Introduction
In recent years, the Philippines has reaped a significant increase in social media, with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram leading the pack as they are now closely associated with daily affairs of communication and dialogue. Facebook and Twitter users are provided with the perfect platform for sharing their ideas and even starting conversations. The most alarming is that it has developed into an aggravator of hate speech and online hostilities. Even though politeness norms are in its culture Filipino, hurtful language exists in numerous cases of social media interactions, making the websites hostile and divided. This investigation focuses on the awareness of politeness in verbal communication of hate speech on social media, particularly in the Philippines. Topics covered include opponents’ disinhibition and the association of “pikon” culture, which refers to people easily provoked or offended.
Problem
The increasing trend of hate speech on toxic Philippine social media infractions poses tremendous barriers to the conversation and the social cohesion of the community. The fact that Filipinos have politeness as a robust cultural norm is not a secret. Hate speech, often evaded by such norms, uses civil language and tries to make malicious intentions sound like they are not. Filling this gap is comprehending how politeness strategies are manipulated within virtual engagement, especially in a society that quasi-fears losing one’s face and maintaining social harmony by any means. Moreover, the concept of “pikon” culture also suggests that words could be used calmly and beautifully to insult others and to instigate conflicts and toxicity in the online space, which may cause moves in the offline world.
Framework
This inquiry is built around Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, which says that the theory’s elaboration will help people be apprehensive about managing their social contacts to deflect face threats and maintain cordial relations. Politeness theory recognizes that people use different politeness strategies, including hedging, indirectness, and positive politeness, as criteria for politeness and harmony in their social relationships. Furthermore, this will be done based on sociocultural pragmatism, which analyzes how cultural norms and values play a role in determining the language used in social communication. This research adopts these approaches of the latter to explore why people in the Philippines are simultaneously using social media to be mean and helpful.
Text
The first sample of the analysis is the Philippine social media post corpus, which will be extracted using prominent social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The corpus will comprise messages where hate speech veiled as polite language takes place, causing cyberbullying and victims’ reactions. Through the analysis conducted on a broad spectrum of social media content, this research aims to study the specifics of politeness strategies in hate speech, thus highlighting the relationship between language politeness and online harm in the context of Liberalism in the Philippines.
Conclusion
To sum up,the central aim of this research is to focus on the hate speech that exists on Philippine social media platforms through the analysis of politeness (both pragmatics and politics) in online interactions. This investigation will use the politeness theory and the sociocultural pragmatics theoretical framework, which is intended to recognize the politics behind the “pikon” speech utterance. The investigation of a coherent body, which consists of social media data, will help improve the systems of studying the dynamics of online discourse in the Philippines and make a particular plan to stop online toxic conduct and lead people to polite communication.
Bibliography
Alabdali, Tahani Saleh. “Revisiting Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory: A Middle-Eastern Perspective.” Bulletin of Advanced English Studies 2, no. 2 (2019): 73–78. https://doi.org/10.31559/baes2019.2.2.3.
Hidayati, Aflina, and Arifuddin. “Hate Speech on Social Media: A Pragmatic Approach.” KnE Social Sciences, March 11, 2021, 308–17. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v5i4.8690.
Kaushik, Vibha, and Christine A. Walsh. “Pragmatism as a Research Paradigm and Its Implications for Social Work Research.” Social Sciences 8, no. 9 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8090255.
Llorica, Marilyn M., and Rowena V. Sosas. “Politeness Strategies of Filipino Teenagers in the Household.” Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 18, no. 4 (March 11, 2023). https://www.jlls.org/index.php/jlls/article/view/5200.
Omar, Abdulfattah, Mohammed Ilyas, Mohamed Ali, and Mohamed Kassem. “Journal of Social Studies Education Research Sosyal Bilgiler Eğitimi Araştırmaları Dergisi Linguistic Politeness and Media Education: A Lingua-Pragmatic Study of Changing Trends in ‘Forms of Address’ in Egyptian Media Talk Shows,” 2018. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1181969.pdf.
Prayitno, Harun Joko, Miftakhul Huda, Nabilatul Inayah, Ermanto Ermanto, Havid Ardi, Giyoto Giyoto, and Norazmie Yusof. “Politeness of Directive Speech Acts on Social Media Discourse and Its Implications for Strengthening Student Character Education in the Era of Global Education.” Asian Journal of University Education 17, no. 4 (November 25, 2021): 179. https://doi.org/10.24191/ajue.v17i4.16205.
Santos, Rea Rodesa Sandoval-Delos, Joseph Araneta, Sajed Ingilan, and Raymund Palayon. “Politeness Strategies of Manobo Students in a Classroom in Kidapawan City, Philippines.” Southeastern Philippines Journal of Research and Development 28, no. 2 (September 30, 2023): 27–54. https://doi.org/10.53899/spjrd.v28i2.247.
Singh, Tavleen, Sofia Olivares, Trevor Cohen, Nathan Cobb, Jing Wang, Amy Franklin, and Sahiti Myneni. “Pragmatics to Reveal Intent in Social Media Peer Interactions: Mixed Methods Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 23, no. 11 (November 17, 2021): e32167. https://doi.org/10.2196/32167.
Statista Research Department. “Philippines: Most-Used Social Media Platforms.” Statista, February 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127983/philippines-leading-social-media-platforms/.
Torres, Joel. “Politeness Strategies vis-à-vis Genders and Exposures to Western Culture: The Case of ‘the Voice of the Philippines’ Coaches.” International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies 1, no. 3 (October 25, 2020): 100–117. https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v1i3.1.
write