Metalanguaging as resistance : The socially-mediated rejection of public apologies in the wake of #MeToo

• The aim of this paper is to investigate how local negotiations of linguistic normativity form part of a structure of civic engagement or political participation in today's socially mediated publics. The public apology is a discursive genre that has received much folk linguistic attention in public debate (e.g., Ancarno, 2015), especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement of 2017–2018. Several prominent examples of such public apologies have been characterized as empty apologies, pseudo apologies, or, simply, "non-apologies" (cf. Kampf, 2009). This paper presents a case study for a larger project focusing on metapragmatic negotiations and contestations in the reception of public apologies as non-apologies in social media spaces. While the larger project will mainly focus on post-#MeToo cases, this paper addresses a prominent ‘portal case,’ namely Donald Trump’s “Pussygate” apology video, which was published in October of 2016 on Trump’s Facebook page. The paper presents analyses of Twitter conversations (i.e. conversational reply-chains) about this apology video from the days immediately following its release, with a microanalytic (Giles et al., 2015) focus on how metalinguistic notions of real versus non-apologies are articulated in informal public discourse. Negotiations of the Trump video’s merits as an apology are rarely only that, but rather tend to be interwoven with affectively charged ideological positionings – in relation to party politics, progressivism, feminism, and more. Through articulating notions such as non-apology, social media interactants are in effect practicing a kind of layperson’s critical discourse analysis.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

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