Criticizing for the public interest and aligning with others

Abstract

This study examines the speech act of criticizing in online comments on the COVID-19 lockdown breaches in Jordan in 2020. Drawing on speech act theory and the face-saving perspective of politeness, the study investigates the strategies used to criticize these breaches. The analysis of 356 online comments revealed that Jordanians used ten strategies to criticize these lockdown breaches: Insulting, Appealing to the divine, Intertextuality, Rhetorical questions, Stylized threats, Framing criticism as request, Framing criticism as advice-giving, Framing criticism as warning, Invoking legal authority, and Invoking religious ‘haram’. These criticisms were driven by safeguarding the collective interests of community members rather than merely expressing personal condemnation of the breaches. The breaches were constructed in these criticisms as communally reproachable, legally answerable, and religiously proscribed. Given their public nature, these criticisms appear to be motivated not by politeness but by expressing strong emotions, showing in-group solidarity, and aligning with other community members.