Threats, not-threats, genre, and the Strange Case of the Suspended Bretwalda

We always understand genres, Anne Freadman has usefully explained, as alike, but different from, other genres. Adding to this, a central feature of genre use is its dialogicity (from Mikhail Bakhtin, obviously): uses of genre arise as responses to, or uptakes of, previous genre use, and in turn try to secure what kind (genre) of response it will get; in almost all cases without ever being able to fully secure it beforehand. There's always the free action of the next agent to contend with.

The strange paths of academic life have led me to play a small part in the study of threats as carried out by Forensic Linguistics; and alongside good colleagues, Marie Bojsen-Møller, Tanya Karoli Christensen and Amy J. Devitt, I have even published a research article about threats and genre. 

Forensic Linguistics addresses criminal threats, a highly pertinent subject—which is, alas, of increasing importance. However, there's another side to threats which is not as important to Forensic Linguistics but interesting and relevant in other contexts. Many of these other kinds of threats are legal, and some of them are even useful—or fun. But I get ahead of myself.

Threats, research states (the references are in the article above), consist of three elements. 

• Futurity
• Sender's responsibility
• Recipient's harm

As in "I (sender) shall (futurity) do (responsibility) this bad thing (harm) to you (recipient)". The purpose of the threat is intimidation. There may be other purposes, but this one is overriding. A threat is usually made illegal by the character of the harm it threatens to cause. If someone threatens you with public rebuke, it may be unpleasant, but it's not usually illegal; if they threaten you with a beating, it's illegal, because the beating is.

As a genre researcher originating from the field of literature I've been interested in how rhetorical genres are recontextualized and used as elements in fictions. This goes for threats too. Fictive threats confirm to other threat except for one thing: They don't exist; or rather they exist as parts of a fiction and as such the proposed harm is also fictive. Thus, they don't really intimidate anyone outside the fiction, or at least they are not meant to, and reporting them to various authorities is a failure of genre. Let us call them not-threats for the sake of the distinction and recalling Freadman's distinct idea of the not-statement which, to be meaningful, must imply a similarity as well as a difference. Thus, it is meaningful to say that a refrigerator is not a deep freezer, but it is almost never meaningful to say that it is not a rhinoceros—true as the statement may be, it conveys very little information. 

One more (well-known) piece of information about threats: They are prevalent on social media; very often as part of a pattern of abuse and harassment, and thus usually reportable per Terms & Services on the various SoMe platforms. Also making threats will usually get you kicked off the site—unless, of course, you happen to be a patently useless American president—because then you need to actually attempt (AND fail) to overthrow Western democracy in order to get shut down.

All of this brings me to Blate. This is his portrait.

A really good-looking helmet, would you not say? And also an account on twitter—or a series of accounts as you shall see.

I don't actually know who the operator of the accounts is, and it really doesn't matter. Blate, in his various instantiations, is a person on twitter pretending to be not a secret agent but a Bretwalda, that is an old Saxon king from around the 8th century. Aside from some sharp, but fairly centrist, political commentary, Blate engages in behavior fitting of a fairly badly informed and definitely not very civilized Saxon lord. He fights Danes, in fact many of my interactions with him are about precisely this. Sometimes he resists Danish occupation of English territory, The Danelaw, or anachronistically shells Copenhagen (as in 1807). He also lumps Swedes, Norwegians and Finns as "Danes" while he is at it and calls his (equally fictive) housecarls "TO THE SHIELDWALL" when he sees a "Danish" flag; even if it's white with a light blue cross. Also, he has a long standing battle with another twitter account concerning the right order of jam and cream on a scone. They are approaching 500 almost consecutive days of battle as I write this. The nickname "Blate", btw, is derived from one of his earlier forms where his twitter handle was @BlatantLie. 

Not recognizing him as a role-playing account is a failure of genre. 

Enter threats. Or rather not-threats. Befitting a warfaring, somewhat uncivilized, Bretwalda he frequently threatens to behead people. Now, given that he is a fictive character acting as Saxon lord, this is hardly very intimidating. And his twitter-correspondents all expect to be challenged to a duel to the death by axe or by scone. Formally speaking, the statements fit the threat as genre; as in "I Bretwalda (sender) shall (futurity) do (responsibility) the beheading thing by scone or battle-axe (harm) to you (recipient)". However, the point isn't intimidation (or rather: the intimidation is fictive), so all his correspondents invite his threats on purpose and take them up as lovely occasions for witticism. These are not-threats. Taking them as threats is a failure of genre.

And yet, SoMe being what it is, sometimes it happens. Somebody, possibly many people, stop by and report the not-threats as threats to twitter. The uptake transforms the not-threat to a threat, even though no one was ever threatened, much less intimidated. And the Bretwalda, just being an long-dead Saxon lord and not a criminal American president, gets suspended. This, of course, is a failure of Twitter's safety team in interpreting the full communicative action and context, the full genre use, of the not-threats, but given just how many reports they have to handle I can see how it happens. 

And Blate comes back. Always with his beautiful helmet and his quirky demeanor to do battle against the Danes and for jam before cream on a scone. Until the next time someone fails to recognize the distinction and interplay between two genres that are alike yet so so different. The threat and the not-threat.