Structure and expression features of communicative tolerance (based on comments on social media pages dedicated to mixed martial arts)

This article aims to examine the structure of communicative tolerance in the comments on social media pages dedicated to mixed martial arts. The object of research is the communicative tolerance in the comments of users of social media pages dedicated to mixed martial arts. The research focuses on the structure of communicative tolerance and the ways it is expressed in comments on social media pages dedicated to mixed martial arts. The study materials are 11,000 comments on the public pages that are dedicated to combat sports from 2017 to 2021. The process of interpreting messages on social media pages dedicated to mixed martial arts is reflected in the "Friend-Foe" opposition. Tolerance can exist precisely in the presence of the "Friend-Foe" opposition. Communicative tolerance, being a relative concept, can only be understood through comparison with intolerance. It implies the reconciliation of different views in the "Friend-Foe" opposition. From the perspective of linguopragmatics tolerance can be defined as a communicative strategy that contributes to the effective achievement of the communicative goal by overcoming the initial negative intentions of the addresser or mitigating the expressed negative evaluation. The pragmatic task of communicative tolerance is to downplay implicit linguistic aggression or to soften an explicitly negative assessment. To confirm this definition of tolerance, the authors found out that social media users change their evaluation in the comments in accordance with the opinion of the majority of the page's subscribers, even if this opinion came from representatives of the "other" camp (fans of other fighters). Thus, social media users avoid conflicts with the majority of the subscribers of the pages dedicated to mixed martial arts. The authors also developed a cognitive structure of tolerance, or the mental image of the situation defined as a manifestation of communicative tolerance. Intolerance towards "others" generates dissonance, since linguistic and behavioral norms prescribe tolerant interaction between people. It is argued that intolerance can be the initial stage in the manifestation of tolerance. Trolling and flaming can serve as an attempt to get out of the dissonance generated by intolerance with the help of a specific form of internet communication. The cognitive structure of tolerance includes the initial condition of the emergence of tolerance (initial intolerance); interlocutors that are perceived by each other as the representatives of different poles of the "Friend-Foe" opposition; beliefs of interlocutors, their opinions and attitudes pertaining to internal cognitive information, as well as the general knowledge about the construction of tolerant communication; and the methods of constructing a tolerant attitude as a means of harmonization/balancing the specified binary opposition ("Friend-Foe" opposition). The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References