An Examination of Metapragmatic Comments on Facebook

Abstract

Despite the increasing interest in studying (im)politeness on Facebook, both in Anglo-centered societies and across cultures, very little explicit scholarly consideration has been given to the (im)politeness implications in Coronavirus pandemic-relate discussions. The aim of this paper is to (1) explore the basis on which metapragmatic comments are produced in Covid-related interaction on Facebook and (2) determine the perspectives (i.e., instigator or target) from which Facebook users express metapragmatic comments. The findings show that metapragmatic comments are expressed in order to react to negative attitudes (such as laughs and disregard) targeting Giuliani, indicating the commentators’ awareness of the appropriate conduct in a situation of despair such as dealing with COVID-19.

1. Introduction

This chapter examines 1000 Facebook comments posted on Fox News’ page in reaction to Giuliani’s positive COVID diagnosis in December 2020. Drawing on the argument that metapragmatic awareness is essential in providing emic understanding, description, and explanation of language use [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], the chapter (1) explores the basis on which metapragmatic comments are produced in COVID-related interactions on Facebook and (2) determines the perspectives (i.e., instigator or target) from which Facebook users express metapragmatic comments. The main research question here is what drives metapragmatic comments in this interaction.

Despite the increasing interest in studying (im)politeness on Facebook, both in Anglo-centered societies and across cultures [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], very little explicit scholarly consideration has been given to the grounds on which metapragmatic comments are produced and framed in Facebook reactions to a COVID-19 positive diagnosis in the context of political turmoil. Specifically, this chapter examines the perspectives from which the commentators evaluate (im)politeness conducts in the reactions to Giuliani’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The chapter draws on Sinkeviciute’s [7] concept of the preferred reaction, which implies that, in the context where (im)politeness manifestations are in order (e.g., in the context of humor behaviors), there is a pattern in terms of preferred reactions. Based on moral order, some humorous behaviors or jocular impoliteness may be seen as offensive or unacceptable. This offensiveness can often be framed from the perspective of the target of the joke to show compassion or from the perspective of what is morally and socially (un)acceptable. As will be argued in this chapter, the evaluation or assessment of determined behaviors as (un)acceptable presupposes the claim of identity. In other words, the simple fact of evaluating a certain conduct as impolite implies dissociation from the offender (and, in some cases, it implies association with the target). In this sense, the chapter also explores what role communicative behaviors play in the claim of identity as well as in the attribution of identity to others. Following Sinkeviciute’s [8] identity framework, the concept of identity is explored—as if it is interrelated to that of face—with the understanding that (im)politeness can be a positive or negative interactional practice that allows individuals to position themselves with respect to others within the comment thread [15]. As Spencer-Oatey [16] puts it, “face is closely related to a person’s sense of identity or self-concept: self as an individual (individual identity), self as a group member (group or collective identity) and self in relationship with others (relational identity)”.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature. Section 3 describes the method. The findings are presented and analyzed in Section 4. The last section combines the discussion and the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the findings.

2. A note on metadiscourse and (im)politeness studies

The development of a discursive approach has advanced the understanding of the fundamental role of metadiscourse in the manifestation and evaluation of impolite behaviors [17]. What is often argued is that an exploration of both the speaker’s and the recipient’s actions is a fruitful way to grasp the dynamic of (im)politeness. Metadiscourse labels such as insults (i.e., in that is an insult!) stand as a way individuals recognize offensive actions and evaluate them as such [1]. The importance of metadiscourse labels in determining how lay participants understand and evaluate social actions is rooted in the idea that any reflection on or the evaluation of some behavior presupposes the understanding of social norms that govern social interaction and the existence of a moral order against which actions are evaluated [2, 4, 6, 18]. The assumption that impoliteness is a social practice stems from the idea that individuals’ reactions to transgressions of social norms are grounded on the awareness and understanding of the binary oppositions of social actions, which translates into the difference between good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, acceptable and unacceptable, republican and unrepublican, divisive and inclusive, etc. Social behaviors that are assessed negatively as unacceptable, unrepublican, and divisive are often taken as a transgression of moral order [4, 5, 19]. Both online and offline (im)politeness studies on political discourse concur that individuals’ expectations of politicians’ actions tend to be grounded on the “seen but unnoticed” [5]; that is, the idea that behaving politely or understanding someone in a delicate situation is what every member of a society is entitled to know, describe and communicate [13, 14, 20].

