Introduction

Despite its positive label, the current social media landscape is often an anti-social environment where negative language use and behaviour seem to flourish (Cosentino 2020; Massanari 2020). Reddit, a social networking service (SNS) consisting of numerous online communities referred to as subreddits, has been identified as particularly prone to negativity (Eddington 2020). The SNS has also been described as a hotbed of toxic masculinity (Haase 2021). In popular thought, toxic masculinity tends to be linked to gender-based violence towards women, thanks to the #Metoo movement (Harrington 2022; Trott 2022). This type of abusive behaviour is but one facet of toxic masculinity, however, which represents a combination of male attitudes and behaviour in response to societal expectations of what it means to be male (Connell 2002). As such, it always involves the subordination of others, including other men, as reflected in Kupers’ (2005: p. 714) definition of toxic masculinity as “the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence.” As a cultural phenomenon, the notion is useful in a descriptive investigation of concrete expressions of masculinities involving language. Toxic masculinity seems to be a gendered practice that may manifest itself within specific online communities, such as various subreddits (White 2019). In Australia, nearly 63% of Reddit users are male and 62% are between the ages of 18–34 years (Gjorgievska 2022) and, globally, men account for 64% of the platform’s user base (Statista 2023). The r/AustralianPolitics subreddit appears to explicitly promote the assertive and aggressive expression of dominant male views while dismissing other perspectives, often motivated by negative emotion. As such, it forms a prime illustration of how toxic masculinity can motivate the engagement strategies employed by some of its users. It needs to be emphasised, however, that the subreddit under investigation diverges from the usual topics associated with the manosphere, which typically include anti-feminism, discussions on gender relations, or disparaging remarks about women.

According to White (2020), a writer’s main goal is to establish solidarity with a putative reader, referred to by Zappavigna (2022) as ambient affiliation in their study of social bonding practices on SNSs such as Twitter. Another possible outcome of dialogical interaction, however, is disalignment, which may involve the use of negated constructions. The concept of negation has been studied extensively in the past, with scholars exploring metalinguistic negation (Horn 1985; Larrivée 2020), semantic ambiguity (Marques 2010), presuppositions (Stalnaker 1973; Abrusán 2016), or, more recently, negation in natural language processing (Díaz and López 2019; Morante and Blanco 2021). Nevertheless, it has received little attention from functional linguists, especially with regard to its rhetorical effects (Kress and Hodge 1979; Nahajec 2021; Jiang and Hyland 2022). In Martin and White’s (2005: p. 118) Appraisal theory, negation is classified as one of the engagement resources of the subcategory of disclaim. It serves the rhetorical purpose of “introducing the alternative positive position into the dialogue, and hence acknowledging it, so as to reject it.” This type of discursive move is further described as “corrective rather than confrontational, presenting the addresser as sensitively attending to the addressee’s level of knowledge and seeking to adjust their communication accordingly” (Martin and White 2005: p. 120). It is often argued that individuals use SNSs to seek agreement from like-minded others, promoting echo chambers and homogeneous behaviour (Cinelli et al. 2021; Dayter and Messerli 2022). Reddit offers its users the advantage of sharing content anonymously, not only providing individuals with the opportunity to engage in online discussions with users sharing similar interests, but also to interact with others without the need to take responsibility for the effects of their language use. The SNS’s upvoting system, promoting favoured posts, appears to be largely driven by emotion as well and negative posts tend to be upvoted, which further encourages polemic rather than open-ended discussion (Chipidza 2021; Davis and Graham 2021). As Massanari (2017: p. 330) points out, Reddit appears to reinforce the preferences of young, white, cisgendered, heterosexual males and its design, including the use of karma points, cross-subreddit content aggregation, governance framework, and policies related to offensive material, seems to facilitate “toxic technocultures” on the platform.

The study uses computer-assisted appraisal analysis to examine online language use on the subreddit of r/AustralianPolitics. Through an investigation of negation patterns in the Redditors’ discourse, it aims to examine the employment of negated constructions in the SNS users’ engagement moves. It further explores possible motivations behind negation as a stance marker. Two corpora, consisting of a total of 2637 most upvoted comments (49,866 words), were gathered between 11–14 April and 7–10 May 2022, to establish whether any changes in the Reddit users’ language use behaviour occured between the start and the end of the Australian federal election campaign. As an empirical investigation of dialogical interaction on Reddit involving negation, the study demonstrates how contextual motivators, including the display of emotional attitudes that may be associated with covert toxic masculinity, such as anger or frustration, can negatively impact online language use and how these attitudes may be strategically employed as engagement resources by some users to control the discussion or reject other users’ views. It further emphasises the importance of negation in the identification of toxic language use on SNSs.

The remainder of the paper’s structure is as follows. Section “Literature review” sketches a brief overview of previous studies investigating toxic language and negation and explains the methodology. Section “Research method” details the concrete research method applied in the study. An appraisal analysis of negation in the Reddit users’ comments and replies is provided in Sect. “Findings”. Section “Further discussion and conclusions” includes some further discussion of the findings and a few concluding remarks.

Literature review

Toxic masculinity and negation

The present study adopts a corpus-driven approach to appraisal analysis, which ultimately aims to provide a detailed linguistic description of the concrete discursive expression of toxic masculinity. Online toxic language use is often gender-based and cyber violence seems to be on the rise, maintaining both internal and external gender inequalities (Liu et al. 2023). Subsequently, various attempts have been made to automatically identify harmful language. For example Dixon et al. (2018) set out to develop a text classifier to detect toxicity in Wikipedia comments. Fan et al.’s (2021) classification model, based on tweets regarding the Brexit debate in the UK, is an example of the use of deep learning in measuring social media toxicity. Sentiment analysis can be used for this task as well, as negative language tends to be associated with higher toxicity levels (Risch and Krestel 2020). More covert elements such as irony or sarcasm remain challenging to classify, however, since these more elusive discursive strategies are strongly linked to extra-textual knowledge. Counter-factuals and negation produce considerable issues, especially implicit negation (Mahany et al. 2022). When it comes to the detection of toxic language on Reddit, moderation bots are typically used to control the content shared on the platform, with mixed success (Reddit, n.d.).

