This paper examines the ways in which the speech act of complaint is realised in social media contexts. To date, little attention has been devoted to the realisation of this speech act in online settings, despite the fact that such settings provide different affordances for complaining than many of their spoken and written counterparts. In the current study, we aim to make a step towards filling this knowledge gap by demonstrating that in online settings – in particular, social media – complaining can become very intensive and aggressive. This is because social media operates with features such as complex participation and multimodality, which allow users to reflect on each other's complaints in an increasingly aggressive escalatory manner, especially when these users are united by a joint cause. We deploy the concepts of ‘addressivity’ and ‘diachronicity’ to conceptualise those features of social media that boost complaint to become aggressive. As a case study, we investigate an online protest against the waste management policy of the Borough of Merton in London.

本文探讨了在社交媒体环境中实现投诉言语行为的方式。迄今为止，尽管在线演讲环境与许多口头和书面对手相比提供了不同的抱怨能力，但在网络环境下，这种言语行为的实现几乎没有引起人们的注意。在当前的研究中，我们旨在通过证明在网络环境（尤其是社交媒体）中抱怨会变得非常激烈和激进来迈出填补这一知识鸿沟的一步。这是因为社交媒体具有复杂的参与和多模式等功能，使用户能够以日益激进的方式逐步反映彼此的投诉，尤其是当这些用户因共同原因团结在一起时。我们采用“地址性”和“历时性”的概念来概念化社交媒体的那些特征，这些特征会促使投诉变得具有侵略性。作为案例研究，我们调查了网上抗议伦敦默顿自治市废物管理政策的抗议活动。