Beyond sarcasm: The metalanguage and structures of mock politeness

•Previous research into mock politeness is synthesised and used to argue that mock politeness should not be equated with sarcasm.•A first-order metalanguage approach is used to investigate how people talk about and perform mock politeness.•The first-order metalanguage used for referring to mock politeness is presented.•The range of structures for realising mock politeness in everyday interactions are described.

This paper aims to cast light on the somewhat neglected area of mock politeness. The principle objectives are to describe the ways that mock politeness is talked about and performed. In order to investigate such usage, I analyse data from informal, naturally occurring conversations in a UK-based online forum. The paper introduces a range of metalinguistic expressions which are used to refer to mock polite behaviours in lay interactions and describes the different structures of mock polite behaviours. The analysis shows that both metalanguage and structure are more diverse than anticipated by previous research and, as a result, the paper argues against equating mock politeness with sarcasm and calls for further research into mock politeness as an important strategy of impoliteness.