Negating a proposition does not simply equal stating that x is not true. In oral discourse, negation is highly context-dependent. It is used to acknowledge a fact while subsequently rejecting it (Macken-Horarik and Martin 2003). Tottie (1982: p. 88) points out two main categories of negation: rejection and denial, adding that the latter may be explicit or implicit depending on what preceded in a conversation. This claim draws specific attention to the context of the proposition. Consider the following example:

(1) No, he won’t.

This is an outright dismissal of a view expressed previously, which is highly characteristic of explicit negation. Another example:

(2) Although I don’t personally believe in evolution, this is just normal survival of the fittest for the party.

Here, the reader needs a great deal of additional information and contextual awareness to be able to disambiguate the negated sentence. They are expected to share the same knowledge as the author, but also have to know what this refers to and be familiar with the party to which the writer alludes. According to Pagano (1994), in denials, the ideational aspect is predominant, as the reader aims to correct the information shared in the previous utterance(s) (in italics). For example:

(3) A: Howard actually doing the right thing after Port Arthur, while the “obvious” choice, is still something to be grateful for.

B: His so-called national gun reform has never happened…

As White (2020: pp. 418–419) states, negative “propositions ‘invoke’ the positive propositions which they contradict.” Upon exploring the notion in several academic papers, Webber (2004) found that, in academic writing, negation is commonly used to compare one’s own research to previous studies, either to shed light on what is being discussed (informational) or to persuade the reader while aiming to fill a research gap. Similarly, Sun and Crosthwaite (2022) examined negation within the limitations sections of one hundred PhD theses. Their research clarified some of the discipline-specific rhetorical effects and interpersonal strategies used in academic texts. By focusing on sentential negation in the Reddit users’ propositions, a conventionalised discursive gestalt of the Australian Redditor may be obtained based on a description of how they dialogically position themselves among other users on the SNS.

Intertextuality

Any statements made by Reddit users are internally dialogised (Bakhtin 1981: p. 284). They may be situated within an overarching cultural and historical context. Therefore, the concept of intertextuality entails that each post, comment or reply, shared virtually, is connected to where the utterances are being produced, in this case the realm of social media, and when. Since cultural context, comprising of a set of shared beliefs, attitudes, practices, and values, is closely tied to historical context, a highly dynamic pattern of discursive interactions thus emerges, raising the question as to whether social media, as a contextualised space where discourses proliferate, establish their own regimes of truth (Foucault 1980). SNSs encourage users to build discourse communities furthering “horizons of expectation, defined rhythms of activity, a sense of its history, and value systems for what is good and less good work” (Swales 2016: p. 69). This entails that all information circulating among members relates to a more or less clearly articulated attitude towards reality, which emerges from a highly inter-subjective configuration of meanings and emotions. Dialogical interactions on Reddit seem to constitute a language game characterised by the frequent use of polemic negation, whereby commenters negate a preceding voice stating the affirmative (Ducrot 1984). The result is a plurilogue in which both internal and external viewpoints are continuously being advanced and subsequently refuted.

The wider context of the Redditors’ dialogical interactions on r/AustralianPolitics consists of Australian society. In Australia, climate change has been a topic of major discussion over the past few years, encouraging a great deal of opinionating, both in the media and on SNSs, even though it did not immediately take centre stage in the campaigns orchestrated by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or his predecessor, Scott Morrison (Baker 2020). Global warming is often linked to misinformation, especially in the digital realm. Politics tends to be a predominantly male discursive domain in Australian society. Even though one would assume that Reddit users remain largely unaware of other users’ gender identity, since the SNS encourages the use of pseudonyms, a relatively high number of Redditors seem to expect their interlocutors to be male (Reddit 2017). Australian male users of the SNS tend to add clear gender markers to their usernames (e.g. sirboozebum, Centrist-He-Him, or Jeffmister). They seem to frequently use colloquial terms such as bloke, mate, or man, and may present as male through the avatars they create on their profile page. The present study focuses on male language use behaviour on the SNS.

The appraisal framework

Halliday’s (1978a) model of context of situation has been used extensively to explore the ideational (field), interpersonal (tenor) and textual (mode) meanings interwoven around online discursive practice. The highly interpersonal character of social media exchanges necessitates a more thorough investigation of tenor as part of this specific type of register. Building further on the foundations laid by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework allows for a detailed exploration of the complex attitudinal and dialogic meanings encapsulated in the Redditors’ online discursive exchanges, not only by examining their most salient linguistic choices to express sentiment or feelings, but also by taking a closer look at the workings of intersubjective positioning on Reddit (Englebretson 2007).

The appraisal system offers multiple resources for the construction of emotion, under the umbrella category of Attitude, namely affect, judgement, and appreciation. Affect pertains to the expression of emotion and includes un/happiness, dis/satisfaction, in/security, dis/inclination, and surprise. Judgement involves the evaluation of other individuals’ abilities or ethics: social esteem, including normality, tenacity, and capacity, and social sanction, including veracity and propriety. Appreciation deals with the evaluation of the aesthetics of a concrete or abstract thing and includes reaction, composition, and valuation. The expression of emotion is distinct from sharing opinions. Resources involved in the latter may be identified as part of the system of Engagement, which is concerned with dialogical positioning and includes both monoglossic and heteroglossic utterances. All the aforementioned resources can be amplified or weakened, which falls under the third system of Graduation (Appendix, Tables 1 and 2). This paper is concerned with negation, which primarily involves the Redditors’ use of denial as a sub-type of the disclaim branch of the Engagement taxonomy of appraisal (Martin and White 2005) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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The appraisal system (Martin and White 2005)

