Haters in the spotlight

Abstract This study investigates the interplay between commenters’ gender and their language use in Slovene socially unacceptable Facebook comments by inspecting the frequency of opinion markers and impoliteness triggers, and the pragmatic functions of opinion markers which were investigated according to a newly developed typology. The analysis shows statistically significant differences between men and women in their formulation of opinions and use of impoliteness triggers. Comments written by men are characteristically formed as fact-like covert opinions and contain explicit impoliteness triggers (e.g., insults). Comments written by women are formed as overt opinions explicitly encoding subjectivity and include implicit impoliteness triggers (e.g., tropes). A common feature is the use of opinion markers as self-oriented face-saving devices. But while men use opinion markers to explicitly communicate their desire to save face, women use them to perform face-saving implicitly.