WHAT MAKES AN INSULT AN INSULT: A POLITENESS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

One of the two main aims of this Honours Thesis is to explore how insults are established, within an integrated model of Politeness Theory adapted from both Leech's conversational-maxim approach and Brown and Levinson's face-saving view. The second key aim arising from the first is to investigate if this combined Politeness Theory is able to provide an adequate account of insults. A secondary issue is to discover if the kinds of insults correlate with the type of data in which they occur. It is found that PT accounts for most insults in the data. However, more attention needs to be accorded to metalinguistic and non-verbal insults. Although PT places importance on the speaker's point of view, the addressee's role in the interpretation of insults must also be emphasised. In addition, due to its premise that interactants seek to preserve social harmony, PT does not provide a satisfactory explanation for insults in the conflict-oriented data. The distinction between positive and negative politeness in PT is also questioned. These findings thus represent important implications for PT. This thesis begins by examining the treatment of insults by existing literature and why Politeness Theory is expected to provide an explanation for insults. For the research, relevant segments of dialogue from four different kinds of interactions, including scripted and naturally occurring data, was transcribed and analysed. Adapting Brown and Levinson's on-record and off-record strategies for performing face-threatening acts whilst incorporating Leech's principles and maxims of interaction, the insults are defined and classified into prototypical (direct) and nonprototypical (indirect) ones. Within each classification, the insults are categorised into super-strategies, which are in turn divided into the specific means through which they are realised. It is suggested that correlations between the types of insults and the kind of data in which they occur exist.