The Pragmatic Study of Third-Party Responses to Online Verbal Violence in Public Emergencies

Abstract

During public emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, online verbal violence can often arise, prompting third party participants in the digital public space to express their opinions. This research focuses on the verbal violence towards COVID-19 patients and takes comments from a WeChat article as corpus. Drawing from judgement resources of appraisal system, this study aims to explore how the third-party respond to online language violence and moral foundations reflected by third-party responses. It is showed that the third-party use relative polite and impolite strategies to make respond. The findings indicate that these responses mainly refl ect moral foundations of benevolence and groupism in traditional Chinese culture. By examining the connection between online verbal violence, third-party responses, moral foundations, and judgement resources, this research aims to provide insights for future related studies.