Impoliteness Strategies in English and Arabic Facebook Comments

Abstract

The study investigates Culpeper's (1996) impoliteness strategies in English and Arabic Facebook comments. The study aims at describing the types of impoliteness strategies used by facebookers in online contexts, and what factors may affect this use. As such, six pages are selected and there are four strategies found in Facebook contexts: bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, sarcasm/mock impoliteness. Positive and negative impoliteness are the most frequent types, whereas, withdraw politeness does not exist in online contexts. The findings show a great similarity between English and Arabic data in the most used strategies, but the topics that cause the use of impoliteness were different.