2.1 A note on social media and (im)politeness studies

The affordances of social media are continuously shaping and attracting new forms of social engagement in mainly two different ways [1, 13, 14, 19, 21]. On the one hand, the affordances have turned social media into platforms on which individuals turn in order to express their emotional issues (i.e., death, illness, catastrophes, distrust, breakups, etc.) and achievements (i.e., victories, graduation ceremonies, birthday celebrations, etc. [10, 12, 22]. On the other hand, social media have become a circus of confrontations where exchanges about topics such as politics not only favor the competition of different viewpoints but also attacks and criticisms are commonplace [9, 11]. This is precisely why there has been a growing interest in studying the socio-behavioral changes brought about by the online nature of human interaction on Twitter [23], YouTube [24], blogs [25], WhatsApp [26], and Facebook [1, 11, 13, 14, 20, 21]. At the heart of this interest is the idea that social media interactions revolve around the struggle between politeness—as a set of strategies for maintaining good relations and avoiding interpersonal conflicts [27]—and impoliteness—as the behavior that is face-aggravating in a particular context [28]. Thus, the manifestation of (im)politeness presupposes that online users understand and are aware of the difference between the behaviors that can be considered morally right and those that are seen as morally unacceptable. It is often argued that the desire to claim own ground and/or form a like-minded block is one of the main motives for social media users to act aggressively in political discourse [14, 20]. Conversely, it has also been argued that moral order is the underlying motive why social media users act politely when discussing topics such as health issues [29, 30]. However, recent studies have shown that when political polarization meets emotional issues such as COVID-19, the line between morally acceptable and unacceptable behaviors becomes fuzzy [13, 21]. In this context, this chapter explores metapragmatic comments posted as reactions to a COVID-19 diagnosis in a context of political turmoil.

2.2 Theories of (im)politeness discourse

The relationship between metapragmatic practices and (im)politeness phenomena has been proven to be salient in studies that examine irony, sarcasm, teasing, and mockery [3, 7, 8, 31]. These studies have shed light on the (im)politeness implication of interactional practices and their importance in the cultural contexts in which they have been applied, suggesting that (im)politeness is a socio-interactional phenomenon that can be approached from a discursive perspective [18, 32, 33, 34], frame-based perspective [35], face constituting perspective [36, 37], genre-based perspective [38] as well as rapport management perspective [16], among others.

The discursive-based perspective puts the focus on participants’ understandings of politeness as they arise in various forms of discourse or social interaction. By focusing merely on describing the uses of impoliteness, the main criticism against the discursive framework is that the theory disregards any predictions, leading critics such as Terkourafi [35] to alarm that the disregard for predictions only leaves the analyst with “minute descriptions of individual encounters, but these do not in any way add up to an explanatory theory of the phenomena under study.” Against this, the frame-based perspective draws a line between linguistic expressions and their contexts of use. (Im)politeness thus becomes a product of the co-occurrence of contexts and particular linguistic expressions [35]. Furthermore, face constituting theory is grounded on the ethnomethodological conversation analysis, focusing on the analysis of social practices on which participants’ evaluation arises [39]. Thus, (im)politeness accounts for the interactional achievement of individuals in a given conversation. Through interaction, the analysts may identify explicit (im)politeness evaluations made by lay participants. Additionally, the genre-based perspective views discourse as always situated and shaped by genre, providing top-down norms and expectations [38, 40]. Finally, rapport management theory approaches (im)politeness as a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interactions by reducing potential conflicts and confrontations [16]. This management of harmony-disharmony among interactants is made up of different components such as the management of face needs, the management of sociality rights and obligations, and the management of interactional goals. The merit of Spencer-Oatey [16] is her account of face management as involving “the management of face sensitivities” and her understanding of social rights and obligations as “the management of social expectancies – fundamental entitlements a person effectively claims for himself/herself in interaction with others,” and her description of interactional goals as “the specific task and/or relational goals that people may have when they interact with each other.”

