Impoliteness in social media interactions by Cameroonian diaspora activists

Abstract

This study sets out to analyse Cameroonian diaspora activists’ impoliteness in their various interactions on Twitter and Facebook. It highlights the different conventionalized impoliteness formulae in Cameroon Social Media. Data for this study comprises 219 impolite messages collected from activists’ tweets and Facebook profiles from the 3rd of December 2017 to February 2023. The data was collected through screenshots thank to android phone. To analyse the data collected from these two main platforms (hereafter Twitter and Facebook), the researchers applied a mixed method research. Culpeper (2010) conventionalized impoliteness formulae was adopted in this research paper to analyse the data. Results from the analysis unveil insults as the mostly used impoliteness formula followed by pointed criticism, explicitly associate with a negative aspect, pointed accusation, threats, unpalatable questions/presuppositions and message enforcers respectively. 

Key words:  social media, Pragmatics, impoliteness, conventionalized formulae, Cameroon.