“STOP THIS NONSENSE, HARRY!”: An analysis of impoliteness strategies in cyberbullying commentary targeting Harry Maguire

Abstract

Cyberbullying encompasses a range of negative online behaviours, including harassment, threats, and insults, which can significantly impact individuals’ mental and emotional wellbeing. This study aims to examine the nature and prevalence of impoliteness strategies within cyberbullying commentary targeting Harry Maguire, a prominent figure in the football world. The data consists of 100 purposively selected comments showcasing impoliteness, extracted from the comments section of a post by Maguire, on his official X platform (formerly Twitter) account dated 7th November 2021. Culpeper’s (2005) Model of Impoliteness serves as the theoretical framework while a mixed method approach is adopted in this study. Out of the five strategies proposed by Culpeper (2005), this study discovers four strategies present in the selected cyberbullying comments. The findings show that Positive Impoliteness (39.6%) is the most frequently employed strategy, and this is followed by Bald on Record Impoliteness, which represents 27.7% of the total comments. The study concludes that within the digital sports community on the X platform, fans frequently employ strategies of positive impoliteness and bald-on-record impoliteness as a means to challenge the face wants of players, such as Harry Maguire, particularly when their performances are below expectation.