Central to the theories of impoliteness is the distinction between (im)politeness1—i.e., the understandings of participants by themselves—and (im)politeness2—i.e., the understandings of (im)politeness from a researcher’s perspective [2, 6]. Scholars studying (im)politeness1 deal with lay participants’ own assessments of discourse as (im)polite [32]. This is why it is often argued that metadiscourse is prompted more by impolite behaviors than polite ones [18]. On the other hand, those studying (im)politeness 2 take as a starting point the analyst’s assessment grounded in pragmatic theories [40]. Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus that any analysis of naturally occurring data should always advance the combination of both (im)politeness1 and (im)politeness 2 in order to, as Garcés-Conejos Blitvich [40] argues, “identify the norms of appropriateness for a given community of practice and then assess a given utterance as perhaps (im)polite against those norms (…). This allows the researcher to capture, in a top-down/bottom-fashion, the realization and conceptualizations of (im)politeness in a given context.”

3. Method

This chapter quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes some of the data initially collected and published in previous projects [13, 14]. The 1000 Facebook comments were collected on December 7, 2020, from the Facebook page owned by Fox News. This Facebook page was selected for its uniqueness as a pro-republican, pro-conservative, and pro-Trump news outlet with the likelihood to generate more empathetic and sympathetic comments than offensive ones, since Giuliani is a Republican who, at the time of the data collection process, was operating as the leading lawyer for the Trump campaign’s legal team in charge of challenging the 2020-US-November-3rd-election results. Thus, these 1000 comments, which were collected and numbered in chronological order, cover the first 1000 comments posted in the comment thread.

However, it is important to point out that Facebook comments, especially when posted on public pages, are readily available and can conveniently be collected by simply copying the comments from the news outlet page and posting them into a doc. File, the main issue facing the researcher revolved around not just the fact that (1) the person at which the post is directed—i.e., Giuliani—is absent from the conversation within the Facebook thread, (2) the researcher bears no physical contact with the participants but also that the identification and classification of the comments had to be carried out in a fully pen-and-paper fashion, which was time-consuming. Additionally, the issue with respect to ethics was dealt with following the approach taken in previous studies [41, 42, 43]. Thus, given that the comments were intended for public display on public platforms, no consent was required from contributors. Nevertheless, I ensured that all the user identity details were removed from the analysis. Likewise, I employed names unfamiliar with the users’ identity to represent both the user and the rank of their interventions within the threads in each corpus.

Furthermore, elsewhere I ([13]:12) explained that “Rudy Giuliani has been in the public eye for countless years, including being the New York City mayor between 1994 and 2001, launching a campaign for US Senate 2000 and for the presidency in 2008.” As a personal lawyer to Trump, his positive for COVID-19 added to the countless high-level officials closer to the President to be infected by the virus after Trump himself and his wife had both been infected on October 2, 2020. Thus, political and public health implications and ramifications of this positive diagnosis in the context of the looming presidential election make the data worth a study.

3.1 Procedure and interrater agreement

The unit of analysis adopted in this study is the Facebook comment in its entirety. Regardless of the length, each comment is considered a unit of analysis. This decision stems from the idea that each comment is a proposition that covers what each user wants to convey. Many studies examining Facebook comments focus on each comment as a unit of analysis independently of its length because each comment as a whole purports to capture each user’s perception, (pre)conception, and understanding of the ongoing interaction [13, 14, 20, 21, 23].

Following Culpeper [3] and in order to identify metapragmatic comments, two approaches were in order. On the one hand, conventionalized (im)politeness formulae were examined so as to categorize the comments in terms of politeness and impoliteness. Conventionalized (im)politeness formulae are comments directed at Giuliani, whether to wish him well or to curse him. On the other hand, any comment that is used as an evaluation or a response to another comment within the comment thread was considered to be a metapragmatic comment. Metapragmatic comments are unique because they are framed as reactions to comments posted by fellow users reacting to the diagnosis. In other words, metapragmatic comments are reactions to reactions. A meticulous examination of all instances where users hashtag fellow users within the interaction led to determining comments directed at Giuliani’s diagnosis and those used as reactions to the comments previously made by fellow users within the thread. All the excerpts are here reproduced as they were naturally uttered by the users with errors and infelicities to keep their naturally occurring forms.

