Disney’s Two Versions of Mulan (1998, 2020) and Twitter: A Reception Study in Terms of (Im)politeness

ABSTRACT This article examines the (im)politeness of Disney’s two versions of Mulan and their receptions on Twitter. As for the films, it takes advantage of the availability of the same sharing scenes and storytelling scripts of the two versions. Considering their reception, over 6,700 tweets and comments were collected, using #Mulan and #DisneyMulan and from the two accounts of @DisneysMulan and @Disney, respectively. The analysis of the instances was based on the current literature on (im)politeness models. The results revealed that all of the impoliteness instances were found in the live-action version, guiding the inaccurate depiction of Chinese cultural and historical elements highlighted in the audiences’ comments, classified into pointed criticisms as the third most reoccurring strategy in the corpus.