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Based on the Bakhtinian notions of monoglossia (one voice) and heteroglossia (multiple voices) (Bakhtin 1981), Martin and White (2005) define monoglossic propositions as ‘bare assertions’ which solely involve the author’s voice. Against the backdrop of a highly diverse multitude of voices, the writer may opt for such assertions, expecting the reader to share the same perspective and to accept the statement as “accurate, fair, reasonable and/or well-founded” (White 2021). This turns the proposition into a presumption—sometimes also referred to as a presupposition—leaving no space for further discussion or argumentation. Such statements, which often remain unsupported by evidence, seem to be common in online subcultures (Koller et al. 2023). In contrast, heteroglossic utterances can be seen as utterances which do incorporate multiple viewpoints. Nevertheless, monoglossic propositions remain inherently dialogic, even if the statements may not seem to be directed at anyone in particular (Bakhtin 1981). As long as a response from other users is still possible, the proposition can be seen as part of the exchange.

The present study focuses on r/AustralianPolitics users’ heteroglossic utterances and covert use of negation. Heteroglossic resources can be employed to either contract or expand the discourse (Martin and White 2005). Dialogic contraction involves the exclusion of other value positions and occurs when writers disclaim an adopted perspective or proclaim that a specific view is trustworthy or valid. Disclaim implies that the author either denies a response from the reader or expresses a counter-expectation using the sub-systems of deny or counter. As mentioned earlier, the analysis mainly focuses on the use of deny markers. Denial expresses disalignment and tends to evoke its positive counterpart followed by a rejection of the evoked mental image or ideational construct (Tottie 1982; Pagano 1994; Dancygier 2012). Another sub-system of contraction is proclaim, which includes concur, pronounce, and endorse resources. Concur occurs when a writer expresses agreement with a particular perspective using affirm or concede markers. Pronounce involves utterances which emphasise a viewpoint. Finally, endorse markers may be used to underline the trustworthiness of sources. Dialogic expansion, on the other hand, occurs when writers entertain an alternative stance, or attribute the advanced viewpoint to other sources, either by acknowledging them or by using reporting verbs to distance themselves from the included value position. It is important to examine the directionality of negative propositions as well, since they may not only target the reader, but also a third party, a phenomenon referred to by Tottie (1982) and Pagano (1994) as implied negation. The directionality of a negation can also be unclear.

The Redditors construe an ideal reader whom they orient towards a preferred conceptualisation of society (Martin and White 2005). As such, their propositions are linked to various axiological or existential paradigms (Pagano 1994), and to ideology, since they are associated with presuppositions (Bakhtin 1981). As White (2020: p. 419) points out, “the potential persuasiveness cum ideological potential of such texts can be explored as an interplay between the multiple propositions which the author affords these various dialogistic statuses.”

Research method

The data for the study were obtained from the comments section of a subreddit named r/AustralianPolitics (223,000 subscribers) by interrogating the Reddit API, using Python 3, between 11–14 April and 7–10 May 2022, and saved as two separate plain text files. Extracted from the same subreddit, corpus A comprises a total of 37,620 words and corpus B includes 12,246 words. Data collection began on 11 April, one day after former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement of a federal election scheduled for 21 May 2022. The collection was ceased after a few days. A subsequent dataset was obtained from the subreddit when early voting commenced, as the subject garnered intense debate at the start of the campaign, after which the discussion tapered off and public attention shifted to the new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. This allowed for a comparative analysis of how the Redditors’ use of negation, in combination with various other appraisal resources, was strategically employed both at the start and end of the election campaign period to underline key points and frame argumentation. When selecting the social media platform for analysis, the author’s anticipation was that the topic would spark intense discussion among users, featuring a substantial amount of negation as a means of expressing viewpoints with strong conviction. Upon reviewing the gathered data, it became apparent that the discourse lacked specific characteristics typically associated with the manosphere. However, a notable presence of toxic language was observed.

Parts-Of-Speech tagging was performed on the data using the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK 2023) and a set of tables containing suggested POS-tags (Appendix, Table 3). A full appraisal analysis was undertaken on both corpora, focusing on the systems of Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation following Martin and White’s (2005) framework. For example, searches were conducted on all adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, and comment adjuncts in each corpus on Notepad++ to examine the employment of affect resources by all Redditors, regardless of gender (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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Example search on Notepad++

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The results were organised in a text file and uploaded to Notepad++, quantifying the appraisals for each of the categories and sub-types (Van Poucke 2023). Although popular corpus tools such as AntConc or WordSmith already provide user-friendly interfaces, Notepad++ offers a higher degree of flexibility, allowing needs-based customisation for appraisal analysis. Unlike tools with pre-defined functionalities, Notepad++ is highly versatile. It supports Python or spaCy, enabling the possible addition of sentiment analysis, and external libraries, such as NLTK, can be used in conjunction with the open-source tool. The text editor allows for the creation of relevant marking and annotation schemes, facilitating the highlighting of salient features and dominant appraisal patterns. The editor’s pre-processing capabilities, such as the ability to remove hashtags, emojis, hyperlinks or robotic messages, are particularly useful when dealing with larger, unstructured social media datasets extracted from SNSs, such as Reddit, using Python. The option to search all opened documents simultaneously, while still allowing the user to view the context in which each of the appraisal items appears, proves helpful as well (Notepad++ 2023). Upon clicking the line numbers in the search window, the screen jumps to the exact place where the excerpt appears in the corpus (Fig. 2). The results of the frequency analysis were organised in tables.

