Part of
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Im/politenessEdited by Marina Terkourafi
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 14] 2015
► pp. 121–148
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.
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Mitchell, Nathaniel
2022. Duelling contexts: how action misalignment leads to impoliteness in a courtroom. Journal of Politeness Research 18:1 ► pp. 93 ff. 
Li, Chuntao
2020. Teasing as a practice of managing delicate issues in institutional talk. East Asian Pragmatics 5:3 ► pp. 323 ff.
Zawiszová, Halina
2018. On ´doing friendship´ in and through talk: Exploring conversational interactions of Japanese young people,
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.
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