4. Analysis

A metapragmatic analysis aims to determine what the users think and consider to be the appropriate behavior under the circumstances of a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. As will be seen, such appropriateness implies that COVID-19 is no laughable subject matter; as a result, users should show compassion and indignation. In other words, metapragmatic analysis is a way to determine what is at play in the corpus regarding the struggle between politeness and impoliteness.

As shown in Figure 1, metapragmatic comments represent 1.6% of the dataset, whereas (im)polite comments represent 98.4%. Despite the statistically low rate, the fact that there are metapragmatic comments presupposes that some reactions within the comment thread may have been evaluated as marked under the circumstances.

Figure 1.

Metadiscourse analysis.

What Figure 1 indexes here is the idea that the interactants preconceive the potential norms of conduct within this interaction in different ways. Each interactant approaches the interaction as they see fit in their perception of the social norms of the interaction. 1.6% of metapragmatic comments imply not just assessment and reassessment of specific behavior, but also a process of construction, negotiation of what is or what is not appropriate and through this process, the participants seek to establish interactional identities. In other words, politic behavior—i.e., the knowledge of which linguistic structures are expected in a specific interaction under specific contextual circumstances [18]—is at the center of the struggle between interactants who, through their social acts, negotiate and establish commonalities and differences.

4.1 Perspectives from which metapragmatic comments are framed

The word perspective here refers to how commentators evaluate (im)politeness episodes within the comment thread. In other words, perspective involves the orientations metapragmatic comments take in assessing and conceptualizing what is good or bad. As shown in the upcoming paragraphs, while some evaluations may address the instigators’ attitude (e.g., instigator’s perspective), others position themselves in defense of the target (target’s perspective). The instigators are fellow users who disregard Giuliani through laughter or criticism. The target, on the other hand, is Giuliani. Depending on the perspective a user takes in framing a metapragmatic comment, the understanding and conceptualization of (im)politeness vary and index the users’ expectations of what is or what is not appropriate. Quantitatively, as shown in Figure 2, 81.25% of metapragmatic comments include comments in which the users question the attitudes of fellow users’ reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis. The commonly shared feature in this category includes their poor evaluation of fellow users’ attitudes as well as the counterattack targeting fellow users’ actions. On the other hand, 18.75% include metapragmatic comments that are framed in defense of Giuliani.

Figure 2.

Perspectives from which metapragmatic comments are framed.

Although all the metapragmatic comments are framed in terms of a negative assessment of impolite reactions to Giuliani’s diagnosis, the fact that the vast majority of them (81.25%) revolve around the instigator’s perspective (rather than a defense proper of Giuliani) can generate two lines of argument. On the one hand, moral order seems more important than political favoritism or partisanship. Consequently, the impolite behaviors may prompt reactions (and even condemnation) within a group of like-minded individuals. The benchmark of any political ideology is often drawn from the provision of moral order, that is, the expectation of moral normality, which implicitly or explicitly shapes the understanding of what should be obligatory, permissible, or forbidden under the circumstances [14]. Any conduct that transgresses the benchmark and threatens the norms of conduct may generate condemnation and tension within the group. On the other hand, it may also be the case that the users do not condone Giuliani’s actions such as his political engagements. As will be seen below, metapragmatic comments tend to focus more on Giuliani as a human being in distress rather than on him being a politician, which in this case contradicts the findings in previous studies where, for example, reactions on the Facebook page owned by CNN are reported to focus more on Giuliani as a politician than on him as a human being [13, 21]. This contradiction may be understandable given that CNN is a pro-democratic news outlet, whereas Fox News is a pro-republican news outlet.