After this, a search was conducted on the following negation markers: not/n’t, no, never, no one, none, neither, nor, nothing, nowhere, nobody, hardly, and barely. Lexical negation (fail, refuse, renounce, deny, prevent, or abstain) was not included in the search and neither was any prefixal negation (inadequacy, unwelcome, or dissatisfaction). This decision was made for the sake of scope and clarity. The negation items were analysed in concurrence with the findings obtained from the previously performed appraisal analysis and the results were summarised, visualised and interpreted. Then, all negation patterns in the commenters’ engagement moves, along with any attitudinal resources, were analysed and interpreted. To ensure confidentiality, comment writers were referred to using gender-neutral terms such as Redditor, commenter, or addressee. However, all representative excerpts in the findings section were tagged M for male, F for female, U for unclear, based on the Redditors’ public usernames and the avatars found on their profile page, to explore gender as a possible contextual factor. Based on Burkhart’s (2017) BigQuery tool, out of a total of 4798 commenters on r/AustralianPolitics, 82.8% are male and 17.2% can be identified as female, allowing for an additional contrastive comparison between the employment of negation devices in corpora A and B and the use of negation in a publicly accessible dataset (Corpus C) (Cornell University 2019) extracted from r/BabyBumpsandBeyondAU, a platform with predominantly female commenters.

Findings

Engagement

Corpus A includes a total of 3038 Engagement resources, with a frequency of one realisation every 12 words and Corpus B includes 492 Engagement resources, with a frequency of one realisation every 25 words. The percentage of negative propositions in both corpora is highly similar (28% versus 25%) (Fig. 3). As for concrete negation markers, the number in Corpus A is 752, while Corpus B counts 202 items. The average frequency of negation (per 1000 words) is 19.98 for Corpus A and 16.50 for Corpus B, and the most frequently used negation items in both corpora are not and no. Corpus B contains less tokens of negation than Corpus A. It has previously been argued that the frequency of negation is higher in spoken text than in formal documents (Biber et al. 1999; Hidalgo-Downing 2003). Since the dialogical interactions between SNS users closely resemble oral conversation (Andersen 2018), a high number of negation instances were found on the r/AustralianPolitics subreddit. In contrast, Jiang and Hyland’s (2022) corpus of research abstracts revealed a frequency of only 4.22.

Fig. 3
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Negation in corpora

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In terms of clausal negation, corpus A comprised a higher number of dialogically contractive (disclaim: 38 + proclaim: 21 = 59) than expansive resources (entertain: 18 + attribute: 7 = 25).Footnote 1 Similarly, corpus B also counted more dialogically contractive (disclaim: 31 + proclaim: 13 = 44) than expansive resources (entertain: 17 + attribute: 8 = 25) (Fig. 4). Contractive resources “challenge, fend off or restrict the scope” of other voices, whereas an expansive stance “actively makes allowances for dialogically alternative positions” (Martin and White 2005: p. 102). Within the subcategory of disclaim, more contractive denial resources (20 and 17) were used on the subreddit than counter devices (18 and 14) at both points in time. The samples suggest that the subreddit users seem to dislike perspectives that differ from their own and consistently refute any divergent views. This discursive pattern of frequent use of contractive resources may be associated with dominant power positioning (Li and Zhang 2021).

Fig. 4
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Use of engagement resources

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In theory, social media discourse is intended to be expansive, involving a respectful exchange of views, “endless conversation, and authentic human connection” (Reddit n.d.). However, at first blush, an equal exchange of views does not seem to constitute a common social practice in the digital sphere, including on Reddit. Language use involves self-expression but also entails a conscious enactment upon reality and others in order to achieve mostly self-centred goals, especially in terms of facilitating interactions associated with the exchange of goods-and-services (Halliday 1978b). Similar to how individuals purchase and provide goods and services, language can be used as a tool to interact with others, negotiating meanings and achieving various objectives, which, in this case, do not seem to be profit-driven but communication-focused.

Upon examining how the Redditors’ attain their communicative goals in the discourse samples, it was found that the most frequently used negation devices in corpus A were not/n’t, no, never, and nothing. Similarly, in corpus B, users preferred not/n’t, no, never, and nothing, but also none and no one (Fig. 5). The high percentage of not-negation or verbal negation confirms the speech-like character of the Reddit discourse, since this type of negation is more common in oral language (Burke 2019). Accordingly, the commenter’s attitude is one of disagreement with some of the viewpoints held by other users. In most cases, this involves the outright rejection of the other person’s value position. The Redditors further countered previously uttered statements using negation. Apart from more frequent instances of denial or counter, a limited number of expansive entertain and pronounce formulations appeared in the negated constructions as well. A brief comparison between the two discourse samples under investigation and the r/BabyBumpsandBeyondAU dataset (Corpus C) (Cornell University 2019) showed that the amount of negation used on the latter subreddit was considerably lower (Fig. 5). This does not necessarily imply that there is a direct link between gender and negation, however. The disparity between the two subreddits is mostly observed in terms of stance, as the study adopts a linguistic perspective to online toxic masculinity practice.

Fig. 5
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Use of negation markers in Corpora A, B, and C

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Various combinations of negation and attitude were encountered on the r/AustralianPolitics subreddit, with a preference for negative judgement and appreciation resources (Fig. 6). A more detailed description of the negation patterns and their strategic use on the subreddit follows.

Fig. 6
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Negation patterns

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Negation patterns

negation + attitude (affect)

In excerpt 4 (corpus A), the commenter uses negation in a mental verb projection (I think) to project a negative attitude of insecurity onto the addressee regarding former prime minister Scott Morrison’s discourse. They refer to the latter as a bloke, which is an Australian slang term used by the Redditor to reduce the mining magnate Clive Palmer to an ordinary man.

(4) I think [pronounce] this is just [downscale] further proof that you can’t trust [insecurity: disquiet] anything this bloke [social esteem: negative capacity] says (M).

