Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group

The present paper explores disagreement and impoliteness in a WhatsApp interaction within a Spanish family that took place during the 2018 International Women’s Day. The conversation is linguistically examined using categories of disagreement strategies proposed by previous authors (Pomerantz 1984,...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lucía Fernández-Amaya
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2019-12-01
Series:Russian Journal of Linguistics
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/22531/17617
_version_ 1828803205324079104
author Lucía Fernández-Amaya
author_facet Lucía Fernández-Amaya
author_sort Lucía Fernández-Amaya
collection DOAJ
description The present paper explores disagreement and impoliteness in a WhatsApp interaction within a Spanish family that took place during the 2018 International Women’s Day. The conversation is linguistically examined using categories of disagreement strategies proposed by previous authors (Pomerantz 1984, Brown and Levinson 1987, Rees-Miller 2000, Locher 2004, Kreutel 2007, Malamed 2010, Shum and Lee 2013). Furthermore, multimodal analysis (Dresner and Herring 2010, 2013, Jewitt 2013, Bourlai and Herring 2014; Herring 2015) is used to consider not only participants’ linguistic strategies for expressing disagreement, but also the function of multimedia elements and emojis (Dresner and Herring 2010, 2013, Yus 2014, 2017, Sampietro 2016a, 2016b, Aull 2019). The analysis is followed by an interview to better understand the participants’ communicative intentions towards disagreements in relation to (im)politeness. A total of 427 instances of disagreement are identified, with the most common strategies being giving opposite opinions and emotional or personal reasons. This is to be expected since the group is divided from the very beginning into detractors and supporters of feminism, and they are also defending their opposite viewpoints by giving examples from their own life experience. Based on the participants’ opinions, the most significant result is the fact that, although disagreement may lead to face-threat, and thus impoliteness in other contexts (Langlotz and Locher 2012, Sifianou 2012, Shum and Lee 2013), in this WhatsApp interaction, the Spanish family members did not consider it to be impolite, and it is even evaluated in positive terms by some of the participants (Angouri and Locher 2012).
first_indexed 2024-12-12T07:17:48Z
format Article
id doaj.art-f3c741fd7c1c4c9186e1d0b5ad24668f
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2687-0088
2686-8024
language English
last_indexed 2024-12-12T07:17:48Z
publishDate 2019-12-01
publisher Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
record_format Article
series Russian Journal of Linguistics
spelling doaj.art-f3c741fd7c1c4c9186e1d0b5ad24668f2022-12-22T00:33:27ZengPeoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)Russian Journal of Linguistics2687-00882686-80242019-12-012341065108710.22363/2687-0088-2019-23-4-1065-108718291Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp groupLucía Fernández-Amaya0Pablo de Olavide UniversityThe present paper explores disagreement and impoliteness in a WhatsApp interaction within a Spanish family that took place during the 2018 International Women’s Day. The conversation is linguistically examined using categories of disagreement strategies proposed by previous authors (Pomerantz 1984, Brown and Levinson 1987, Rees-Miller 2000, Locher 2004, Kreutel 2007, Malamed 2010, Shum and Lee 2013). Furthermore, multimodal analysis (Dresner and Herring 2010, 2013, Jewitt 2013, Bourlai and Herring 2014; Herring 2015) is used to consider not only participants’ linguistic strategies for expressing disagreement, but also the function of multimedia elements and emojis (Dresner and Herring 2010, 2013, Yus 2014, 2017, Sampietro 2016a, 2016b, Aull 2019). The analysis is followed by an interview to better understand the participants’ communicative intentions towards disagreements in relation to (im)politeness. A total of 427 instances of disagreement are identified, with the most common strategies being giving opposite opinions and emotional or personal reasons. This is to be expected since the group is divided from the very beginning into detractors and supporters of feminism, and they are also defending their opposite viewpoints by giving examples from their own life experience. Based on the participants’ opinions, the most significant result is the fact that, although disagreement may lead to face-threat, and thus impoliteness in other contexts (Langlotz and Locher 2012, Sifianou 2012, Shum and Lee 2013), in this WhatsApp interaction, the Spanish family members did not consider it to be impolite, and it is even evaluated in positive terms by some of the participants (Angouri and Locher 2012).http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/22531/17617disagreement(im)politenesswhatsappdigital communicationfeminismspanishwhatsapp
spellingShingle Lucía Fernández-Amaya
Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
Russian Journal of Linguistics
disagreement
(im)politeness
whatsapp
digital communication
feminism
spanish
whatsapp
title Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
title_full Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
title_fullStr Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
title_full_unstemmed Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
title_short Disagreement and (im)politeness in a Spanish family members’ WhatsApp group
title_sort disagreement and im politeness in a spanish family members whatsapp group
topic disagreement
(im)politeness
whatsapp
digital communication
feminism
spanish
whatsapp
url http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/22531/17617
work_keys_str_mv AT luciafernandezamaya disagreementandimpolitenessinaspanishfamilymemberswhatsappgroup