4.1.1 Instigator’s perspective

Framing a metapragmatic comment presupposes an understanding of the preceding comments as well as an assessment grounded on the idea that what precedes (or the attitude in the preceding comments) is positively or negatively provocative enough to cause a reaction. This is the case of Nicole (Cf. [1]), who not only expresses her awareness of various participants interacting in the comment thread but also evaluates fellow users’ actions as inappropriate and inadequate under the circumstances. Nicole not only draws explicit awareness of the multiparticipant nature of interaction but also she judges some of the interactants to be laughing about Giuliani’s diagnosis (“The people who think this is funny or are laughing about it”). A closer look at the comment shows that Nicole’s comment is mainly focused on fellow users’ actions and attitudes. Nicole positions her evaluation against the instigator of impoliteness attitude within the comment thread. In other words, Nicole does not react to comments that wish Giuliani well. She takes issue with anyone laughing. In the process, Nicole counterattacks the instigators (i.e., anyone laughing) through an insulting personalized negative vocative (“you are sick”) accompanied by a pouting face emoji (

). This indexes the level of annoyance and disgust, since Nicole’s intervention occurs at turn 599.

[1]

Nicole: The people who think this is funny or are laughing about it are sick.

In terms of the claim of identity, it is clear that Nicole’s comment dissociates her as a person from fellow users’ who find Giuliani’s diagnosis laughable. Similarly, Doris in [2] approaches the interaction by assessing the multimodal aspect of the comments and examining the role of emojis in conveying jocular impoliteness [44]. It appears to be Doris’s belief that a positive diagnosis is no laughing matter. Doris’ interpretation of the 2.3 K emojis shows that he negatively evaluates their use under the circumstances. This metadiscourse shows Doris’ awareness of the multimodal nature of Facebook interaction, exhibiting the understanding that beyond textual communication, users may also resort to imagery (or emojis) to express their point of view about the situation. As for Nicole, who, beyond the poor assessment of fellow users’ actions, counterattacked the instigators, Doris takes issue with the instigators. In the process, Doris reposts, and face attacks the instigators by means of a rhetorically personalized negative assertion (“How are you 2.3 K laughing fools”) before concluding the comment with a negative expressive and ill-wishing comment (“I hope you get it”).

[2]

Doris: How are you 2.3 K laughing fools .... Who put laughing emoji‘s I hope you get it.

What Doris’ comment points to is the contingency of the multimodal nature of Facebook interaction in the production and interpretation of (im)politeness. Doris’ understanding of the interaction is not just text-driven but also multimodal-driven. In other words, Doris’ perception of what is appropriate or inappropriate is something that should be conveyed both textually and (typo)graphically. This supports Locher et al.’s [9], according to which “[(im)politeness] evaluations are contingent upon expectations, which themselves are intricately tied to norms of appropriateness for the community and activity in question.” Thus, the jocularity of the interaction may come not just from textual discourse but also, and more importantly, users may evaluate the jocularity of the interaction through an examination of what the imagery (i.e., emojis) orients to. In other words, the users interpret the textual comments and provide positive or negative evaluations of other typographic messages.

Furthermore, the perspective from which a user evaluates the interaction is crucial regarding whether the commentator shows a degree of appreciation. For instance, the evaluation in Lola’s metapragmatic comment below questions the nature of humankind when it comes to laughing at somebody else’s misfortune (“why would anyone laugh?”). She proceeds by offering a piece of advice (“just because you may not like him is no reason to be mean. I would rather no one get it. Even if I don’t like them”) before shaming the instigators for the laughter. As was the case with Nicole, Lola does not see the situation to be funny at all. This meta-pragmatic comment, which intervenes at turn 275, deplores the attitude and actions in the preceding comments.

[3]

Lola: Why would anyone laugh? Just because you may not like him is no reason to be mean. I would rather no one get it. Even if I do not like them. Shame on you who thinks this is funny.