This pervasiveness of negativity persisted over time, even after the heated debate had subsided, as, in corpus B, several attitudinal meanings projected by Redditors still seemed to stir negative emotion in the reader, primarily through negative evaluations of male politicians’ ethical conduct. The comment in excerpt 5 is directed at another user who previously stated that the health minister appeared too close to several pharmaceutical companies. Using terms such as fucker can aid writers in establishing solidarity with the audience as a whole, since strong emotional utterances tend to gain the general public’s attention and exert positive effects in terms of perception (Kwon and Cho 2017):

(5) I wouldn’t trust [insecurity: disquiet] the fucker [social sanction: negative propriety] as far as I could kick him (M).

This negation pattern reveals that the Redditors use a great deal of negative sentiment, as a form of banter, which is defined by Leech (2014: pp. 100–101) as “mock-impoliteness” or “a way of reinforcing in-group solidarity.” However, as Vice (2021: p. 153) points out, banter often carries negative connotations that may be linked to toxic masculinity, especially when it directly targets other users online, as in the following excerpt:

(6) Why can’t you be bothered [disinclination: non-desire] to look up Glencore and how many hundreds of billions they made (M)?

The highly confrontational nature of the utterance is reinforced by the commenter’s selection of interrogative mood.

negation + attitude (judgement)

Redditors in both corpora predominantly appear to employ judgement resources in combination with negation to negatively evaluate other male individuals, including journalists, politicians, religious leaders, employers, fellow Australians, or the addressee, with political leaders and fellow users forming the most frequent negatively appraised entities. Other users are mainly being judged by some of the commenters on their capability to provide intelligent comments on articles, websites, or YouTube links included in the posts in more direct attacks. In excerpt 7, a commenter advances a claim that refutes the addressee’s view that former Prime Minister John Howard used a particular counter-attack strategy in a previous election. Using no-negation, the Redditor attacks the addressee’s cognitive abilities. Excerpt 8 is another ad hominem argument that includes a directive (don’t), which is monoglossic, as it does not allow for any alternative action (Martin and White 2005).

(7) Nobody with braincells to rub together [social esteem: negative capacity] thinks [proclaim: endorse] that had any influence on the end result (F).

(8) Do not parade your ignorance [social esteem: negative capacity] with your acerbic [negative valuation] bias (M).

In excerpt 9, members of parliament are depicted as involved in activities that are regarded by the Redditor as insufficiently masculine, such as being careful or granting other politicians’ desires. Derogatory phrases or terms such as nobody with braincells to rub together (excerpt 7), do not parade your ignorance (excerpt 8), pussyfooting (excerpt 9), or lefties (excerpt 9) negatively denote and demote individuals adhering to opposing perspectives and vocally criticise their actions. This type of depiction, in conjunction with explicit or invoked negative judgement of capacity, tenacity, or propriety, is a common discursive strategy in toxic masculine discourse (Heritage and Koller 2020):

(9) The goal is the government not pussyfooting [social esteem: negative tenacity] around pandering [social sanction: negative propriety] to the lefties [social sanction: negative propriety] who will steal [social sanction: negative propriety] your gender (M).

Corpus B demonstrates an ongoing deployment of attitudinal resources belonging to the subcategory of judgement to negatively assess other individuals’ capacity and tenacity. For example, in excerpt 10, a commenter negatively evaluates another user’s ability to differentiate between trustworthy and false information, and accuses them of being scared, which is considered a highly undesirable trait:

(10) China isn’t going to invade [social sanction: negative propriety] Australia, that’s just fear mongering [social sanction: negative propriety] for political purposes - you’re more gullible [social esteem: negative capacity] and compliant [social esteem: negative tenacity] when you’re scared [insecurity: disquiet] (M).

The above-mentioned negation pattern confirms Jacobson’s (2018) finding that ad hominem fallacies tend to be highly prominent in toxic masculine discourse.

negation + attitude (appreciation)

Some of the Reddit users in corpus A further combine negation and appreciation resources to negatively value current or past local or foreign government policies and decisions, or to describe their own and other people’s negative reactions to the perceived aberrant behaviour displayed by male party representatives. As an example of the latter, the commenter simultaneously corrects Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s response provided in an election campaign interview and the addressee’s view that the interviewee should have checked his phone or asked a staff member for assistance (excerpt 11). The Redditor’s comment in excerpt 12 perceives of Labor’s policies and political narrative as lacking coherence and refers to the party members using the pejorative Australian slang term flog, which commonly denotes a highly unpleasant male individual (Langridge 2022).

(11) No, what he \*should\* [pronounce] have said was: an employment figure based on a minimum hr a week of work is not a good [reaction: negative quality] indicator of actual employment to begin with… (M).

(12) [They went] from positive [positive valuation] policies and no cohesive [composition: negative balance] narrative, to no policies and no cohesive [composition: negative balance] narrative. Absolute flogs [social esteem: negative capacity] (M).

In corpus B, frequent combinations of negative judgement and valuation continue to express the Redditors’ apparent strong disalignment with other users’ views regarding mostly abstract concepts. In excerpt 13, a commenter pronounces the viewpoint that the European gas pipeline issue is worse than the crisis in Ukraine, which they then link to Australia’s export of minerals, comparing it to a developing country. Excerpt 14 is a criticism of the addressee’s argumentation using interrogative mood.

(13) It’s [pronounce] not as bad [negative valuation] as the Germans buying more gas delivered by Nord Stream.

(14) If it had no value [negative valuation] in your argument then why include it (M)?

According to Martin and White (2005: p. 57), valuation is linked to individuals’ mental perceptions of the world in which they live. As the above negation pattern shows, SNSs such as Reddit “allow for boys and men to engage in discourse that creates opportunity to raise their masculine capital” (Cleland et al. 2018: p. 103). This discursive practice often involves the devaluation of other users’ viewpoints, opinion dropping, and the use of demeaning language.

counter + negation

Any disalignment from other users’ viewpoints in corpus A is expressed using negation which follows countering to either correct a claim or a view previously shared by another user (excerpt 15), or to emphasise a commenter’s personal and predominantly negative perspective on the situation (excerpt 16). This pattern tends to be combined with negative judgement (excerpt 15), although positive evaluative language can be used as well (excerpt 16) to achieve the same discursive goal of disagreement:

(15) But [counter] it’s not a LNP conspiracy [social sanction: negative propriety]; Labor used it too (M).

