Impoliteness Strategies Inflicted by Twitter Users: The Case of Interaction with Malaysian Royal Family

Abstract

The language used in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) has been a debated issue for a long time. Ever since the normalisation of this method of communication, the interaction has been going on only between the common people, resulting in a more expressive and direct communication process. However, recently, the elites and royalties have also come into CMC platforms which causes confusion in the interaction between the common people and the royalties. Therefore, it leads to the clash between the common people and the royalties on social media. This study aims to analyse the impoliteness strategies used by Twitter users in expressing their resentment towards royalties by using the impoliteness theory introduced by Culpeper in 1996. 442 tweets that represent impoliteness has been gathered through purposive sampling method. Based on the analysis, the most popular strategy used by Twitter users is off-record (75), followed by sarcasm (55), Negative Impoliteness (41), Bald on record (39) and positive impoliteness (32). The findings show that although Twitter users are more expressive, they tend to resort to a more subtle approach to express their resentment towards the royalties.