Aggression as impoliteness in a Facebook discussion about class discrimination in a Brazilian university

Abstract

This paper exemplifies the use of aggression as impoliteness in computer-mediated, or digital communication in Brazilian Portuguese, while looking into the performance of such linguistic actions in the context of a discussion about class discrimination. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between linguistic aggression as impoliteness, and identity as observed in a Facebook campaign page about a Brazilian university. The page under consideration was devised as an open platform to disseminate and call attention to examples of discriminatory behaviors experienced by students from peripheric communities attending an elite university in Rio de Janeiro. These students were at the center of a controversy, as they were supposedly brought to this institution through social programs promoted by the previous, leftist oriented governments. This paper examines the use of linguistic aggression as impoliteness, such as name calling and overt disagreement (Lorenzo-Dus; Blitvich; Bou-Franch, 2011), to communicate different opinions about, or argue against, the perceived instances of discrimination supplied by the students in the campaign and subsequently discussed by the participants in their posts. These impoliteness strategies ratify identities in the context of the discussion, marking in and outside group members, as the participants 1) align against, or 2) justify, the described behaviors.