(16) Still, [counter] that doesn’t disqualify it as good [positive valuation] policy (M).

Both excerpts are corrections of views expressed by other users in preceding comments, with but and still inferring the author’s divergent stance.

The same countering strategy is employed even more frequently in corpus B, where it is accompanied by the Redditors’ expression of negative emotions, either their own (excerpt 17) or on behalf of others (excerpt 18). In excerpt 18, a commenter explicitly evaluates the information as contrary to their own expectation, again, construing a negative attitude to invoke negative judgement.

(17) However, [counter] I haven’t seen [pronounce] any information about plans for Australians suffering [insecurity: disquiet] from eating disorders (M).

(18) All these smaller private generators are [pronounce] happy to [inclination: desire] provide power into the energy market but [counter] no one wants to [disinclination: non-desire] pay for grid stabilisation (M).

The negation pattern exemplified above suggests that some of the subreddit users express collective discontent with the current political situation in Australia. In excerpt 17, the Redditor uses an authoritative tone, which may indicate a dismissive attitude towards Australian policy and other users’ opinions on the matter. The juxtaposition in excerpt 18, contrasting private generators and individual customers, conveys a dominating viewpoint, demonstrating certain aspects of toxic masculinity, particularly in its disregard for any concerns linked to the refusal to pay.

concur + counter + negation

Counter strategies often co-occurred with contractive concur devices in Corpus A. Some of the Redditors seem to attempt to persuade other users to accept perceived correct information. For example, through the use of a rhetorical question, the commenter in excerpt 19 makes a sarcastic comment about social security payments, directed at a third party, to challenge a user’s previously expressed viewpoint:

(19) And I know [concur] us bums [social sanction: negative propriety] on Centrelink shouldn’t be [pronounce] spending time doing anything else but applying for jobs but [counter] why shouldn’t [pronounce] I be able to [social esteem: positive capacity] afford to watch a movie once now and then with a friend (M)?

In this type of construction, the writer uses I know, combined with countering resources, to signal their reluctance to fully concede ground, despite the brief concession. As a recurrent pattern in the Redditors’ discourse, this reveals a resistance to conform to societal norms and expectations. It is also employed as a discursive strategy that may be associated with a form of covert toxic masculinity, characterised by continuous dismissiveness towards individuals in vulnerable positions and a sense of superiority.

The combination of concur, counter and negation became less prominent over time. In corpus B, a slightly different pattern of negation followed by a concur resource occurred (excerpt 20), as part of a commenter’s negative evaluation of Australian prime ministers.

(20) None apart from [concur] the Labour fanatics [social sanction: negative propriety] (M).

By starting the sentence with none, the writer firmly underlines their own preferred value position here.

Even though negation remains directly combined with concession in corpus B, it now occurs without the countering strategy, in several marked constructions. For example, in the excerpt below, a Redditor makes a sarcastic remark about how the Australian government handles mining and other valuable resources.

(21) Oh, yes [concur], not in our plans at all [up-scale].

Here, the commenter seems to agree to reject the imagined scenario of a responsible management of resources such as Indigenous culture. Conveying a sarcastic tone, however, they merely pretend to concur with the other user’s view, which renders it dismissive.

pronounce + negation (+ pronounce)

The male politicians’ perceived inadequacy to tackle the most dominant social issues in Australian society forms the core of the subreddit users’ argumentation, with commenters regularly providing evidence to justify their claims by combining pronounce and entertain strategies, as well as predominantly negative judgement or appreciation resources. For example, in correction of another user’s view based on an article included in a shared post, a commenter states that there will not be any new gas and coal projects in Australia, justifying this by adding that, in their view, such undertakings are no longer profitable (excerpt 22). The lexical semantic negator hardly is used to express negative normality. Another user argues that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) ought to be nationalised, while referring to the disability sector as unprofitable and characterised by abuse, adding an element of uncertainty to the main clause by using the entertain device probably, deviating from the usual pattern in the sample (excerpt 23).

(22) That’s hardly [down-scale] radical [social esteem: negative normality] and is probably [entertain] going to happen anyway because [pronounce] they simply [down-scale] aren’t economically viable [negative valuation] any more (M).

(23) The NDIS should [pronounce] probably [entertain] be nationalised as it’s [pronounce] not getting bang for the buck and clients are being scammed [social sanction: negative propriety] (M).

Additionally, the Redditors opt for pronounce devices on their own or together with other discursive strategies to challenge both inter- or intra-textual positions, such as the view, expressed in an ABC article, that it is important for a prime minister to know the correct figures when developing policies (excerpt 24), or the sarcastic presumption, directed at another user, that they are unable to comprehend evolution theory, which is another ad hominem (excerpt 25). Excerpt 24 demonstrates how strongly invested the writer is in their argument based on their use of the popular intensifier literally.

(24) This has [pronounce] literally [up-scale] nothing to do with him knowing a stat off the top of his head (U).

(25) I think [pronounce] you don’t believe in evolution because [pronounce] you don’t understand it (M).

A substantial number of users further frequently combine pronounce strategies and negation to enforce their authorial voice and establish dominance. In excerpt 26, a Redditor corrects another user’s claim that the fuel rebate is an important election issue.

(26) No one would [disinclination: non-desire] use trucks, particularly [pronounce] not over any appreciable [composition: positive balance] distance if they had to pay the real cost (U).

Likewise, commenters in corpus B still explicitly intervene in the discourse providing other users with their overbearing views regarding the export of precious resources, followed by a justification introduced by the explicit inference marker so (excerpt 27), or the broadcasting of an election debate between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese (excerpt 28).

