Working Title: Discourses of Aggression in Greek Computer-Mediated Communication

Editors: Ourania Hatzidaki (Hellenic Air Force Academy, Greece) and Ioannis E. Saridakis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)

In the context of the 13^th International Conference on Greek Linguistics in September 2017 (University of Westminster, London) a workshop was held under the title “Discourses of Aggression and Violence in Greek Digital Communication”. Our aim is to publish a special issue on this theme in the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict (John Benjamins), pending acceptance of our proposal. We invite you to submit a paper abstract for inclusion in the proposal to be submitted to the journal editors.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the multifaceted relationship between language and aggression/violence, with a special focus on the discourse(s) of Greek speakers’ computer-mediated communication (CMC). Aggressive and even violent language abounds in CMC. Crucial affordances making the online environment conducive to verbal aggression are (perceived) anonymity, physical distance, invisibility, (relative) lack of accountability, amplification by viraling, guilt free exploitation of people’s voluntary self-exposure, etc. Such features render online environments fertile breeding ground for the phenomenon of toxic disinhibition (Suler 2004), resulting in a multitude of forms of (often excessive) verbal aggression such as racial discrimination and hatred (Baider and Constantinou 2017), gender-related verbal abuse (Bou-Franch 2016, Jane 2017), stereotyping in contexts of poverty and social exclusion (Baker and McEnery 2015), trolling (Hardaker 2010, 2015), etc. This type of online behaviour causes or is presumed to cause offence to the addressees on the grounds of many interrelated factors (Culpeper 2010: 23), both personal and social/sociolinguistic, and may have a serious, even permanently damaging impact on the off-line lives of those verbally targeted (Jane 2017 and elsewhere).

Data sources for potential contributions can include all forms of digital communication, synchronous or asynchronous, such as the social media, the discussion sections of mainstream media, internet fora and (micro)blogs, etc.

In terms of subject matter, we are especially interested in contributions dealing with the following areas:

• politics
• ethnicity and race
• gender
• sports
• popular culture
• personal/private digital interaction

Methodologically, a range of approaches are welcome, including but not limited to critical discourse analysis, corpus/quantitative linguistics, conversation analysis, communication studies, pragmatics, multimodality, argumentation theory, social science analysis, ethnography of communication etc., however, studies should have a clear and substantial linguistic component. We especially look forward to proposals combining qualitative and quantitative approaches (cf., for instance, Goutsos and Hatzidaki’s (2017) discourse-driven quantification), or relying on triangulated corpus-driven/based research (cf. Baker and Egbert 2016). Especially welcome, given the availability of massive quantities of social media discourse in digital form, are analyses of large datasets/corpora.

Submitting a proposal

Potential contributors are expected to send in an abstract of their proposed contribution by January 20, 2018 to the editors Ourania Hatzidaki (o.hatzidaki@gmail.com) or Ioannis E. Saridakis (iesaridakis@gmail.com). Authors will be notified about the acceptance of their abstracts by February 20, 2018. Provided the publication proposal is accepted by the publisher, a deadline will be set for the submission of full papers by around November 2018.

Abstract format:

• Title of proposed paper
• Author’s/s’ name(s), affiliation(s) and email(s)
• Proposal of 700-900 words (excl. references), including a description of the article’s theoretical and methodological framework, and its relevance to the publication’s theme.

References

1. Baider, Fabienne, and Maria Constantinou. 2017. At night we’ll come and find you, traitors: Cybercommunication in the Greek-Cypriot ultra-nationalist space. In Greece in Crisis: Combining Critical Discourse and Corpus Linguistics Perspectives, ed. by Ourania Hatzidaki, and Dionysis Goutsos, 413-454. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2. Baker, Paul, and Tony McEnery. 2015. Who benefits when discourse gets democratized? Analysing a Twitter corpus around the British Benefits Street debate. In Corpora and Discourse Studies: Integrating Discourse and Corpora, ed. by Paul Baker and Tony McEnery, 224-265. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
3. Baker, Paul, and Jesse Egbert. 2016. Triangulating Methodological Approaches in Corpus-linguistic Research. London: Routledge.
4. Bou-Franch Patricia (ed.). 2016. Exploring Language Aggression against Women. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
5. Culpeper, Jonathan. 2010. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: CUP.
6. Goutsos, Dionysis, and Ourania Hatzidaki. 2017. Making Sense of the Greek Crisis. In Greece in Crisis: Combining Critical Discourse and Corpus Linguistics Perspectives, ed. by Ourania Hatzidaki, and Dionysis Goutsos, 457-466. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
7. Hardaker, Claire. 2010. Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: From user discussions to academic definitions. Journal of Politeness Research 6, 215-242.
8. Hardaker, Claire. 2015. ‘I refuse to respond to this obvious troll’: An overview of responses to (perceived) trolling. Corpora 10(2), 201-229.
9. Jane, Emma A. 2017. Misogyny Online. London: Sage.
10. Suler, John. 2004. The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(3), 321-326.