Verbal Aggressiveness in Communication in Media and Online. A Case Study of the TV Cooking Show Prostřeno!

The article is dedicated to the topic of im/politeness and verbal hostility in online and media communication environments. Two weeks’ series of the reality show Prostřeno! (Laid Out! – original British version is Come Dine with Me) have been analysed, together with the related online discussions. TV media and the online environment make it possible for speakers to use the interactive texts, normally constructed as acts of private communication in public settings. The choice of communicative strategies still depends on the particular type of medium and the situational context which it creates. Participants in reality TVs who construct communicative acts in face-to-face interaction with others react to the social context established by the show: each contestant is highly motivated by his/her wishes to win, and therefore is making an effort to convince all participants of his/her positive face. Since the contestants might be threatened by the loss of face resulting from open confrontation they usually avoid direct attacks; they prefer slander, which is a part of the show and the act that the contestants are incited to carry out. The online discussions are a medium of anonymity which encourages interlocutors to evaluate and criticise openly. Since such an environment protects users from the potential loss of their own face, viewers of the reality TV use it to threaten the face of the contestants with gossip or harsh and rude vocabulary. The analysis of the corpus confirmed the hypothesis that if the interlocutors can communicate anonymously, their verbal aggressiveness increases.