Pragmatics and Society· 2026Q1
Navigating the continuum of harmful speech
- 0citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Racist discourse on Greek social media escalates from 'you don't hear any Greek' to 'clean Greece' by shifting illocutionary force and employing dehumanizing language, according to an analysis of 180 posts.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Racist discourse on Greek social media was analyzed using 180 posts from May 2012 to January 2024.
- The phrases 'you don't hear any Greek' and 'clean Greece' were tracked as indicators of escalating harmful speech.
- Escalation was measured by shifts in illocutionary force, uptake-licensing, and perlocutionary design.
- The phrase 'you don't hear any Greek' functions as a grievance about cultural displacement, which can be re-keyed into directives.
- The phrase 'clean Greece' employs purity metaphors and dehumanizing language to incite violent responses.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract This article examines escalation in racist discourse on Greek X by tracing two recurrent formulations: δεν ακούς ελληνικά (‘you don’t hear any Greek’) and καθαρίστε την Ελλάδα (‘clean Greece’). The dataset comprises 180 publicly accessible posts (May 2012–January 2024), sampled across migration-salient periods and analysed as posts-in-context. Reflexive thematic analysis maps patterns and guides exemplar selection. Combining Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach with a speech-act lens, we track escalation through three pragmatic diagnostics: shifts in illocutionary force, uptake-licensing, and perlocutionary design. ‘You don’t hear any Greek’ functions as a portable grievance: a deictically anchored sensory claim condensing fears of linguistic and cultural displacement, paired with criminalisation and threat topoi. This crisis framing can be re-keyed into directives culminating in ‘clean Greece’, where purity metaphors and dehumanising nomination lower moral barriers and recruit audiences for violent responses. We conclude by mapping findings onto a graduated response framework aligned to the degree of escalation.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Pragmatics and Society, 2026 · DOI ↗
Continue with a free account
Ask the paper: 3 free questions a day about this paper; save it, get its citation, new summaries every day for your field. Takeaways are Premium.
Continue free on the webSign in with Google or Apple; no card needed. You come back to this paper.
On your phone:
Field: Linguistics and Language
Linguistics and LanguageSocial Sciences