“tˤaћlu:bi: take it easy” Name-calling in affective stances: A case study of Saudi football fans in YouTube comments

This study explored Saudi football fans' name-calling practices when expressing their affective stances in the YouTube comment section. It analysed how name-calling was employed to index fans' team (dis)affiliation, position towards the stance object and their (dis)alignment with other interactants in these comments. It further examined the linguistic creativity in fans' name-calling practices, in particular pattern re-forming forms. To do this task, a small corpus of 2646 YouTube comments was compiled, taken from three clips of the popular Saudi TV show Action with Waleed . The collected data were analysed to identify different forms of creativity in name-calling, such as the creative metaphoric invention/tˤaћlu:bi:/(seaweed). Additionally, following a discursive approach, excerpts of fans' interactions were qualitatively analysed to investigate name-calling as a situated act and how (dis)affiliation, positioning, and (dis)alignment emerge dynamically through the thread of replies. The findings highlight that creative name-calling in Saudi football fans' interactions appears to serve different functions, such as asserting superiority, creating distance through ‘us vs them’ discourse, and providing a source of pleasure. One of the key concerns in sport discourse, particularly in Saudi football, is sport fanaticism, which can be reflected in fans' name-calling practices, thus highlighting the fine line between humour, teasing and provocation in competitive discourse.