Impoliteness in Online News Discourse: Evidence from BBC News Facebook Comments

This study investigates impoliteness in the comment section of the BBC English News website, focusing on the types of conventionalized impolite triggers used by commenters. It also examines the influence of computermediated factors, including anonymity and synchronicity, on impolite behavior. J. Culpeper’s bottom-up model of impoliteness triggers (2011, 2016) was applied to classify impolite acts. Using a mixed-method approach, we analyzed 115 comments containing 170 impolite strategies. Our findings reveal that commenters frequently targeted writers, politicians, and the BBC itself. Insults and pointed criticisms were their most common strategies, while silencers and threats were used least often. Among threats, personalized negative vocatives were most frequent, while personalized negative assertions and references were least common. Our analysis further shows that anonymity, synchronicity, and emotional expression significantly shape the manifestation of impoliteness in online comments.