METALinguistics: Face-threatening taboos, conceptual offensiveness and discursive transgression in extreme metal

Abstract

In this article we provide a genre-specific introduction into extreme metal (EM) and its pragmatic potentials. As we are going to argue, these features are all associated with transgression of conventional boundaries and the breach of taboos in terms of sonic, bodily and discursive dimensions. Based on this claim, we will provide relevant insights into taboo theory. We will then propose our methodology of text analysis, aiming to carve out the levels of offensiveness in a representative EM song text, by working at the semantic–pragmatic interface. The selected text will undergo two phases of analysis consisting of three steps each: firstly, we shall include the Middle-Class Politeness Criterion (MCPC) frame, disregarding any non-linguistic contextual factors, which we shall use as a springboard into analysing a text within the EM frame. While MCPC aims at avoiding taboos and dispreferred behaviours, the EM frame ‘lives’ off from transgressing taboos, thus constituting a completely different frame than MCPC.