As shown in [1] and [3], the label funny is frequently used in metapragmatic comments. However, in most cases, the adjective funny is not used to convey any appreciation, laughter, or amusement; rather, it is used as a negative evaluative mechanism so as to suggest that the situation is as serious as no one should find joy out of it. In this process, the claim of identity and the struggle over the appropriate conduct under the circumstances divide the users between those who approach the diagnosis as a laughing matter and those who claim their identity on moral order grounds. This categorization reflects the commentators’ uniqueness, characteristics, and linguistic choices that differentiate self from others. For example, Lola socially positions herself (i.e., through the use of “I”)—and others (i.e., through the use of “you”). The self attached to Lola draws a picture of a politely-driven person who would not laugh at anybody’s misfortunes. However, while Lola paints a negative picture of those laughing at Rudy Giuliani’s pain, she interactionally fails to keep this face-enhancing identity by lashing out at others at the end of the comment (i.e., Shame on you who thinks this is funny). Thus, while in the first part of the comment, Lola projects an image of a reasonable voice guided by compassion and sympathy, the second part, however, turns Lola into an instigator of face attacks. This shift in terms of the claim of identity is consistent with the argument that identity is a social phenomenon co-constructed in the interaction [15]. Consider the following example:

[4]

Debbie: Laughing at people’s misfortune and illness is a real mark of dissociative sociopathic behavior.. I cannot fix that type of problem ignorance but I can prescribe medication for it.

Debbie’s intervention occurs at turn 698, which presupposes an understanding of the preceding comments. Debbie comments on the instigator’s offensive behavior by pointing a criticism of fellow users who seem to show disregard for Giuliani’s pain. She characterizes this attitude as a “dissociative sociopathic behavior.” She then identifies herself through the use of the first personal pronoun (“I”). She describes what she can and cannot do through condescending remarks (“I can’t fix that type of problem ignorance but I can prescribe medication for it”). Notably, while Debbie appears to react negatively to the seemingly “dissociative sociopathic behavior” of fellow users, she herself becomes an instigator of offensive comments by implicitly insulting others as ignorant. What Debbie seems to perceive as mainstream salient individual identity in the interactional practices is the idea that she is different from fellow users laughing about Giuliani’s diagnosis.

Another way users poorly evaluate fellow users’ attitude and conduct is through the exploitation of a situated identity. Following Sinkeviciute [8], situated identity refers to “instances in which commentators refer to one’s behavior (i) that are primarily related to the ongoing interactional situation and (ii) when the interactants’ understanding, perception, (re-)action are thought to be impacted on by interpersonal relationships between the participants.” In other words, situated identity manifests itself in relation to the ongoing interaction as well as the interpersonal connection (e.g., level of communication, proximity, relationship history, etc.) [7, 8]. Consider the following example which occurs at turn 449.

[5]

Dee: Look at the sick and twisted in here laughing about his. They will not think it’s funny when it happens to them or someone they care about....that is, if they are even capable of caring about anyone. Sure does not look like they are.

Dee provides his opinion of the type of conduct displayed by fellow users within the comment thread, which he describes as offensively laughing reactions in the ongoing interaction. Dee identifies the laugh underneath fellow users’ comments and positions laugh as part of the situated phenomenon that has been negotiated throughout the interaction (“Look at the sick and twisted in here laughing about his”). Dee proceeds by referring to those laughing using a third personal pronoun (“they” and “them”) as a marker to differentiate himself from others. It should be pointed out that no claim is made about situated identity being different from individual and collective identities. In Dee’s metapragmatic comment, the evaluative criticisms are made about fellow users’ conduct as opposed to Dee’s own conduct, which indexes both collective—portrayed through the use of “they” and “them”—and individual identity—which is portrayed through the way Dee implicitly portrays himself. This goes along with Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s [15] argument that “(im)politeness, just as identity, is a situated phenomenon that is interactionally constructed and it is thus derived from specific roles and the rights and obligations socially with those within a particular culture.” The way commentators express themselves through their metapragmatic comments exemplifies the role (im)politeness plays in identity (co)-construction. The “I” and “we” become adversaries to the “you” and “they.” Consider the following example which occurs at turn 93:

[6]

James: Really do not know how people who are reacting to this with laughter can honestly live with themselves. It’s not just your own countryman who’s come down with #COVID19 but your fellow man too and you all find it amusing. How can you people be so callous…

