The use of impoliteness strategies in online feedback relating to a general election in media / Lydia Colaco, Angeline Ranjethamoney Vijayarajoo and Teoh Mei Lin

The spike in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has over spilled into online political discussions enabling the free expression of political views in various platforms. This study aims to investigate the frequency of impoliteness strategies used by netizens in their political discussions online. The study also hopes to identify, if present, the impoliteness strategies that have been more extensively used. Finally, this study aims at finding out the reasons for employing such impoliteness strategies by netizens. In order to answer these questions, a total of 150 impolite feedback responses of netizens were collected from Malaysiakini - an online news portal. The feedback responses formed the backbone of the data, for the study. This data was analysed based on the model of impoliteness by Culpepper (1996, 2005) in the field of pragmatics. The findings firstly revealed that impoliteness strategies were present and the more frequently employed impoliteness strategy was the “positive impoliteness strategy”. This, is used to damage the addressee’s positive face wants i.e., the desire to be liked and appreciated. The findings further revealed that the “bold on-record impoliteness strategy” i.e., where the Face Threatening Act (FTA) was played out directly, were seemingly less frequent. The interview data further revealed that the main reasons that contributed to the use of impoliteness was anger, more precisely, pent-up anger.