Discursive delegitimisation in metaphorical #secondcivilwarletters: an analysis of a collective Twitter hashtag response

ABSTRACT

In July 2018 the Twitter hashtag #secondcivilwarletters began trending as part of a collective response to conservative media personality Alex Jones’ warning that Democratic supporters were planning to launch a Second Civil War on Independence Day. The response consisted of tweets in the form of parodic letters written as though they were from the American Civil War period, and engaged in a collective form of political commentary and discussion, mostly displaying an anti-Republican and anti-Trump sentiment. This article analyses the different ways the tweeters used Twitter and the #secondcivilwarletters hashtag to engage in the humorous discursive delegitimisation of President Trump and Republicans. It was found that the strategies of authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation, and mythopoeisis featured prominently in the tweets and, combined with the humorous edge, nourished the political participation and discourse of this online community.

KEYWORDS:

• Delegitimisation
• discourse analysis
• hashtag
• #secondcivilwarletters
• social media
• Twitter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andrew S. Ross is Lecturer in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests are interdisciplinary and varied but include critical discourse studies, political communication, discourses of new media and sociolinguistics. His work has been published in such venues as New Media and Society; Communication and Sport; The Language Learning Journal; Journal of Language, Identity and Education; Discourse, Context and Media; Journal of Pragmatics; and Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. He is the co-editor of the volumes The Sociolinguistics of Hip-Hop as Critical Conscience: Dissatisfaction and Dissent (2017, Palgrave) and Discourses of (De)Legitimization: Participatory Culture in Digital Contexts (2018, Routledge). School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Education Building A.35, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia.

Notes

1 Although no longer trending, a simple Twitter search of the #secondcivilwarletters hashtag will reveal that it is still active, with the mock letters still forming the foundation for ongoing satirical political commentary.