evaluative compliment (es una buena observación ‘it’s a good observation’), whose primary function is more affective and social than referential. This is an act that integrates rather than distances (Jaworski, 1995: 63), and since it is a strategy that favors the affiliative face of the receiver as much as the emissor it enables the creation of a cordial atmosphere.

Agreement also appears in indirect formats, as in (4). Here, one user adds information to corroborate the opinion of another user so positioning themselves on their side of the argument:

(4) Pan Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts 2005

I think this resolves the controversy:

Spanish. To designate the common language of Spain and many nations of the Americas, and that is also spoken as the official language in many other parts of the world, the terms that are valid […].(Discussion: “Controversia por el nombre del idioma español”, 2020).

Given the many variables in play, such as the objective of the discussion and the user’s need to demonstrate their credentials as a learned authority on the subject they are talking about, justifications are common and are filled with exemplifications, references, arguments with regards to authority, analogies, amongst other moves. In opinions displaying agreement, a common justification move involves the user attempting to demonstrate that they possess sufficient discretion both to make positive evaluations as well as in judging and criticizing (as in the case of dissenting acts). In this sense, the user is reinforcing their own face –engaging in self-facework activities (Hernández Flores, 2013)– as a person who is competent and trustworthy, and who can make relevant contributions.

As in example (3), justifications may be made through a first-person account (yo vivo ‘I live’) of a lived experience, that attempts to bestow a certain authority on the speaker’s opinion. Wikipedia tends to frown upon the use of such value judgements, however, in the case of (3), rather than being an opinion that is exclusively personal the user’s justification predominantly acts to give authority to their argument. It is assumed that any lived experience will lend greater credibility to an argument. In (4), the inclusion of the in-text citation to the entry for “español ‘Spanish’” in Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas is another example of a user aiming to give authority to their argument since the dictionary referred to is one produced by the greatest authority of all with regards to the Spanish language, the RAE.

4.2.2. Disagreement and (im)politeness

Compared to instances of agreement, those of disagreement with an opinion given by another user in a discussion are in fact more common. Here we are dealing with dissenting acts, that is, those that “reject the truth or validity of the propositional content affirmed by the other interlocutor or, in other words, center on challenging the information that has been or is being uttered by the other participant in the conversation” (Brenes Peña, 2011: 32).2