Pragmatic Analysis of Invective Language on Social Media

Abstract

The use of language on the new media is not different from the normal life usage except for the identity of the user that may not be known on the social media. As people use invective language in normal life so also on the social media. This has not really attract scholar's attention in this part of the world. This is the thrust of this work. We examined the use of invective language on social media using Facebook as our case study. Politeness was adopted as the theoretical framework for this analysis. Our data was gathered from the comments of people on Facebook. We discovered two politeness strategies in the use of invective language on facebook, Face Threaten Act and Off-Record. We realized that people used invective language to express their feelings and emotions. We however recommend that people should be conscious of other's face in their communication in order to have a peaceful society.