The expression of passive aggression in family conflicts in selected American plays

Abstract

The article presents sample forms of expression of passive aggressiveness in family conflicts in selected American plays. It briefly describes the notion of passive aggression, dating back to post-war era and originally used to denote passive resistance against superiors. The linguistic expression of passive aggression relies mostly on indirectness as a means of avoiding confrontation, hurting the other person subtly though with a clear intention. Frameworks from the fields of pragmatics and pragmastylistics, such as the concept of face, implicature, theories of (im) politeness or turn-taking facilitate the understanding of how passive-aggressive utterances are constructed and expressed and provide implicit characterization cues that help the reader infer the character participating in conflict.