MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

War veterans are a population evoking varying representations in popular culture. A common sentiment in American society it that of “support our troops”, reinforcing a unilateral positive messaging about those who have been active in the military, most notably those involved in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Coy et al 2008). In face-to-face interactions, the phenomena is commonly articulated as “thank you for your service”. Some investigation has been done indicating the vagueness of “support our troops” and the hollow nature of thanks given (Stahl 2009). While significant research has been done on compliment responses, a closely related discursive practice, the cultural phenomena of veterans as interlocutors in “thank you” discourse has not been analyzed (Holmes 1988). Examining posts in the Veterans section of Reddit, I analyze the response of five threads containing a series of comments about veteran reaction to lexical appreciation, what I refer to as veteran thanks discourse. Using a theoretical framework involving a lens of Bourdieu’s (1998) symbolic capital and Goffman’s (1959) performative acts, I complete a discourse analysis of comments on the Reddit boards made by veterans concerning responses to messages of thanks (n=125). Investigation supports that veteran thanks discourse operates inversely to what Lakoff calls the Politeness Principle (Lakoff 1973). Due to a lack of indexicality, veterans find themselves without a social script for reaction. Further, the statements of gratitude reinforce that all power in the discourse, and symbolic capital, is held by the sender ‘giving thanks’, which serves to marginalize veterans and make them skeptical of sincerity due to a perceived patronizing stance attached to the phrase “thanks for your service” (Kiesling, 2009).