genre; online discussion fora; discourse; computer-mediated communication; face; facework; face attack; impoliteness

This chapter reports on a study of antagonistic facework in a novel (emerging) genre of computer-mediated communication: online discussion fora. After outlining the salient characteristics of this new genre, the study analyzes a corpus of internet discussions taken from the websites of British newspapers and focusing on the topic of the UK riots in August 2011. The analysis addresses the strategies of antagonistic facework used by participants, their realizations and discourse functions. Two broad categories of face attack strategies are identified - on-record attacks (involving direct attacks against opponents) and off-record attacks (involving various strategies based on irony and sarcasm).