IMPOLITENESS IN LANGUAGE USE

ABSTRACT

This research delves into the impoliteness techniques employed by trolls of Nigerian celebrities in their comments on social media. The objective is to examine how individuals utilize verbal aggression in online comments, focusing on the affective and entertaining functions. The study collects data from three social media platforms: Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, and it employs a qualitative approach to analyzing the data. Drawing from Jonathan Culpeper's impoliteness theory, the research deciphers the linguistic strategies of impoliteness, particularly three superstrategies used predominantly by social media users: bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness and negative impoliteness. The findings reveal that these strategies serve to achieve both affective and entertaining functions, with the bald-on-record impoliteness strategy and affective function being the dominant ones, reflecting the intense emotions expressed by trolls in their comments.