Justifying the accusation

Abstract

Accusations of trolling (deceiving participants about one’s communicative intention, conducted for amusement, Dynel 2016; Hardaker 2013) and bad faith (dishonestly denying a speaker’s committing meaning, de Saussure and Oswald 2009; Oswald 2022) abound in digitally mediated communication. The labels chosen by posters significantly impact the outcome of discussions, as accusations of trolling tend to result in more abrupt settlements of disputes compared to accusations of bad faith. However, proving these deceptive activities can be challenging for posters. As a result, they often substantiate the “bad faith” label by mentioning in their accusations what they perceive as strategies indicating their interlocutors’ bad faith. In this paper, I examine 161 accusations of trolling and bad faith gathered from a forum. The analysis draws on Hardaker’s (2010, 2013) research and proposes a comparison of the strategies mentioned in these accusations. The aim is to describe the ways in which posters justify the label they opt for when confronted with deceptive activities.