‘And they say Leftists have no sense of humour’: Sanctioning interpretive failures as discursive gatekeeping on social media

Abstract

Misinterpretations are an integral part of social interaction. They participate in the meaning-making process of the interaction, but also play a wider social role. The context collapse characterising social media advances such occurrences, and the public display of the communicative disruption often results in temperamental responses. This paper explores this complex communicative arena, focusing on the responses induced by misinterpreted ironic utterances. It considers the significant role of public negotiations over failed interpretations online, in processes of social boundary consolidation. Based on the analysis of such flawed interactions on social media, I offer a typology of nine discursive sanctions based on two dimensions: participation structures and levels of content explicitness. These aspects interact in complex, often non-intuitive ways on social media, and participate in the boundary demarcation of the interpretive community within them. The paper concludes by discussing the significant social role of the failed interpreter, termed here “the un-addressee”.