(Im)politeness, aggressiveness and emotions: readers’ responses to la manada verdict

The rise of digital written media has allowed for the emergence of a new genre of opinion writing that is often known as Readers’ Comments. The genre was born as a variation on the tradition of letters to the editor, but it does not share most of the older genre’s stylistic or pragmatic traits.The aim of this paper is to analyse examples of this genre that appeared in two Catalan media (Ara and El Periódico) as a result of the verdict of Provincial Court of Navarra in the case popularly known as La Manada (April 26, 2018). Our objective is to see how verbal politeness manifests itself in readers’ comments, not so much in the response to the verdict, but in the ratings given to the comments of others readers.