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Influencer Discourse: Affective relations and identities
Edited by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Alexandra Georgakopoulou
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 349] 2024
► pp. 100–127

Chapter 4
“Oh wow! We getting ready for my funeral?”

The prosody of self- and other-directed impoliteness in Jeffree Star’s YouTube product reviews

| Uppsala University
| Stockholm University
This paper investigates the prosodic differentiation between self-deprecation and impoliteness targeting others in YouTube video product reviews by Jeffree Star, a well-known social media (hence SM) influencer. The results show that low pitch values, longer durations, and descending melodic patterns, which are associated with impoliteness, as well as rising pitch and faster speech rates, which are indicative of self-deprecation, distinguish these two functions in Star’s performance. The paper contends that the strategy of phonological distinction between different functions of impoliteness is critical to developing a relatable in-group relationship with the community of viewers. Thus, our findings shed light on the communicative strategies used by internet influencers, as well as the importance of the understudied feature of prosody in SM context.
Keywords: impoliteness, prosody, social media influencers, product reviews, Jeffree Star, YouTube
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Impoliteness, self-deprecation, and Goffmanian performance in the genre of product reviews
    • 2.2The role of prosody in impoliteness expression and interpretation
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Impoliteness
    • 4.2Self-deprecation
    • 4.3Jeffree Star’s ‘baseline’ speech analysis
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Note
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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(Video 1/Figure 1/ 0:03- 0:05) [URL]
(Video 2/ Figure 2a/04:38–04:41; Figures 5 a and 5 b/10:23 ̶ 10:25; Figure 6/14:13 ̶14:15) [URL]
(Video 3/Figure 2b/14:00–14:04) [URL]
(Video 4/Figure 2c/2:13–2:16) [URL]
(Video 5/ Figures 3 0:04–0:12 and 4/07:59–08:02) [URL]
(Video 6/Figure 7/07:34–07:37) [URL]
(Video 7/Figure 8/0:50–01:00) [URL]
(Video 8 – compilation) [URL]
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