The Discourse of Being an American on Bluesky : Investigating impoliteness strategies employed by Bluesky users towards Americans following Trump’s second election win

Sammanfattning

This paper investigates the way in which impoliteness is realized by the international community, on social media, in response to a negatively perceived domestic political event, namely Donald Trump’s 2024 election win. The study utilizes Jonathan Culpeper’s (2005) model of impoliteness in order to categorize a selection of 500 Bluesky posts, conceived briefly following Trump’s election win, into six distinct impoliteness superstrategies. These results are compared and contrasted with other studies on online impoliteness in order to ascertain similarities and differences in impoliteness use throughout different contexts, particularly using the discourse analytical approach as described by Van Dijk’s (2000). This essay aims to shed light on how impoliteness is realized in the particular context of ordinary civilians reacting negatively to a people being held responsible for a political event, specifically in the setting of Americans being held responsible for Trump’s unfavorably viewed second election.