(27) Because [pronounce] we can’t [social esteem: negative capacity] produce our own steel from ore in the quantities and prices we require [inclination: desire] so [justification] we sell ore to China and buy finished steel for our industries (M).

(28) Because [pronounce] there is no requirement for debates (M).

As Martin and White (2005: p. 130) explain, pronounce strategies pose “an obvious threat to solidarity since the authorial voice overtly presents itself as at odds with this construed addressee.”

endorse + negation

Whenever a Redditor employs an endorse marker, they do not allow other users to argue against their proposition, which is firmly anchored in the writer’s own subjectivity. In excerpt 29, a commenter denies making any incorrect statements about the Labor party’s climate change policy, while, in excerpt 30, they berate the addressee, employing a sarcastic tone, for failing to mention Australian investigative journalist Michael West’s view on the media’s bias against Labor.

(29) Not once did I say [endorse] that they shouldn’t [pronounce] have policies (M).

(30) I’ll note [endorse] you’re not actually [endorse] addressing anything he’s said (M).

Some of the commenters use contrastive negation, such as the additive construction not only…but, evoking two possibilities without rejecting any opposing views (Hidalgo-Downing 2021). In combining this type of negation with the endorse strategy in excerpt 31, the Redditor invites other users to positively assess people with disabilities as being productive and to value making accommodations for their needs. The contrastive if not is added to emphasise that what follows is the commenter’s personal stance (Dancygier 2012).

(31) It’s been shown that [endorse] when accommodations are made, not only is [pronounce] it cheaper [positive valuation]…, but [counter] that person is going to be [pronounce] just as productive [social esteem: positive capacity], if not more [up-scale] productive [social esteem: positive capacity] than their able-bodied [social esteem: positive capacity] counterpart (M).

No endorse strategies with negation or contrastive constructions were encountered in corpus B. Even though the r/AustralianPolitics users mostly employed contractive resources, they also occasionally employed expanding engagement strategies when using negation. Some of the most salient patterns are summarised below.

(entertain) + negation

A small number of commenters do consider other viewpoints from time to time, for example by painting an alternative election scenario in which any positive Labor party policies are being challenged by idealists, which is a positive label. However, this representation invokes negative judgement due to the commenter’s sarcastic tone (excerpt 32). The Redditor refuses to entertain the previously expressed claim that ‘Queensland will likely hand the country back to the LNP,’ which is preceded by a conditional. The up-scaling devices a hell of a lot and perfect are added by the commenter to contrast this image with the actual campaign. Again, the tone is sarcastic, and the conditional part of the sentence reveals ironic criticism of idealists who are good at explaining things, without this leading to any concrete action. The construction further contains a great deal of lexicalised negative propriety (demolishing, pontificate). Possible alternative scenarios seem to be only briefly entertained by the Redditors, however, and then presented as doubtful and rejected. Again, the negation in excerpt 33 is intra-textual. A commenter refers to the practice of paying people with disabilities a minimum wage and subsequently makes a sarcastic remark using the entertain resource apparently to cast doubt on the situation.

(32) It would [entertain] be a hell of a lot [quantification] better [positive valuation] time if it wasn’t made unnecessarily [quantification] hard [negative valuation] this time by a group of idealists [social sanction: negative propriety] tying their name to the Labor brand and demolishing [social sanction: negative propriety] the good [positive valuation] to pontificate [social sanction: negative propriety] about the perfect [up-scale/positive valuation] in the political wilderness (U).

(33) It apparently [entertain] is not something this company does (F).

In corpus B, some of the users still employed entertain strategies when employing negation in combination with judgement (excerpt 34) or appreciation resources (excerpt 35). In excerpt 34, the Redditor directly instructs the addressee as to which attitude they ought to adopt towards other individuals, followed by an outright rejection of the user’s previously expressed view that people are not idiots. The commenter’s sarcastic tone demonstrates their desire to assert dominance in the discussion, as an aggressive style is typical of toxic masculinity. Excerpt 35 is an example of the use of hyperbolic language and invalidating baby talk (Labor bad) to emphasise the Redditor’s negative judgement of the situation in the Liberal party. This is reinforced by the commenter’s negative confrontational tone, which may further be associated with toxic masculine behaviour.

(34) You might not [entertain] reach them by calling them idiots [social esteem: negative capacity] but [counter] you do [pronounce] need to identify [endorse] that they are (M).

(35) Look at the rabble [social esteem: negative capacity] under Morrison: they can not [entertain] agree on anything except Labor bad [negative valuation] (M).

In both excerpts, the Redditors employ expanding engagement resources. However, the combination of entertain devices with inscribed negative judgement of capacity or negative valuation and a sarcastic tone renders the utterances toxic.

(acknowledge) + negation

Apart from using a more contractive endorse strategy, some of the subreddit users also acknowledge shared sources. These voices are situated either on or outside of the SNS, a phenomenon that may be referred to as inter- or intra-vocalisation. Regardless of the information’s origin, however, the focus remains on the Redditors’ anticipation of their fellow users’ response (Martin and White 2005). In excerpt 36, the commenter uses an unknown source as evidence in their argument that the Reserve Bank cash rate will not rise in the near future to contradict another user’s statement that it would drop. The writer of excerpt 37 clearly indicates where they stand regarding Clive Palmer’s contradictory assertion that the Liberal National Party is untrustworthy by adding the accusative assumption that the politician would be friends with the prime minister. This type of strategy aims to create solidarity with other users, together with the Australian nicknames for Anthony Albanese (Albo) and Scott Morrison (Scomo).

(36) Albo just clarified [acknowledge] they won’t up the rate until at least his second budget (M).

(37) He claims [acknowledge] you can’t trust [insecurity: disquiet] LNP when he is Scomo’s BFF [social sanction: negative propriety] (U)!

