Resumen de Twitter, Politeness, Self-Presentation

Maria Sifianou, Spyridoula Bella

• Responding to the recent call by politeness researchers for the need to study lay understandings of politeness, Sifianou and Bella explore the potential value of Twitter data as a source for studying lay people’s understandings of politeness. Focusing on public text data in Greek drawn from Twitter’s huge repository, they isolated 195 tweets which included the keyword phrases “politeness is/is not” in an attempt to identify specific views on what politeness means to Greek posters. What emerged from the analysis is that politeness is viewed in both positive and negative terms and is not restricted to verbal behavior. In addition, the views expressed appear to reflect the affordances of the medium which offer a platform for users to claim authority and knowledgeability.