Introducing Two New Terms into the Literature of Hate Speech: “Hate Discourse” and “Hate Speech Act” Application of “speech act theory” into hate speech studies in the era of Web 2.0

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explain the need for a revision of the term “hate speech” in the era of Web 2.0 and to introduce two new terms into the literature of hate speech with the help of application of “speech act theory”, that is “hate discourse” and “hate speech act.” The need for the revision arises from the examination of the methodology used to analyze hate speech, which is critical discourse analysis (CDA). Even though CDA seems fairly sufficient for hate speech analysis in traditional media, it could be rather difficult to apply into the analysis of hate speech disseminated in social media because of the nature of the tremendous data found in Web 2.0. Therefore it is believed that these two new terms could be beneficial to find more practical and new ways to combat against hate speech disseminated through social media.