“You’re trolling because…” – A Corpus-based Study of Perceived Trolling and Motive Attribution in the Comment Threads of Three British Political Blogs

This paper investigates the linguistically marked motives that participants attribute to those they call trolls in 991 comment threads of three British political blogs. The study is concerned with how these motives affect the discursive construction of trolling and trolls. Another goal of the paper is to examine whether the mainly emotional motives ascribed to trolls in the academic literature correspond with those that the participants attribute to the alleged trolls in the analysed threads. The paper identifies five broad motives ascribed to trolls: emotional/mental health-related/social reasons, financial gain, political beliefs, being employed by a political body, and unspecified political affiliation. It also points out that depending on these motives, trolling and trolls are constructed in various ways. Finally, the study argues that participants attribute motives to trolls not only to explain their behaviour but also to insult them

A boszorkányperek mint közösség- és identitásképző diskurzusok

This paper presents a historical pragmatic analysis of the documents of three witchcraft trials of the early eighteenth century in Borsod County (Hungary). In particular, the author investigates the prosecutor’s own utterances and his interpretation of the witnesses’ testimonies in documents of witchcraft trials as specimens of community and identity forming discourse to see how the prosecutor creates ‘witchcraft’ as a community and ‘witch’ as the culprits’ identity. The paper applies a socio-cognitive model of discursive community and identity formation in analysing the documents of witchcraft trials under discussio

A bekiabálás vizsgálata mimetikus és személyközi nézőpontból

The present paper aims to model the interactional operation of heckling, which has received little attention in impoliteness and interaction studies, despite the fact that studying this phenomenon has various advantages for the analyst. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we approach heckling by combining Turner’s (1982) anthropological framework with Kádár’s interaction-based relational ritual theory (e.g. Kádár 2012, 2013; Kádár & Bax 2013). Following Turner, we define heckling as a ‘social drama’, which is evaluated by its watchers as ‘judges’. In accordance with Kádár’s relational ritual framework we argue that heckling is a mimetic ritualistic mini-performance, which is inherently interactional as it operates in the adjacent action pair of the heckler’s performance and the public speaker/performer’s counter-performance. Adopting Turner’s terminology, heckling is a ritualistic performance of ‘anti-structure’, i.e. it upsets the regular social – and consequently interactional – structure of a setting. Successful counter-performance is a ritual of ‘structure’, which restores the normal social structure of the event, as the public speaker/performer regains control over the interaction. Through the social actions of performance and counter-performance the heckled and the heckler aim to affiliate themselves with the audience, who are ‘metaparticipants’ of the ritualistic interaction, and with the watchers/listeners in the case of video/audio-recorded interactions, who can be defined as ‘lay observers’ (cf. Kádár & Haugh 2013). Approaching heckling as a theatrical type of relational ritual helps us capture various complexities of this phenomenon, such as its relationship with certain interactional settings and metaparticipant expectations/ evaluations, and its interface with related phenomena such as impoliteness

Operation Heron – Latent topic changes in an abusive letter series

The paper presents a two-part forensic linguistic analysis of an historic collection of abuse letters, sent to individuals in the public eye and individuals’ private homes between 2007-2009. We employ the technique of structural topic modelling (STM) to identify distinctions in the core topics of the letters, gauging the value of this relatively underused methodology in forensic linguistics. Four key topics were identified in the letters, Politics A and B, Healthcare, and Immigration, and their coherence, correlation and shifts in topic evaluated. Following the STM, a qualitative corpus linguistic analysis was undertaken, coding concordance lines according to topic, with the reliability between coders tested. This coding demonstrated that various connected statements within the same topic tend to gain or lose prevalence over time, and ultimately confirmed the consistency of content within the four topics identified through STM throughout the letter series. The discussion and conclusions to the paper reflect on the findings as well as considering the utility of these methodologies for linguistics and forensic linguistics in particular. The study demonstrates real value in revisiting a forensic linguistic dataset such as this to test and develop methodologies for the fiel

The motives attributed to trolls in metapragmatic comments on three Hungarian left-wing political blogs

This paper investigates the linguistically marked motives that participants attribute to those they call trolls in 178 comment threads of three Hungarian left-wing political blogs. It is also concerned with how frequently these motives are mentioned and how they contribute to the discursive construction of trolling and trolls. Another goal of the paper is to examine whether the mainly emotional motives ascribed to trolls in the academic literature correspond with those that the participants attribute to the alleged trolls in the threads. The paper identifies five motives for trolling: emotional reasons, financial gain, political beliefs, being employed by Fidesz or the Hungarian government, and unspecified political affiliation. Depending on these motives, trolling and trolls are constructed in various ways. Furthermore, by suggesting that Fidesz or the Hungarian government employs trolls, the posters discursively construct Fidesz as an autocratic and corrupt state party that tries to manipulate the public

