Anons, chads and mixed-nazis: the naming and predication strategies in the discourse of the alt-right in Brazil

Abstract

4chan is a digital forum known for its strong presence of alt-right movements ( Nagle, 2017; Tuters, 2020). In this article, based on the Discourse-historical Approach ( Wodak; Reisigl, 2016) of Critical Discourse Studies ( Wodak; Meyer, 2016), we present a brief qualitative and quantitative study on this forum in two parts: first, we discuss processes of lexical innovation that occur endemically in this type of digital environment and, second, we present an overview that exposes the most recurrent terms in the naming and predication of social actors represented in the discourse on this platform, in a corpus of 3,675 comments. From these examples, we selected cases that represent some of the most productive vernacular innovation processes, namely, semantic fading ( Peeters et al., 2021 ), morphological blends and floating signifiers ( Tuters; Hagen, 2020). To the later, we dedicate a more detailed discussion based on the instances revealed in the corpus of this study. We conclude, based in this data, that the environment is highly fruitful in the use of language games to represent social actors taken as antagonistic, reproducing markedly racist, antisemitic and transphobic discourses.

Keywords:
Critical Discourse Studies; Discourse-Historical approach; Digital media; Alt-right; Lexical choice