Implicational impoliteness strategies used by tweeters against Trump

Abstract EN

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) provides an opportunity for research into impoliteness and face-threatening acts (FTAs).

Besides, compared to face-to-face interaction (FtF), CMC is more aggressive (Hardaker 2012: 71).

Twitter is proving to be a valuable research medium in a number of fields, including political impoliteness.

During his first impeachment hearing, Donald J.

Trump, the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), is the target of impoliteness on Twitter by politicians and journalists, in this research.

The research is distinctive in that it investigates impoliteness towards Trump by journalists and politicians which has not been studied before.

Another reason for choosing this subject is that “implicational impoliteness” research has been largely ignored in the Iraqi scholarly domain of impoliteness; most researchers continue to use Culpeper's (1996; 2005) method.

The study primarily examines implicational impoliteness triggers directed against Trump on Twitter during the impeachment process, using a corpus of 18469 words that constitutes 409 tweets mostly from journalists and politicians.

It uses Culpeper's (2011a) method to analyse tweets qualitatively.

The study's aim is to answer research questions about the most common implicational impoliteness triggers and strategies used against the POTUS.

The findings are consistent with Culpeper's method, and conclusions were reached successfully regarding the questions posed and statements hypothesised.