James here attributes negative evaluation of the conduct of fellow users within interaction. As has been the case for meta-pragmatic comments framed from the instigator’s perspective, the implication of James’s comments is that no human being should react callously to another being dealing with COVID-19. Just as Spencer-Oatey [16] puts it, “people often regard themselves as having certain attributes or characteristics, such as personality traits, physical features, beliefs, language affiliations and so on. They usually perceive some of their attributes positively (e.g., clever, musical), some of them negatively (e.g., overweight, inartistic) and others neutrally.” James’s attitude shows his face-sensitivity, as his perception of fellow users’ comments here draws a picture of someone who positively sees his own attributes while downgrading fellow users. However, while implicitly self-valuing himself, calling fellow users callous may index deliberate intention to face damage.

What underscores the metapragmatic comments is the implicit expectation of what the preferred reaction in the moment of sickness should be. In [7] below and as has been the case in previous excerpts, it is Teresa’s belief, and understanding that no one should be laughing while another being is battling COVID-19. Consider the following example, which occurs at turn 812:

[7]

Teresa: Laughing about someone being sick. I feel sorry for you …

Although Teresa is against laughing while another being is suffering from COVID, she makes a pointing criticism of those supposedly laughing. In the process, Teresa makes use of dissociative elements (“I feel sorry for you…”) to claim an identity that is different from that of fellow users. From this dissociation, Teresa concludes the comment in a way that simultaneously gives a positive image of self and denigrates or belittles fellow users who have found it humorous in Giuliani’s misfortunate. The punctuation suspension that ends this comment seems to suggest that Teresa might have said less than what she intended to.

4.1.2 Target’s perspective

Metapragmatic comments that take the target’s perspective come to Giuliani’s defense. Rather than simply counterattacking the instigators, these comments are framed in a way that shows compassion to Giuliani. Consider the following comment:

[8]

Charissa: Prayers Rudy. We should be praying for every person who is affected by this virus regardless of political affiliation. What is wrong with this world? Why so much hate for someone you probably do not even know!

Charissa intervenes at turn 28. She starts off by sending prayers to Rudy Giuliani. The marker of sympathy and compassion shows that what concerns Charissa is first and foremost Giuliani’s wellbeing. Charissa proceeds by suggesting what everyone’s attitude should be in regard to the devastation of COVID-19. She uses the first personal pronoun (“we”) as a marker of the difference between how human beings (as opposed to animals) should act in the presence of a sick person. What “we” indexes here is that Charissa considers herself as a member of a society that she expects to be compassionate and understanding in life-and-death situations. It seems to be Charissa’s observation that the world has gone the wrong way in disregarding one another. She rhetorically questions the attitude of the world (“What is wrong with this world”), and she recognizes the hateful message conveyed through fellow users’ comments (“why so much hate for someone you probably don’t even know!”). It is Charissa’s belief that Giuliani has been unfairly treated for seemingly political reasons. By doing this, Charissa draws attention to the behavior that can be considered inhuman. It is also in this sense that Spencer-Oetay’s [16] claim that “people have a fundamental desire for others to evaluate them positively, and so they typically want others to acknowledge (explicitly or implicitly) their positive qualities, and not to acknowledge their negative qualities” can be paraphrased as people (Facebook users who metapragmatically post comments) have a fundamental desire for others to evaluate anyone affected by COVID-19 positively, and so they typically want to acknowledge (explicitly or implicitly) their positive qualities, and not to acknowledge their negative qualities. Consider the following example, which appears at turn 191:

[9]

Susan: Sending prayers for his health and speedy recovery. No compassionate human should wish this on anyone, no matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican.

As for Charissa, Susan portrays herself as a compassionate person who wishes fellow users should exhibit the same qualities. However, if one assumes, as Spencer-Oetay’s [16] argues, that people regard themselves as having a range of sociality rights and obligations in relation to other people,” any communicative acts or interventions (i.e., laughs, well wishes, ill wishes, curses, etc.) within this comment thread are as participatory and valid as Susan’s comment. All these comments become the representation of the perception of each individual participating in the interaction. In this regard, Susan’s negative evaluation of fellow users here may index an infringing attitude that aims at the face-threatening social rights of fellow users while implicitly attempting to impose upon others her expectation and perception of the circumstances.

