Beyond Defensiveness: the linguistic strategies of hate speech in Malaysian Online comments

• Main Author: Mohamad Jamil, Siti Nurnadilla
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General); P Philology. Linguistics; P87 Communication. Mass media
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/105004/1/Hate%20Speech%20Symposium%20Program%20-Final%20Version%20%281%29.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/105004/7/HateSpeechSymposiumNavarra_snmj.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/105004/

This presentation examines the linguistic strategies of hate speech in Malaysian online comments, focusing on the counter-narratives that emerged in response to Al-Jazeera's 'Locked Up in Malaysia's Lockdown' documentary. After the documentary was broadcasted in 2020, it received a strong reaction from the Malaysian government and netizens. In this study, I analyzed 5,000 comments posted on the 101 East-Al Jazeera Facebook page on July 3, 2020, to identify the specific linguistic and discursive strategies used to defend against allegations of racism and discrimination. The study is guided by two main research questions: (1) What specific linguistic and discursive apologia strategies were used to defend against the allegations of racism and discrimination in online apologia? (2) How did these strategies contribute to the normalization of discriminatory and racist attitudes? To answer these questions, I drew on theoretical frameworks from Ware and Linkugel (1973) and van Dijk (1992) to identify the apologia strategies. I qualitatively unpacked these strategies further using three discursive strategies from Reisigl and Wodak (2016), namely nomination, predication, and argumentation. The findings reveal a significant emotional stake was invested in face-saving that could release/ mitigate the aspersions, then seeing the alleged discriminating/ racist attitudes or actions themselves as more serious social contraventions, especially towards the outgroup during difficult times like in a pandemic. This is potentially problematic for two reasons: first, defending one’s positive traits/ track record to save one’s reputation has often been done at the expense of others, and this on its own is capable of triggering discrimination/ racism; second, any accusations also suggest that the victim is a lesser human being who somehow deserves mistreatment by the accused. Therefore, when the focus was to solely clear Malaysia’s/ the Malaysian government’s name and reputation, it is hard not to notice how the alleged acts of discrimination/ racism (what are supposed to be non-negotiable acts) are also negotiated at the same time.