Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2013

A number of studies have shown how participants work to accomplish their goals in ways that minimize the possibility of acrimonious conflict. And yet acrimonious conflict does occur. This raises the issue of what circumstances and discursive moves engender acrimonious interactions and what circumstances and discursive moves avert them. We address this issue through the analysis of segments of a jury deliberation in the penalty phase of a murder trial. We followed the lead of writers who have tied the outbreak of an acrimonious interaction to the launching of a complaint that exposes a personal flaw in the target. We examine three cases where one juror made such a complaint about another. In two of those cases, an acrimonious interaction did not ensue, in the third it did. In comparing these cases, we found that much depends on whether the complainant’s wording and sequential placement of the complaint are mitigating or inflammatory, and much depends on whether the target juror resists the complaint in ways that engender acrimony or concedes and avoids engendering it.

The topic of the online communication — university staff cuts — generated divergent and highly emotive views expressed in a variety of verbal actions/social practices ranging from language play to face threatening acts of verbal aggression that showed the potential to escalate into serious interpersonal conflict. Posters’ alignment practices are explored to reveal how interpersonal work in verbal conflict is co-constructed. Analysis of topic development, posters’ stance and shifting targets reveals that participants’ communicative behaviors are not driven exclusively towards resolution, rather to ‘battle it out’ engaging in a variety of verbal actions, playful and aggressive. Actions reflect posters’ highly developed sociopragmatic competence based on their socialization into an argument culture, weaving in and out of sociability, play and aggression, simultaneously reflecting discourse patterns more typically associated with the adversarial discursive behaviors of less experienced language users.

This paper calls for the integration of first order and second order approaches in (im)politeness studies. Most previous research on the (im)politeness of Chinese speech behavior has been based on researchers’ interpretations and second order investigations. However, this study included a first order approach by examining Chinese participants’ lay conceptualizations of the appropriateness of the strong disagreement behavior that appeared in spontaneous mundane conversations. A close analysis of both the participants’ responses to strong disagreement in ongoing conversations and follow-up interviews revealed that the participants’ strong disagreement was perceived as politic and acceptable within their communities of practice. This challenges the general belief of strong disagreement as impolite and that of Chinese native speakers being indirect in communication. The finding indicates the importance of embracing first order investigation of the conventional views/norms that might cause communication misunderstanding in cross-cultural contact.

The present article, based on approximately 50 hours of audio recordings of Latvian parliamentary sessions from 2009, is concerned with the language of ethnic conflict and competing ideologies in the debates of Saeima (the Latvian Parliament). Principles of critical textual analysis are applied to study the aggressive, offensive, and prejudicial ways in which two blocks –of native and non-native members of the Latvian Parliament– addressed, referred to, and talked about each other. The study analyzes the verbal expressions of conflict — their possible triggers, patterns of linguistic behaviour and outcomes and hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the problem of ethnic conflict and polarization in Latvia.