Pragmatics, (Im)Politeness, and Intergroup Communication: A Multilayered, Discursive Analysis of Cancel Culture (Elements in Pragmatics)

This Element shows the basis for pragmatics/(im)politeness to become intergroup-oriented to be able to consider interactions in which social identities are salient or are essentially collective in nature, such as Cancel Culture (CC). CC is a form of ostracism involving the collective withdrawal of support and concomitant group exclusion of individuals perceived as having behaved in ways construed as immoral and thus displaying disdain for group normativity. To analyze this type of collective phenomenon, a three-layered model that tackles CC manifestations at the macro, meso, and micro levels is used. At the meso/micro levels, problematize extant conceptualizations of CC -mostly focused on the macro level and describe it as a Big C Conversation, whose meso-level practices need to be understood as genre-ecology, and where identity reduction, im/politeness, and moral emotions synergies are key to understand group entitativity and agency. Cover Title page Copyright page Pragmatics, (Im)politeness, and Intergroup Communication Contents 1 Introduction 2 A Pragmatics of Intergroup Communication 2.1 Overcoming Potential Hurdles to a Pragmatics(im)politeness of Groups 2.1.1 Face and Identity 2.1.2 Collective Intentionality and Action 2.2 A Discursive Pragmatics 2.2.1 Genres and the Meso-Level 3 Groups and the Meso-Level 3.1 Groups and Online Spaces 4 Macro-Level Analysis: Cancel Culture as a Big C Conversation 4.1 Methods: Macro-Level Analysis 4.2 Results of the Macro-level Analysis: Understanding of CC as a Big C Conversation 4.3 Macro-Level Overview of the Three Case Studies 4.3.1 Nichols 4.3.2 DeGeneres 4.3.3 Cheney 5 Meso-Level Analysis: Cancelation as a Genre Ecology 5.1 Methods 5.1.1 Data Sampling 5.1.2 Theoretical Framework and Procedure of Analysis 5.2 Results and Discussion: Three Cancelations, Three Genre Ecologies 6 Micro-Level Analysis 6.1 Methods 6.1.1 Data Sampling and Selection 6.1.1.1 Data: The Genre of Online Comments 6.1.2 Theoretical Framework and Procedure of Analysis 6.2 Results and Discussion of the Micro-Level Analysis: Online Cancelation Practices 6.2.1 Identity Claims/Attributions/(Non)verification: Morality and Degradation Ceremonies 6.2.2 (Im)politeness Manifestations 6.2.2.1 Intragroup (Im)politeness 6.2.2.2 Intergroup (Im)politeness 6.2.3 Moral Emotions 6.2.3.1 Other-Condemning Emotions 6.2.3.2 Suffering 7 Conclusions References Acknowledgments