‘How dare you!’ – anklager og mot-anklager på Facebook knyttet til Greta Thunbergs FN-tale 23. ­september 2019

Abstract

The contribution analyzes accusations related to Greta Thunberg’s speech in the UN on September 2019, posted on public Facebook pages in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The accusations we analyze are of three types: 1. Accusations that amplify and mirror Thunberg’s accusations, 2. Accusations against Thunberg, her followers, and supporters, and 3. Accu­sations against people who are bullying Thunberg and her ­followers on­line. None of the accusations is the first move in an apologetic discourse. We argue that the rhetorical functions of accusations that are not met with an apology have two important characteristics: 1. they attribute responsibility to the ­accused by expressing a reactive attitude towards his or her action, 2. they express a judgement that the action is blameworthy. We use these perspectives to analyze the accusations related to Thunberg’s speech on the public Facebook pages and characterize the rhetorical functions of the three types of ­accusations