Discursive (re)construction of “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as an identity in the eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trial records

This paper provides a qualitative historical (socio)pragmatic analysis of records of three eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trials using a socio-cognitive model of discursive community and identity construction. I aim to describe how the general social and legal context of witchcraft became situated and interpreted in the actual witchcraft trial records from the delegated officials’ perspective. I argue that in the analysed records, the officials did not simply apply a codified definition of “witchcraft”, but they discursively (re)constructed “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as the defendants’ identity. Thus, from the officials’ perspective, discursive community and identity construction established a relationship between the general context of witchcraft and the actual witchcraft trials. In order to reconstruct this process, I investigate the linguistic constructs by which the delegated officials actively created “witchcraft” and the defendants’ “witch” identity as mental constructs

The discursive construction of trolling on British and Hungarian political blogs

This thesis looks at how users construct trolling as a negatively marked communicative behaviour and troll as a behaviour-based identity in their comments on British and Hungarian political blogs, thus focusing on the users’ metapragmatic discourses on online trolling. The main aim of the thesis is to identify the perceived actions, motives, and aims that users associate with trolling in their comments. The thesis is also concerned with how these actions, motives, and aims affect the ways in which trolling is depicted and trolls are portrayed in the users’ comments. To answer these questions, the thesis presents a corpus-based analysis of 6,129 British and 1,118 Hungarian comments in which users call someone a troll or refer to someone’s behaviour as trolling or trollkodás. These comments were collected from 1,713 British and 519 Hungarian comment threads, which were posted on 27 British and 28 Hungarian political blogs in 2015. The thesis observes that British and Hungarian commenters attribute the same four activities, five motives, and six aims to the alleged trolls. The perceived trolling activities include spamming, ignoring or withholding information, flaming, and dishonesty, which in total cover sixteen specific actions. The trolls’ perceived motives comprise various emotional, mental health-related, and social reasons, financial gain, political beliefs, being employed by a political body, and unspecified political affiliation. Finally, the trolls’ perceived aims involve diverting others’ attention, triggering unpleasant emotions, eliciting responses, provoking conflict, misleading or confusing others, and disrupting the ongoing discussion. The analysis also shows that, although users construct trolling and trolls in many different ways, trolling is generally conceptualised as a non-normative and manipulative behaviour while trolls are portrayed as bad debaters and uncooperative troublemakers

A bekiabálás vizsgálata mimetikus és személyközi nézőpontból (Exploring heckling from a mimetic point of view)

The present paper aims to model the interactional operation of heckling, which has received little attention in impoliteness and interaction studies, despite the fact that studying this phenomenon has various advantages for the analyst. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we approach heckling by combining Turner’s (1982) anthropological framework with Kádár’s interaction-based relational ritual theory (e.g. Kádár 2012, 2013; Kádár & Bax 2013). Following Turner, we define heckling as a ‘social drama’, which is evaluated by its watchers as ‘judges’. In accordance with Kádár’s relational ritual framework we argue that heckling is a mimetic ritualistic mini-performance, which is inherently interactional as it operates in the adjacent action pair of the heckler’s performance and the public speaker/performer’s counter-performance. Adopting Turner’s terminology, heckling is a ritualistic performance of ‘anti-structure’, i.e. it upsets the regular social – and consequently interactional – structure of a setting. Successful counter-performance is a ritual of ‘structure’, which restores the normal social structure of the event, as the public speaker/performer regains control over the interaction. Through the social actions of performance and counter-performance the heckled and the heckler aim to affiliate themselves with the audience, who are ‘metaparticipants’ of the ritualistic interaction, and with the watchers/listeners in the case of video/audio-recorded interactions, who can be defined as ‘lay observers’ (cf. Kádár & Haugh 2013). Approaching heckling as a theatrical type of relational ritual helps us capture various complexities of this phenomenon, such as its relationship with certain interactional settings and metaparticipant expectations/evaluations, and its interface with related phenomena such as impoliteness

The Aston Forensic Linguistic Databank (FoLD)

The Aston Forensic Linguistic Databank (FoLD) is a permanent, controlled access online repository for forensic linguistic data. We broadly understand forensic linguistics as any academic research with a potential to improve the delivery of justice through the analysis of language. FoLD thus comprises a wide range of datasets with relevance to forensic linguistics and language and law, including commercial extortion letters, investigative interviews in police and other contexts, legal documents, forum posts from far-right online groups, and comment threads from political blogs. This paper outlines how FoLD works and its potential impact on the general discipline of forensic linguistics