The Use of Linguistic Violence on Social Media: The Case of Followers of Selected Cameroonian Facebook Platforms

Abstract

This paper examines the type and intensity of linguistic violence that Cameroonians use on social media pages to express their anger, frustration, disagreement, or hatred towards others. It also explores the causes and consequences of linguistic violence on the face, identity, or well-being of the speaker and the hearer. The paper adopts the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) as the main theoretical framework and uses the concept of face-threatening acts (FTAs) to analyse the linguistic forms and strategies of linguistic violence. The paper employs a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data from three popular Cameroonian Facebook pages: Mimi Mefo Info (MMI), Cameroon News Agency, and ADE Divine. The paper collects and analyses a corpus of 110 comments from the pages, using a coding scheme based on the types and intensities of linguistic violence, such as abusive language, hate speech, and cyber bullying. The paper finds that linguistic violence is prevalent and pervasive on Cameroonian Facebook pages, and that it varies in type and intensity depending on the topic, the target, and the context of the interaction. The paper concludes that linguistic violence is a serious social problem that needs to be addressed by the authorities, the media, and the public. The paper also suggests some possible solutions and recommendations to reduce or prevent linguistic violence on social media. The paper contributes to the field of linguistic studies and has implications for other fields, such as sociology, psychology, education, and communication.