The abusive power of neologisms in Lithuanian internet comments

• In Event: Issues in Transformation and Preservation of Language

Abstract

By challenging social diversity and thus disrupting social cohesion, hate speech (HS) remains an issue that poses numerous practical problems. This study aims to examine neologisms in Lithuanian internet comments and assess how much they are indicative of HS. The data consists of 10,662 comments (neutral, offensive, and comments containing HS) posted on issues related to the target groups of HS as defined by Lithuanian law. The analysis examines the distribution of neologisms in the three types of comments; linguistic resources used to create them; and the themes of creative name-calling. The analysis applies the framework of pragmatics and Vasilaki’s (2014) and Culpeper’s (2009) definitions of creativity and creative insults, Martínez and Jus’s (2013) perception of conventional and unconventional insults, and Ljung’s (2010: 35) categorization of the themes of name-calling. The results show that neologisms clearly dominate in offensive and hateful comments but are not characteristic of neutral ones. They appear in vocatives as insults and are part of discriminatory referential strategies used to refer to vulnerable groups.
Culpeper, J. 2009. Impoliteness: Using and understanding the language of offence. ESRC project website.
Ljung, M. 2011. Swearing: A Cross-cultural Linguistic Study. Palgrave Macmillan.
Martínez, J. M. and Yus, F. 2013. Towards a cross-cultural pragmatic taxonomy of insults. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 1(1), 87-114.
Vasilaki, M. 2014. Name-calling in Greek YouTube comments. In Papers from the 9th Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics & Language Teaching, ed. Carolina Pérez-Arredondo, Margarita Calderón-López, Hilda Hidalgo-Avilés, and David Pask-Hughes, 90–110. Lancaster University.

Short Bio

Jūratė Ruzaitė is Professor at the Department of Foreign Language, Literary and Translation Studies and a senior researcher at the Centre of Intercultural Communication and Multilingualism at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) focused in Linguistics from the University of Bergen, Norway. She has rich experience in (inter)national research projects, including a national project (Semantika-2, 2018-2019) in the framework of which a software for automated detection of offensive online comments in Lithuanian was created. She is also the Associate Editor of the Lithuanian Applied Linguistics Journal and a board member of the Lithuanian Association of Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language and ideology, hate speech, propaganda, and disinformation.

Author

• Jūratė Ruzaitė, Vytautas Magnus University