Online comments as inwards and outwards-directed acts in Polish and English

Abstract

Abstract The main focus of the paper is to analyse selected English and Polish online comments on the Russia-Ukraine war (2022) from the perspective of dialogical discourse and define to what extent the exchanges satisfy the criteria of different types of dialogism with regard to their self- or other-referential character, i.e., inwards- or ingroup- directed, and what other circumstances are decisive in the determination of the exchange profiles. The materials are derived from selected Twitter comments referring to the war in Ukraine and its refugees, which dominate large segments of today’s online discourse. The research methodology employed is an interactional discourse analysis, which assumes that meanings are dynamic and created in interaction, and shaped by the cognitive and social potential of the participants, and their ideological preferences. The outcomes of the analysis indicate a complex character of the exchanges from a dialogical typology dilemma perspective and shed some light on the speakers’ argumentation. The analysis also shows a lower radicalization axis than in comparable samples referring to earlier refugee crisis scenarios in the years 2016–2020.