To express the strongest human emotions such as anger, people often choose to use hurtful language and expressions. The words chosen in this context can be extremely powerful and possess the power to hurt and inflict very strong emotional responses followed by violent disagreement. Although strong emotions that could cause people to be detrimental are part of our daily life, so far little has been done to investigate how humans use language to cause offense and be impolite.
This study investigates how teenagers realize insults as responses to initial insults within different situations with a special focus on gender differences. Who uses more counter-insults throughout and within different situations where social distance is varied? Which realization strategies are used by whom? It will be further inspected whether the target’s gender to which the counter-insult is presented, has any effect on the participants’ counter-insult behavior.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Defining Insults
2.2. Realizing insults
3. Methodology
3.1. Instrument
3.2. Informants
3.3. Data Collection Procedure
3.4. Coding Scheme
4. Results
4.1. Frequency of Counter-Insult Strategies
4.2. Counter-Insult Strategies and their Targets
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This study investigates how high school teenagers in Texas realize counter-insults in response to initial insults across various social situations, with a primary focus on gender differences and the influence of social distance on verbal aggression.
- Analysis of gender differences in the frequency and nature of counter-insult strategies.
- Examination of how social distance (stranger, colleague, friend, sibling) impacts the likelihood of counter-insulting.
- Evaluation of realization strategies based on the HFSN-Principle.
- Assessment of the impact of the target's gender on the counter-insulting behavior of participants.
- Investigation into the conventionality of lexical choices in impoliteness.
Excerpt from the Book
2.1. Defining Insults
The act of insulting, whether verbal or non-verbal, not only plays a significant role in our lives as interactional human beings, but also reveals how we deal with impoliteness and how we manage conflicts. Before insults as speech acts can be properly defined and understood, a detour must be made to impoliteness theories. Although equally important, in the past many researchers have mainly focused their work on the good part of language - politeness (e.g. Brown and Levinson, 1987; Lakoff 1973, Leech 1987 among others)- and have rather neglected the equally important notion of impoliteness - our bad language. Although, “any adequate account of the dynamics of interpersonal communication (e.g. a model of politeness) should consider hostile as well as cooperative communication” (Locher and Bousfield 2008: 2), the amount of studies focusing on impoliteness cannot compete with those on politeness. Nevertheless, during the last years there seems to be a growing interest in the withered concept of impoliteness.
What exactly is impoliteness? Bousfield (2008: 72) takes impoliteness to be the broad opposite of politeness, in that, rather than seeking to mitigate face-threatening acts (FTAs), impoliteness constitutes the communication of intentionally gratuitous and conflictive verbal face-threatening acts (FTAs) which are purposefully delivered: i. Unmitigated, in contexts where mitigation is required, and/or, ii. With deliberate aggression, that is, with the face threat exacerbated, ‘boosted’, or maximised in some way to heighten the face damage inflicted.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: This chapter introduces the research context, highlighting the neglect of impoliteness in linguistic studies and establishing the aim to examine counter-insult behavior among teenagers in Texas.
2. Theoretical Background: This section reviews impoliteness theories, specifically focusing on the definitions of insults and the conventionalized structures used to realize them.
3. Methodology: This chapter details the study's design, including the use of an online mixed-task questionnaire with Discourse Completion Tasks, participant demographics, and the analytical coding scheme.
4. Results: This chapter presents the data on the frequency of counter-insult strategies and how these strategies correlate with different social situations and target genders.
5. Discussion: This section interprets the findings in the light of previous research, addressing gender differences and the conventional nature of the language used by the participants.
6. Conclusion: This final chapter synthesizes the main findings regarding the influence of social distance and gender on counter-insult behavior, acknowledges study limitations, and suggests avenues for future research.
Keywords
Impoliteness, Counter-insults, Gender Differences, Discourse Completion Task, Social Distance, Verbal Aggression, HFSN-Principle, Texas, Teenagers, Speech Acts, Lexical Choice, Taboo Language, Communication Norms, Conventionalization, Interpersonal Conflict.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research paper?
The research focuses on how Texan high school students realize counter-insults in response to being insulted in various social contexts.
Which specific themes are addressed in this study?
Key themes include the impact of gender on linguistic behavior, the influence of social distance between interlocutors, and the conventionalized ways teenagers use impoliteness.
What is the primary research question?
The study investigates which realization strategies students use to counter-insult, who uses them, and whether the gender of the target or the social distance of the situation affects these behaviors.
Which scientific methodology was applied?
The researcher utilized an online mixed-task questionnaire that incorporated Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) to elicit data from 126 students.
What is covered in the main body of the work?
The main body provides a theoretical overview of impoliteness, describes the methodology used to collect and code data, and presents an analysis of results regarding counter-insult frequency and strategy usage.
Which keywords best describe this study?
Relevant keywords include impoliteness, counter-insults, gender differences, discourse completion task, and verbal aggression.
Why did the study reveal a high frequency of counter-insults toward siblings?
The study suggests that siblings represent a unique "low social distance" relationship that is non-elective, unlike friendships, leading to a different dynamic in handling insults.
Did the participants use creative language to insult each other?
No, the findings indicate that participants relied on a limited and conventional set of lexical items, often repeating the same offensive terms rather than being linguistically creative.
What role does the "HFSN-Principle" play in this paper?
The HFSN-Principle by Bergen (2016) serves as the primary framework for categorizing the realization strategies of the observed insults.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Katja Grasberger (Autor:in), 2018, "Now take out the trash you pasty peasant". How Texan High School Students Realize Counter-Insults, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/497954
