“You got me wrong”

cancelability of implicatures and positive face recovery in online shaming

Abstract

This article investigates attempts to cancel implicatures as politeness strategies aimed at restoring positive face in contexts of online shaming. The analysis draws on Grice’s theory of implicature (1975), Politeness Theory (Brown; Levinson, 1987), and a metapragmatic perspective (Silverstein, 1993). Through a qualitative analysis of two cases that received wide circulation on Brazilian social media, the study examines the controversial utterances, subsequent retractions, and evaluations documented in audience responses. It proposes a distinction between logical cancelability and interactional cancelability, as well as the analytical category of reverse FTA. In both cases, the recontextualizations are semantically and formally compatible with the original utterances, but the selected comments document resistance to revising the controversial interpretations. A reverse FTA is identified only in the case in which the reassignment of interpretive responsibility to the audience is explicitly contested. The study concludes that the logical possibility of cancellation does not guarantee its interactional effectiveness.