Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014

The present paper aims to model the interactional operation of heckling, which has received little attention in impoliteness and interaction studies, despite the fact that studying this phenomenon has various advantages for the analyst. In order to fill this knowledge gap, I approach heckling by combining Turner’s (1982) anthropological framework with my interaction-based relational ritual theory (e.g. Kádár 2012, 2013; Kádár and Bax 2013). Following Turner, I define heckling as a ‘social drama’, which is evaluated by its watchers as ‘judges’. In accordance with my relational ritual framework I argue that heckling is a mimetic ritualistic mini-performance, which is inherently interactional as it operates in the adjacent action pair of the heckler’s performance and the public speaker/performer’s counter-performance. Adopting Turner’s terminology, heckling is a ritualistic performance of ‘anti-structure’, i.e. it upsets the regular social — and consequently interactional — structure of a setting. Successful counter-performance is a ritual of ‘structure’, which restores the normal social structure of the event, as the public speaker/performer regains control over the interaction. Through the social actions of performance and counter-performance the heckled and the heckler aim to affiliate themselves with the audience, who are ‘metaparticipants’ of the ritualistic interaction, and with the watchers/listeners in the case of video/audio-recorded interactions, who can be defined as ‘lay observers’ (cf. Kádár and Haugh 2013). Approaching heckling as a theatrical type of relational ritual helps us capture various complexities of this phenomenon, such as its relationship with certain interactional settings and metaparticipant expectations/evaluations, and its interface with related phenomena such as impoliteness.

As im/politeness scholars increasingly explore the intersections of identity and im/politeness, they reveal a growing need for empirical research that examines these intersections in a variety of discourses. This paper investigates the linkages between participants’ co-constructions of identity and impoliteness in naturally occurring classroom discourse. The data come from a corpus of conflictive interactions observed in seven hours of whole-class discussions and twelve hours of small-group discussions in four eighth-grade classrooms. I apply an analytic framework that combines a genre-approach (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010, 2013) to impoliteness with a socio-constructivist approach (Bucholtz and Hall 2005) to identity, and I categorize identity according to Zimmerman’s (1998) three broad identity types: discourse identity, (genre)situated identity, and transportable identity. In co-constitutive processes (Miller 2013), participants co-construct impoliteness and identity, strategically initiating and assessing potential impoliteness acts to assert and reject identity claims.

The present paper discusses issues of language aggression, conflict and identity, and of emotional communication and conflict. In particular, it explores different positionings of deviant identity as projected by a number of juvenile delinquents through the display of moral indignation (Ochs et al. 1989; Günthner 1995), at moments of crisis and conflictual relationships between them. Moral indignation is expressed through the co-occurrence of a number of linguistic and discursive devices, such as hypothetical examples and personal analogies (Günthner 1995; Kakavá 2002), prosodic features, implicit or explicit moral judgments (Günthner 1995), or non-literal threats. These devices are employed in interaction in order to construct opposing moral versions of identities. The paper argues for a tight interweaving between moral indignation, affect, identity indexing, and moral positioning. It further argues that displays of indignation are powerful interactional devices of conflict management and control of the moral and social order and of social relationships.

In this paper, I examine perceived (im)politeness practices in a specific geographical location and argue that not only do patterns and practices need to be understood in relation to particular understandings and attitudes but also in terms of participants’ objectives. By examining impoliteness practices in a Mexican context, I argue that not only are interactants impolite in locally effective ways but may also hold individually differing and often conflicting views regarding the acceptability of engaging in a specific instance of impolite behaviour. Given the strong preference for positive politeness strategies in Mexican social encounters (Curcó 1998, 2007, 2011), I argue that verbal and non-verbal positive impoliteness strategies are often used to exclude interactants from social groups through short-term group-coordinated strategies such as hacer la ley de hielo (to give someone the silent treatment) and fregar (to verbally annoy) and through more long-lasting measures such as no dirigir la palabra (not to be on speaking terms) or hacer la burla (to make fun of). By conducting semi-structured interviews in Guadalajara, Mexico, I identified how participants saw themselves employing a range of positive impoliteness strategies and examined how such strategies reflect interpersonal choices such as having fun or censuring others’ behaviour.

Several philosophy of language scholars have recently argued that the intention to deceive is not part of a well-defined concept of lying. So-called bald-faced lies, i.e., asserting what is false while speaker and hearer both understand that the speaker does not believe what s/he asserts are provided as evidence. In contrast to these proposals, it is pointed out in this article that lying is necessarily connected to an intention to deceive. Consequently, it is argued that so-called bald-faced lies are not proper lies but acts of verbal aggression. Since bald-faced lies attack the face of the addressee and the viability of the Cooperative Principle (Grice 1989a), they are analyzed as insults. Thus, the traditional idea that lying is connected to the intention to deceive is upheld.

This study explores ideological embedding in US presidential rhetoric on aggression and conflict. Specifically, it examines President Obama’s first official statement on each of the 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria. The first statements are sampled because they are often carefully timed and phrased to project position and perspective. The objective of the study is to examine how Obama’s speeches on the Arab Spring articulate US ideological assumptions about the pro-reform protests (and protestors), the aggressive responses of the embattled regimes and the conflict which developed as a result. The methodology of analysis is constituted by the analytical framework of Critical Stylistics. Findings from the analysis reveal the ways in which value systems and sets of beliefs may be structured in the language of aggression and conflict, and, more specifically, the ways in which Obama’s ideological attitudes and assumptions are embedded in the structure of his statements. Obama’s construction of the different unrests, for example, is evident in the naming conventions, his evaluation of the revolutionaries and their oppressors is reflected in the transitivity patterns, and the US regional priorities are signposted by the structural subordination options.