Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of Twitter/X users’ reactions to the Brazilian presidential debate broadcast by Globo T.V. on 28th October 2022. By combining the Principle of Epistemic Reciprocity (PER) with studies on the epistemic dimension in Conversation Analysis, the paper examines to what extent linguistic impoliteness is associated with the negotiation of epistemic agency in digital interaction. The data was extracted from a corpus of 2,522 unique tweets containing hashtags, featured as trending topics. The results revealed the role of challenging questions in reorienting the interactional topic and expressing stance. As for the manifestation of disagreement, users were cautious in protecting their epistemic territory, which they did by enacting impoliteness. The affordances of Twitter/X, such as hashtags, also played a key role in how the users sanctioned the transactional nature of the debate.
Keywords:
Twitter/X; Linguistic impoliteness; Epistemic relations