Counterness. Merkmale von Gegenrede in Online-Debatten über Political Correctness

Abstract

This paper deals with debates about political correctness as they can be observed in comment sections of the website “Zeit Online”. Under articles on the topic of political correctness, numerous critical comments can be found which are then in turn reacted to with counter speech. On the basis of a corpus of 4791 comments of nine articles, in which the thread structures are also marked up, typical linguistic features of counter speech which are summarized as characteristics of counterness, are determined with quantitative corpus linguistic methods. In qualitative fine analyses, selected findings are further enriched. It will be shown that epistemic positioning, i.e., the indexing of one’s own and other people’s knowledge, and the associated acts of demarcation play an important role in the articulation of counter speech.

Keywords

• counter speech
• epistemic positioning
• internet linguistics
• corpus linguistics