I’m not Charlie: (Im)politeness evaluations of the Charlie Hebdo attack in an internet discussion forum Milan Ferenčík Institute of British and American studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Pres ˇ ov, Ul.17. novembra 1, 080 01 Pres ˇ ov, Slovak Republic Received 6 March 2016; received in revised form 2 January 2017; accepted 7 February 2017 Abstract In reaction to the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo staff in January 2015, the Je suis Charlie movement emerged as a demonstration of solidarity with the victims. At the same time, however, the Je ne suis pas Charlie counter-stance found its way mostly into unofficial discussions, which became prolific fora where the in/appropriateness of the actions of the parties involved in the act was debated. The numerous Internet-based discussions offer a wealth of evaluative data which can be analysed using the methods and procedures of recent politeness theorisation. The main objective of the paper is to examine how (im)politeness evaluations are made within a particular Internet discussion forum by the commenters themselves vis-à-vis the perspectives and the identities they assume. Conceived within the framework of ‘politeness as social practice’, the paper seeks to access the commenters’ identities and the respective ‘moral orders’ to which they seem to orient themselves when making their evaluations. It is claimed that these (im)politeness evaluations as manifestations of their metapragmatic awareness can be used as a venue for the study of how individual, group-based and societal value systems are negotiated, contested and ratified within computer-mediated communication settings. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Charlie Hebdo; CMC; Internet discussion forum; Metapragmatic awareness; Interpersonal awareness; Politeness as social practice 1. Introduction One of the things that geo-cultural globalisation has made us aware of is that the world's geographical and symbolic spaces across which people, ideas, images, codes and discourses move are never empty but filled with values and norms which respective sociocultural groups developed to ensure their cohesion and identity. The Internet as a quintessential technology of globalisation, with English as a catalyst of globalisation, has brought about certain new domains of mobility set in the electronic environment of computer-mediated communication (CMC), 1 including discussion fora. Ever since they were launched, they have become an invaluable source of naturally occurring analytical data for social scientific research. One of the pervasive and intriguing features of discussion fora is that their participants demonstrate their reflexive awareness of the choices they are making and of how they can be interpreted by others. This awareness manifested as a constant monitoring of each other's contributions very often surfaces in the form of metapragmatic commentary. At the heart of this awareness lie evaluations which are made with regard to the participants as social beings and which pertain to their socially constituted ‘selves’. This so called ‘interpersonal awareness’ underlies the phenomena www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics 111 (2017) 54--71 E-mail address: milan.ferencik@unipo.sk. 1 Throughout the article, the following abbreviations are used: CHH -- Charlie Hebdo, CMC -- computer mediated communication, OP -- original poster, PSP -- politeness as a social practice. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.02.002 0378-2166/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.