this study was German-language comments under the Instagram posts of the largest German parties and German politicians who participated in the German Federal Chancellor elections (2021). As the main methods of research were used linguopragmatic and linguocultural types of analysis. In addition, this paper includes a continuous sampling of comments that contain signs of implicit and/or explicit verbal aggression. Then was done a contextual analysis of the selected comments. The analysis revealed that implicit and explicit types of verbal aggression are equally common in the comments under political figures' Instagram posts, and that both types of verbal aggression can be used simultaneously by the authors in the same comment. The most frequent lexical and grammatical means of implementation of verbal aggression were also distinguished. The conclusions drawn during the research can be used in further studies that focus on the peculiarities of realisation of verbal aggression in computer communication as well as in those that focus on speech culture in a computer-mediated communication.