self-praise; Instagram; influencers; positive politeness; mitigation strategies; self-presentation; microblogging; multimodality

Recent studies of self-praise in CMC (Dayter, 2016; Matley, 2018; Dayter, 2019) indicate that, in contrast to conversational norms of face-to-face interaction, self-praise is a frequent and well-rooted practice online. The present study aims to contribute to this burgeoning field of research by examining the (im)politeness of self-praise in Instagram posts of fashion and lifestyle influencers. Since their popularity is contingent on being liked by others, influencers are highly cautious of their positive face (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and their self-presentation thus represents a potentially rich source of data. 1,000 posts shared by five British influencers were coded for the presence of self-praise, positive politeness and mitigation strategies. The analysis showed that influencers recognize the face-threatening nature of self-praise – as such behaviour could drive less devoted followers away – and employ a variety of strategies oriented toward saving their own and their followers’ positive face. Influencers convey self-praise primarily indirectly or with modification, obstructing the image of a narcissist and ego-centric user which the accompanying photo might paint. The analysis also identified cases of self-praise bald on record which, however, functions as an attention-getter transforming the illocutionary force of the utterance, e.g. ‘I’m bloody amazing and so are you’ being used to raise the awareness of the lack of access to sanitary products for women around the world.