Abstract
AbstractMany researchers in impoliteness studies have set themselves the task of determining, amongst other things, (i) what linguistic or non-linguistic phenomena can cause offence, and (ii) why people take offence. However, the reality of interaction clearly shows that, on many occasions, there appears to be a marked dissonance between the speaker and hearer in their evaluations of offensive language, even in locally situated interaction. More research is therefore needed to account for and explain why and how the hearer assigns a particularly offensive meaning to an utterance during the course of an interaction. With this aim, and by drawing on insight from what is referred to as “radical contextualism”, in this study we discuss the possibility of looking at how interactants can arrive at their own (subjective) evaluations of impoliteness in ways that do not match up with the alleged intentions of the so-called offender. Drawing on a number of exchanges that involve such instances of taking offence, we will argue that the taking of offence should best be viewed as a process over which the hearer has a more active control. Accordingly, the paper contributes to current attempts at explaining the variability involved in the taking of offence.
Highlights
The study of impoliteness beyond what could be called the ‘intention paradigm’ has recently gained considerable momentum
By drawing on insight from what is referred to as “radical contextualism”, in this study we discuss the possibility of looking at how interactants can arrive at their own evaluations of impoliteness in ways that do not match up with the alleged intentions of the so-called offender
These studies are triggered by the discovery that (i) people can and do take offence without necessarily being the target of markedly or grossly offensive language or conduct, and (ii) people do not readily take offence at words or conduct that are generally associated with impoliteness (Haugh 2010; Culpeper 2011; Kádár and Haugh 2013; Tayebi 2016, 2018)
Summary
The study of impoliteness beyond what could be called the ‘intention paradigm’ has recently gained considerable momentum. As far as our above example is concerned, the fact that the hearer is likely to interpret the word “bitch” as an expression of, say, endearment, is not because the utterance and the circumstances under which it has been used have dictated this in a bottom-up fashion, but rather because the content of “what is said” is determined by the hearer in a top-down manner right from the outset The latter account has its roots in radical contextualism, a view which assumes that information that is not encoded linguistically pretty much determines the content of “what is said” (Recanati 2010: 4–5). Offence discussed in this paper should best be viewed as being caused by “a pragmatically controlled pragmatic process” (Recanati 2004: 136, italics original; cf. Haugh 2002), which, theoretically speaking, rules out the possibility of linguistically motivated inferences followed by contextual adjustment, in support of more top-down “pervasive contextual adjustment” (Huang 2017: 983) of meaning by the hearer
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