Cover not available
Part of
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Im/politeness
Edited by Marina Terkourafi
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 14] 2015
► pp. 121–148

Goading as a social action

Non-impolite evaluations in targeted banter

This paper addresses particular social actions present in a data set of short message emails where interactants use potentially impolite strategies frequently. The particular social action under analysis here is that of goading, a term coined to describe targeted banter (banter directed toward a ratified participant in interaction). However, evaluations of impoliteness are not always shared across participants in these goading sequences, as follow-up interviews show some disaffiliation between individual participants’ understanding of the prior turns. It is more common in this data set to find tokens of goading being evaluated as non-impolite rather than impolite, suggesting that participants perceive the humorous nature of goading. Yet, among a tiny community of practice of only four individuals, even these non-impolite evaluations are not always shared. This paper attempts to add to the empirical study of im/politeness to account for goading as a type of banter or jocular mockery and situate it in the ever-increasing set of actions which cannot be straightforwardly categorized as second-order politeness or as impoliteness.

Published online: 28 May 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.14.07mit
References
Armstrong, S.A
1992 Teasables, Teases, and Responses in Conversational Teasing Sequences. Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Atkinson, J.M
1985 Pursuing a Response: Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bousfield, D
2008 Impoliteness in the struggle for power. In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, D. Bousfield & M.A. Locher (eds), 127–153. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, P. & Levinson, S.C
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J
1996 Towards and anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1): 35–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power. In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, D. Bousfield & M.A. Locher (eds), 17–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Conventionalised impoliteness formulae. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3232–3245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 (Im)politeness: Three issues. Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1128–1133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D. & Wichmann, A
2003 Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1545–1579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, P
1987 Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics 25(1): 219–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, M
2008 No aggression, only teasing: The pragmatics of teasing and banter. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 4(2): 241–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eelen, G
2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Egbert, M.M
1997 Schisming: The collaborative transformation from a single conversation to multiple conversations. Research on Language and Social Interaction 30(1): 1–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner, R., Fitzgerald, R., & Mushin, I
2009 The underlying orderliness in turn-taking: Examples from Australian talk. Australian Journal of Communication 36(3): 65–89.Google Scholar
Glenn, P
2003 Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, C
2006 “Lift your game Marina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English. In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context, C. Goddard (ed.), 65–97. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009  Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(1): 29–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1038–1050. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E
1979 Footing. Semiotica 25(1/2): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C
1987 Forgetfulness as an interactive resource. Social Psychology Quarterly 50(2): 115–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, M
2007 The discursive challenge to politeness research: An interactional alternative. Journal of Politeness Research 3: 295–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Jocular mockery, (dis)affilitation, and face. Journal of Pragmatics 42(8): 2106–2119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Humour, face and im/politeness in getting acquainted. In Situated Politeness, B.L. Davies, M. Haugh & A.J. Merrison (eds). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2013 Im/politeness, social practice and the participation order. Journal of Pragmatics 58: 52–72 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, M. & Bousfield, D
2012 Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1099–1114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hepburn, A. & Potter, J
2011 Threats: Power, family mealtimes, and social influence. British Journal of Social Psychology 50(1): 99–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, J
1998 Conversational analysis and institutional talk: Analyzing distinctive turn-taking systems. In Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of IADA (International Association for Dialogue Analysis), S. Cmejrková, J. Hoffmannová, O. Mülllerová & J. Svetlá (eds), 3–17. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Kádár, D.Z., & Haugh, M
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, D.Z., & Mills, S
2013 Rethinking discernment. Journal of Politeness Research 9(2): 133–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotthoff, H
1996 Impoliteness and conversational joking: On relational politics. Folia Linguistica 30: 299–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, G.N
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. New York NY: Longman. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, M.A
2010 Introduction: Politeness and impoliteness in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Politeness Research 6: 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, M.A. & Bousfield, D
2008 Introduction: Impoliteness and power in language. In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, M.A. Locher & D. Bousfield (eds),. 1–16. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, M.A., & Watts, R.J
2005 Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1): 9–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, M.A. & Watts, R.J
2008 Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguisitic behaviour. In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, D. Bousfield & M.A. Locher (eds.), 77–100. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mills, S
2003 Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N.R
1984 Stock conversational witticisms. Journal of Pragmatics 8(2): 195–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993 Conversational Joking: Humor in Everyday Talk. Bloomington MI: Indiana University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Involvement and joking in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 22(3–4): 409–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N.R. & Chiaro, D
(eds.) 2009 Humor in Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 182]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, A
2005 Using participants’ video stimulated comments to complement analyses of interactional practices. In Conversation and Cognition Discourse, Mind and Social Interaction, H. te Molder & J. Potter (eds), 93–113. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Do participants’ reports enhance conversation analytic claims? Explanations of one sort or another. Discourse Studies 14(4): 499–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R
1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses by AR Radcliffe-Brown. London: Taylor & Francis. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., & Jefferson, G
1974 A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4): 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.R
1969 Speech acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, T
2008 Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41(1): 31–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, T. & Rossano, F
2010 Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43(1): 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, M
2008 Toward a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness and rudeness. In Impoliteness in Language, D. Bousfield & M.A. Locher (eds.), 45–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Theobald, M
2012 Video-stimulated accounts: Young children accounting for interactional matters in front of peers. Journal of Early Childhood Research 10: 32–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, R.J
2003 Politeness. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, R.J., Ide, S. & Ehlich, K
1992 Introduction. In Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, R.J. Watts, S. Ide & K. Ehlich (eds), 1–17. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Li, Chuntao
2020. Teasing as a practice of managing delicate issues in institutional talk. East Asian Pragmatics 5:3 ► pp. 323 ff. DOI logo
Mitchell, Nathaniel
2022. Duelling contexts: how action misalignment leads to impoliteness in a courtroom. Journal of Politeness Research 18:1 ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Walkinshaw, Ian
2016. Teasing in informal contexts in English as an Asian lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 5:2 ► pp. 249 ff. DOI logo
Zawiszová, Halina
2018. On ´doing friendship´ in and through talk: Exploring conversational interactions of Japanese young people, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.