Subsequently, this type of negation pattern opens up the dialogue and demonstrates friendly banter. However, the number of contracting resources in the corpora, at both points in time, is higher than that of the expanding devices, further highlighting the large amount of toxicity in the discursive exchanges included in the samples.

Further discussion and conclusions

The findings suggest that the dominant negation patterns identified within the Australian Redditors’ discourse may be associated with masculine toxicity, as a considerable number of arguments involve ad hominem attacks and negative evaluations of other users and male politicians and their conduct by predominantly male interlocutors. The realm of Australian politics has been historically perceived as a male domain, which may extend to the digital space (Williams 2020). Users expressing a larger amount of negative sentiment are continuously rewarded through the upvoting of their comments and their claims seem to put more weight in the scale based on how their argumentation is received on the platform. Hence, a persona or collective identity emerges as a perpetrator of toxic masculinity on r/AustralianPolitics, employing the engagement strategy of negation as a power tool to dominate other users. This observed discursive manifestation of toxic ‘geek’ masculinity, in contrast with other ideological motivations, reveals unique inequalities between masculinities in the digital sphere. Unlike the typical practice, which tends to involve toxic language use targeting the female other, the Redditors’ discourse demonstrates atypical behaviour, directed towards other males, that appears to be validated and reinforced on the SNS.

A high number of users on the r/AustralianPolitics subreddit seem to collectively constitute a form of privileged masculinity associated with the hegemonic conceptualisation of expertise as a Western knowledge value. They do so by consistently adopting an authoritative stance through the frequent use of contractive resources and by dismissing differing viewpoints in their argumentation surrounding the federal climate change election in Australia. The emergence of covert toxic masculinity on r/AustralianPolitics is apparent in the Redditors’ use of negation as a power tool and self-declared expertise in Australian politics. Taking advantage of the fact that other users do not always share the same extra-textual knowledge, these commenters establish their hegemony on the SNS by disaligning themselves with any undesirable internal or external perspectives on Australia’s political situation in the lead-up to the 2022 federal election. Other factors besides cultural norms shape the subreddit users’ behaviour as well, such as age, individual differences, education level, or socioeconomic background. Apart from seeking validation of their views, social bonding, and the pursuit of identity work, the findings further suggest that negative sentiment might be an additional motivator for the r/AustralianPolitics members’ online behaviour, confirming Nilan et al.’s (2023) finding that young Australian males tend to share a sense of disillusionment when it comes to politics. Numerous commenters continuously express their views in combination with negative emotion while evaluating various attitudinal targets (Bednarek 2009: p. 181). These users primarily focus on whether the appraised abstract items, such as climate change or other policies, are appropriate or not, whether information shared on the SNS is correct or fake, whether certain acts committed by politicians are ethical or not, and so on. This underlines the importance of considering both the immediate and wider context in which any selections occur and the need to focus on larger units of analysis. Any emergent toxic masculinities have to be considered within the overarching context of Australia’s colonialist past and migration (Grosjean 2022), with persistent socially acquired cultural behaviours flowing over into the digital sphere. This type of online social practice includes a diverse pattern of beliefs and attitudes, constituted by shared knowledge and Western norms. Such collective experiences may continue to influence the Redditors’ perception of political leadership and their views of the male role in society. The large amount of negation in the dialogic interactions may lead users to assume that the Australian political landscape has changed dramatically, leading to negative outcomes, which may not correspond with reality and can lead to the spread of misinformation.

The line between banter and toxic language use is often blurred. However well-intentioned, online banter can readily escalate into cyberbullying due to a lack of social cues or contextual knowledge on the receiver’s end and the larger social distance between the interactants. On Reddit, a great deal of the banter appears to be status-driven, based on a user’s number of upvoted posts, resulting in power inequalities. Among geeks, “masculine self-esteem and social capital are built through specialized technical knowledge” (Salter 2018: p. 250). Subsequently, the prevalent discursive patterns within the specific context of the examined subreddit may be linked to the internal hegemony of Reddit masculinities over other users, especially other male Redditors.

Both at the start and end of the election campaign period, a high number of r/AustralianPolitics users appear to be heavily invested in their own persuasive argumentation, shown by a frequent use of up-scaling in their discourse. They express toxic masculinity through the use of negation strategies, amplifying the authorial voice and constraining their fellow users into adopting a negative predisposition towards various Australian politicians, political parties, their policies, and the general state of political affairs in the country. These commenters frequently employ contractive engagement resources to dismiss other users’ claims by invoking a self-perceived correct view, as such, acknowledging and extending the SNS’s regimes of truth. Most importantly, though, by construing their putative addressee as ignorant and susceptible to misinformation, the r/AustralianPolitics users may perpetuate pre-existing toxic masculinities in the digital sphere. The large majority of the comments on the subreddit demonstrate blatant rejections of the addressee’s views, which reveals the Redditors’ dominant attitude towards other users, implying that the other is ignorant. Nevertheless, even though the commenters’ aggressive communication style and continuous dismissal of other users’ views seem to align with the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, as an ideology associated with power and control, these dynamics are being observed within the specific context of the subreddit and, in this case, the exertion of power appears to be implicitly directed towards putative male readers instead of female Reddit users, underlining the complex negotiation of interpersonal meanings within this digital space.

Political subreddits provide individuals with the opportunity to engage with others and to critically evaluate social and economic policies. It is mainly up to the users themselves to evaluate the reliability of the information sources and to determine whether commenters are experts or not. The use of contractive negation, directly confronting negative evaluations of individuals and their conduct, and disalignment in digital dialogical interactions may extend beyond discursive practice and lead to the emergence of echo chambers, cyberbullying, possible mental health issues, scepticism towards lockdowns or vaccines, and the propagation of misinformation. Encouraging more egalitarian and respectful dialogue within online spaces, employing expansive engagement strategies, is crucial to mitigate the negative effects of some SNS users’ toxic tendencies.