CHANGES IN POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Abstract: The study investigates the shifts in politeness strategies in social media communication, focusing on how users adapt their language in digital interactions. With the increasing prominence of social media as a primary mode of communication, understanding and following some rules of politeness is expressed on social media has become an outstanding issue for many decades. The study addresses a gap in research regarding how different contexts and audiences affect the choice and implementation of politeness strategies in online environments. The research aims to identify the most frequently used politeness strategies on social media, analyze their effectiveness and evaluate the effect ofcontextual factors on user`s language choices. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on a corpus of 600 social media posts and comments, using Brown and Levinson`s politeness theory as the analytical framework.