Hate Speech On Social Media Over The Macedonia Naming Dispute

Neshkovska, Silvana and Trajkova, Zorica (2020) Hate Speech On Social Media Over The Macedonia Naming Dispute. Proceedings of the ESIDRP International Conference: English Studies at the Interface of Disciplines: Research and Practice (ESIDRP). pp. 35-50.

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Abstract

The paper offers a critical discourse and pragmatic analysis of a corpus of hateful Facebook comments of
Macedonian citizens over the Macedonia naming dispute, collected immediately after the name change
was officially endorsed in the Parliament. The analysis first attempts to unveil who the hateful political
discourse in the given socio-political context is directed at, what roles the commenters assume, what
speech acts the hateful posts are predominantly composed of (e.g. assertive, directives, expressives,
commissives), as well as what kind of negative lexis and rhetorical tropes are employed by the
commenters. The main aim of the research is to unveil the main features of hateful comments through
detailed language analysis as they could be easily detected and extracted from social media. The results
show that social media have influenced the traditional pattern of communication by introducing a more
interactive and participative type of communication. Social media users employ them to direct verbal
assaults not only at fellow citizens, but also at political figures, journalists, diplomats and other officials,assuming roles of analysts and judges who mostly use assertive and expressive speech acts, ingrained with a variety of negative lexis and rhetorical figures intended to reinforce their negative stance.
Keywords: hate speech, social media, speech acts

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Scientific Fields (Frascati) > Humanities > Languages and literature
Divisions: Faculty of Education
Depositing User: Prof. d-r Silvana Neskovska
Date Deposited: 27 Aug 2020 11:19
Last Modified: 27 Aug 2020 11:19
URI: https://eprints.uklo.edu.mk/id/eprint/5664

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