Both Charissa and Susan take the perspective of the target (i.e., Giuliani) to formulate their metapragmatic comments. In so doing, they claim an identity that defines them in relation to fellow users who find joy in Giuliani’s misfortune. What is a moral order for both Charissa and Susan seems to be the idea that compassion and sympathy are social regularities that every individual should show to someone in distress, regardless of their political affiliation. This is consistent with Upadhyay’s [45] study on online news comments in which Upadhyay suggests that commenters on political editorials position themselves as members of in/out groups delineated by political ideology and use overt face aggravation to argue against out-group ideologies and discredit political opponents. Because of the highly political implication of the interaction, other-blaming is a frequent strategy in metapragmatic comments.

5. Conclusion

This paper set out to (1) explore the basis on which metapragmatic comments are produced in Covid-related interactions on Facebook and (2) determine the perspectives (i.e., instigator or target) from which Facebook users express metapragmatic comments. One research question drives the purpose of this paper—i.e., what drives metapragmatic comments in this interaction? The answer to this question is provided as follows.

First, the findings show that more metapragmatic comments are framed from the perspective of the instigators based on the difference between right/acceptable and wrong/unacceptable. At the heart of each metapragmatic comment lies the moral order; that is, the expectation that determined forms of conduct (i.e., compassion toward and understanding of someone in distress) are proportionate with what the participants think is obligatory and permissible in the context of a life-threatening issue. The basis of this expectation is the preconception of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate under the circumstances. In this perspective, the prompter of meta-pragmatic comments is the idea that laughing at someone’s illness or joking someone’s illness is inappropriate, offensive, forbidden, and inhuman. The struggle between politeness and impoliteness thus supposes that some users find Giuliani’s diagnosis an issue akin to compassion. In contrast, others consider the situation a gratifying opportunity to generate laughter and happiness. This is consistent with the findings in previous studies [13, 21].

Second, the findings suggest that all the metapragmatic comments are expressed in reaction to negative attitudes (such as laughter and disregard), supporting the view that commentators are more sensitive and willing to metapragmatically comment on the behavior that they perceive to be impolite than the behavior perceived as polite such as well-wishing comments [18]. The 1.6% of comments that make up metapragmatic comments all fall within this attitude. In other words, none of the comments with this 1.6% drew attention from the comments designed to show love, express prayers, and support or welshing messages to Giuliani. The patterns are as clear as the users only react if the comments laugh or bluntly show disregard for Giuliani.

Third, the findings demonstrate the commentators’ awareness of the ways of what should be the appropriate conduct in the situation despair such as dealing with COVID-19. They describe fellow users’ conduct as the type of behavior that falls out of their league. How they see themselves is different from how they see others. The comments that convey a laughing attitude are, for instance, metapragmatically singled out as implicitly discourteous and impolite, pointing to the argument that what is appropriate in the interaction should be anything other than jocularity. However, criticizing others as behaving inappropriately does not prevent metapragmatic commentators from initiating attacks against anyone laughing. In excerpt [3], for example, after addressing fellow users’ comments, Lola opts for shaming those laughing. This type of criticism validates Haugh and Chang’s [46] conclusion that “criticisms can cause hurt feelings, convey expectations that the target will do something to remedy the fault, pass (unwelcome) moral judgment on others, or display claims to have expertise or knowledge about the target that may be resisted by the latter.”

Fourth, the findings also reveal commentators’ awareness of the multimodal nature of Facebook interaction. Attention is closely paid to the visual, textual, and typographic elements of the interaction. For instance, the metapragmatic comment made by Doris, rather than evaluating the textual comments, aims the typographic elements, mainly emojis, posted by fellow users. This shows that the commentators are aware that any communicative elements of the interaction (linguistic and nonlinguistic) are equally salient in the production and perception of (impoliteness). Additionally, it has also become clear that Facebook users are as aware of the multiparticipant nature of the interaction (see excerpt 1) as knowledgeable of the fact that the multimodal nature of Facebook plays a substantial role in producing (im)politeness behaviors.