Polish

866 comments written in Polish were analysed for this section, including 496 written by women and 370 by men.

Table 56: Polish verbal aggression online

Female Male Total

Total comments 496 370 866

Aggressive

comments 53 (10.6%) 68 (18.4%) 121 (14.0%)

Despite the fact that most comments in total were written by women, most of the aggressive comments were written by men (18.4% of all comments from men were aggressive in nature, as opposed to 10.6% of those written by women).

When compared to the Japanese data, the percentage of such comments is higher for both genders, and the gender gap is larger (a difference of 7.8% as opposed to 1.3%). Proportionally, Polish women made more aggressive comments than Japanese men. As in the previous section, some controversial

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topic were selected, such as dishonesty in romantic relationships, internal politics in Poland including social welfare policies, American troops stationed in other countries. They were likely to elicit more vitriol than a random subject.

Tereszkiewicz (2012) found that the topic of sport is likely to elicit relatively short comments without much flaming, whereas politics provoked longer discussions, often antagonistic in spirit.

As for direct aggression in the form of disparaging the topic of the discussion (and hence the person who chose it and who can read the disparaging comment) as well as attacks in second person on other people who commented in the thread, 18.8% of all aggressive comments by women and 29.4% by men were of this character. This is a higher proportion for both genders when compared to Japanese, and particularly striking is the difference between the results for Polish women and the 3.9% figure for Japanese females.

Not only were directly aggressive comments more frequent as units, the Polish users were also visibly more eager to engage in longer antagonistic direct exchanges between two people. The most extreme example is an argument about which gender is superior to the other:

Marcin²⁵: Kobiety mają troszeczkę mniejszy iloraz inteligencji... :) ²⁶ Woman: wlasnie większy, Marcin, bo nam mózgu nie zalewa sperma :P Marcin: Women have a slightly lower IQ... :)

Woman: No, it’s higher, Marcin, because our brains are not flooded with sperm :P

The man begins with an inflammatory remark about all women, without directing it to any user in particular. The character of the remark provokes an equally offensive riposte from a female commenter. The man then directs that woman to the Bible as a source of authority, claiming that it supports his

25 A common given name, an analogue of “Martin.”

26 Out of the sentences quoted here from this argument, all but one ends in an emoticon, :) or :P . The emoticons are a graphic representation of a close-lipped smile and a smile with the tongue stuck out, respectively. Although a smile may summon amicable connotations, Crystal (2004 : 37) warns about the highly ambiguous nature of such symbols: “[…]adding a smile to an utterance which is plainly angry can increase rather than decrease the force of the ‘flame’.”

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masculinist worldview. The woman retorts by saying that she has read the Bible, but did not find any passages that would justify the man’s opinion. The exchange goes on for 11 comments, concluding not in a compromise or reconciliation, but rather a condescending parting blow from Marcin, who cuts off communication:

To są tylko Twoje uwagi, stwierdzenia ja Tylko powiedziałem że rozwiązanie jest w bibli ;) A jeśli czytałaś i jeszcze go nie znalazłaś a ja znalazłem to zastanów się dlaczego? ;) Idę spać dobranoc ;)

These are just your remarks, statements. I just said that the solution is in the Bible. ;) And if you read it and still haven’t found it when I did, ask yourself why that is? ;) I’m going to bed, good night ;)

In contrast, whenever a direct attack on another user in the comment section took place on Japanese Facebook, the exchange ended within no more than 4 comments without further escalation, often with the initiator restating his or her opinion in more moderate terms and acknowledging the argument of the other side.

The sexism of the exchange described above was not an isolated case.

The post on which the users commented was about cheating in relationships, a topic also selected for the Japanese section, where the users engaged in a discussion about gender, like the Poles. Unlike the Japanese, however, both men and women on the Polish site posted unconstructive sexist proclamations, such as the following:

Precz z facetami…

Down with men...

precz z kobietami? ;) Down with women? ;)

Next, I will compare the characteristics targeted by Polish aggression to those targeted by Japanese speakers. The table below shows the aspect that was under attack by verbal aggression in relevant comments.

147 Table 57: Targets of Polish verbal aggresion

Men Women Men Women

Possesions Achievement 5

Appearance 1 Personality 3 6

Changes in

appearance Actions 7 6

Talent 11 4 Ideas 13 12

Others 29 24

Similarly to the Japanese results, there were not many comments about the appearance or possessions of the target. This is likely the result of the context of communication – discussion of controversial behaviors, or of people notorious for such behaviors. Some of the critics focused on the actions themselves, some sought to explain them by inner flaws of the perpetrator, whether caused by weak personality or lack of ability. Studies of Polish internet insults found that a considerable part of them attributed low intelligence or mental disorders to the insulted (Tereszkiewicz 2012 : 225), and in a similar fashion the data for this study included numerous examples of the attribution of both traits, sometimes in combinations difficult to separate:

Ale idiotyzm!! Kto to wymyślił...

What idiocy! Who came up with this...

co za kretyn [...]

What a cretin [...]

A much higher proportion of the Polish comments was difficult to place in a specific category, hence the size of “Other” as a group. The reason for that is the multi-faceted nature of the employed insults, especially the copiously represented group of sexual slurs: kurwa “whore,” chuj “dick”(both discussed in section 4.1.2), cwel “fag” (originally from prison slang), cipa “pussy,”or even penis, used as a personal reference and thus treated as aggression. The

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problem with these terms is that it is not always clear which part of the insulted person’s life they refer to. Is it sexual conduct as an action? Is it the inner desire that may or may not lead to such conduct? Or is the insult simply exploiting the negative societal image of certain sexual acts or predispositions through allusion, without truly claiming that the target indulges in them?

Since the language does not require speakers who use such terms to elucidate the exact motivations for such insults when they are uttered, the speakers themselves may not necessarily have a clear aim to attack a specific facet of their target, but instead they may be satisfied with attacking the person as a whole.

As for less straightforward insults, there were three examples, all written by women, of unconstructive personal criticism combined with a superficially polite personal reference:

1) Kolega Piotr M. nie umie czytać.

Colleague Piotr M. cannot read.

2) Panie Mirosławie, pan z choinki dopiero w marcu się urwał, czy dla jaj wielkanocnych przemyślenia snuje?

Mr. Mirosław, did you fall from the Christmas tree only in March, or are you deliberating for the sake of Easter eggs?

3) Az wstyd... Panie Tusku niech Pan tylek ruszy...

How embarassing... Mr. Tusk, move your butt Sir.

In example 1, the speaker complains about the fact that Piotr misunderstood something that was said, but she does so by exaggerating Piotr’s insufficient comprehension to the point of illiteracy. In the second example, the speaker uses and idiom “falling from the Christmas tree,” suggesting a state of ignorance and confusion, not being in touch with the current situation. The comment about Easter is a product of the speaker’s own creativity, prompted by the chronological distance between the day of posting the comment and Christmas time. In the last comment, the user unceremoniously urges Donald Tusk, a politician who was a topic of one of the discussions, to take action for

149 the sake of the nation.

In all of these comments, the women call the men by their names and add titles with some degree of formality – as is appropriate in polite communication between adults – but then in the same comment mix in personal attacks, including vulgar references to one man’s body part. There were no Japanese comments which did the same and in fact it is dubious whether Japanese permits such mixtures as easily as Polish. For example, one of the aggressive comments from the Japanese section would not likely appear modified by an honorific title:

杉本さんうるせえ Sugimoto-san urusee Shut up, Mr. Sugimoto.

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4.3. Taboo language and verbal aggression in natural