Pilar G. Blitvich
 

This paper analyzes impoliteness in the responses to YouTube videos related to the 2008 US Democratic Primaries and Presidential Elections. Far from abiding by the ideals of civility that govern public discourse (Sellers 2004), impoliteness is rampant in these YouTube exchanges. Impoliteness, also referred to as flaming, in some genres of computer mediated communication has been linked to anonymity and mostly connected to conflict and disruption of communal life.  This paper argues that impoliteness can play a crucial role in the construction of collective identities, and thus could be regarded as constitutive rather than disruptive of social interaction.
            Fifty exchanges among YouTube forum participants are analyzed. All of them involve participants with dissimilar political affiliations or supporters of different candidates of the same party. Twenty five of them contain language that is deemed impolite either explicitly or implicitly by the participants. In the other twenty five, no explicit or implicit reference to impoliteness is made by any of those involved. The fifty exchanges are analyzed using a multi-disciplinary approach combining tenets of im-politeness theory, identity theory and computer mediated communication. The goal of the analysis is to find whether there is a correlation between the presence of impoliteness and polarization. Polarization is here understood as participants moving toward a more extreme position of group norms, even beyond the mean position, so that they can maximally differentiate themselves from those holding different views.
            The results strongly indicate that (a) impoliteness fosters polarization in those exchanges in which it is present; and (b) impoliteness plays a major role in the construction of collective identities along the lines of gender, race and political affiliation Whereas rapport (Brown & Levinson 1987) is used to create a sense of inclusive “weness”, impoliteness creates an excluding sense of us versus them, by systematically attacking and delegitimizing others’ point of view or ideological/political beliefs. By delegitimizing the out-group, the positions of the in-group are reinforced and so is perceived value of membership therein.