Chapter published in:
Implicitness: From lexis to discourse
Edited by Piotr Cap and Marta Dynel
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 276] 2017
► pp. 177–199

Indirect ritual offence

A study on elusive impoliteness

|
The present chapter examines the phenomenon of indirect ritual offence, which includes cases of recurrent offences that are indirect and as such make it difficult for the targeted person to respond to them. Manifestations of indirect ritual offence include a series of indirect attacks that recurrently target a person, and cases in which the targeted person is recurrently ostracised. While this behaviour has received significant attention is social psychology, it has not been studied in pragmatics and (im)politeness research, in spite of the fact that it is one of the most widely discussed forms of impoliteness behaviour in public discourses. The examination of this phenomenon also contributes to the pragmatic examination of the difference between indirectness and implicitness; as I point out in this chapter, indirect ritual offence becomes implicit from both academic and lay points of view if the frequency of such attacks decreases but the attacks nevertheless continue. In such cases, the targeted person may reinterpret previous attacks as “harmless” and speculate about the nature of new attacks, and even more importantly the abuser can easily claim that they have not intended to offend the other at all – thus, in such cases indirect ritual offence gains an implicit nature. In order to illustrate this point, I examine ways in which “implicit” as an evaluator tends to be metapragmatically used in accounts on indirect ritual offence.
Keywords: impoliteness and offence, indirectness, implicitness, frequency, metapragmatics
Published online: 30 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.276.08kad
References

References

Bloch, Sidney, Sally Browning, and Graham McGrath
2011 “Humour in Group Psychotherapy.” British Journal of Medical Psychology 56: 89–97. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1987 “Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 131–146. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Byon, Andrew Sangspil
2006 “The Role of Linguistic Indirectness and Honorifics in Achieving Linguistic Politeness in Korean Requests.” Journal of Politeness Research 2: 247–276. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn
2009 “The Explicit/Implicit Distinction in Pragmatics and the Limits of Explicit Communication.” International Review of Pragmatics 1: 35–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clift, Rebecca 2012 “Identifying Action: Laughter in Non-humorous Reported Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1303–1312. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan 2010 “Conventionalised Impoliteness Formulae.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3232–3245. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Curtner-Smith, Mary E., Anne M. Culp, Rex Culp, Carrie Scheib, Kelly Owen, Angela Tilley, Molly Murphy, Lauren Parkman, and Peter W. Coleman
2006 “Mothers’ Parenting and Young Economically Disadvantaged Children’s Relational and Overt Bullying.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 15: 177–189. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Tracy Walker
2009 “Going Too Far: Complaining, Escalating and Disaffiliation.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 2400–2414. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dunham, Yarrow, Andrew Scott Barron, and Mahzarin R. Banaji
2006 “From American City to Japanese Village: A Cross-cultural Investigation of Implicit Race Attitudes.” Child Development 77: 1268–1281. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta
2009 “Where Cooperation Meets Politeness: Revisiting Politeness Models in View of the Gricean Framework.” Brno Studies in English 35: 25–43.Google Scholar
Garandeau, Claire F., and Antonius H.N. Cilessen
2006 “From Indirect Aggression to Invisible Aggression: A Conceptual View on Bullying and Peer Group Manipulation.” Aggression and Violent Behaviour 11: 612–625. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gennep, van, Arnold
1909 [1960] Rite de Passage [The rites of passage]. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Glasø, Lars, Stig Berge Matthiesen, Morten Birkeland Neilsen, and Ståle Einarksen
2007 “Do Targets of Workplace Bullying Portray a General Victim Personality Profile?” Scandinavian Journal of Social Psychology 48: 313–319. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1986 Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Grainger, Karen
2011 “Indirectness in Zimbabwean English: A Study of Intercultural Communication in the UK.” In Politeness Across Cultures, ed. by Franncesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Daniel Kádár, 171–193. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2010 “Jocular Mockery, (Dis)affiliation, and Face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 295–317. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 “The role of English as a Scientific Metalanguage for Research in Pragmatics: Reflections on the Metapragmatics of ‘Politeness’ in Japanese.” East Asian Pragmatics 1: 41–74. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael, and Dániel Z. Kádár
forthcoming). The Metapragmatics of Politeness and Impoliteness.
Holtgraves, Thomas
2005 “The Production and Perception of Implicit Performatives.” Journal of Pragmatics 37: 2024–2043. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Robert, and Kenneth Drummond
1990 “Emergent Goals at a Relational Turning Point: The Case of Gordon and Denise.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 9: 39–65. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jaszczolt, Katarzyna
2009 “Cancellability and the Primary/Secondary Meaning Distinction.” Intercultural Pragmatics 6: 259–289. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z.
2013 Relational Rituals and Communication: Ritual Interaction in Groups. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z. 2017 Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Michael Haugh
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Rosina Márquez Reiter
2015 “(Im)politeness and (Im)morality: Insights from Intervention.” Journal of Politeness Research 11: 139–260. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kanetsuna, Tomoyuki, Peter K. Smith, and Yohji Morita
2006 “Copying with Bullying at School: Children’s Recommended Strategies and Attitudes to School-based Interventions in England and Japan.” Aggressive Behaviour 32: 570–580. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kowalski, Robin M., Susan P. Limber, and Patricia W. Agatston
2008 Cyberbullying: Bullying in the Digital Age. London: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Limberg, Holger
2009 “Impoliteness and Threat Responses.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1376–1394. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar G. Blitvich, and Particia Bou-Franch
2011 “On-line Polylogues and Impoliteness: The Case of Postings Sent in Response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube Video.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2578–2593. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Monks, Claire P., Peter K. Smith, Paul Naylor, Christine Barter, Jane L. Ireland, and Iain Coyne
2009 “Bullying in Different Contexts: Commonalities, Differences and the Role of Theory.” Aggression and Violent Behaviour 14: 146–156. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Olweus, Dan
1994 “Bullying at School: Basic Facts and Effects of a School Based Intervention Program.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 35: 1171–1190. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington
1991 Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rayner, Charlotte
1997 “The Incidence of Workplace Bullying.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 7: 199–208. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ren, Wei, Ching Yin Lin, and Helen Woodfield
2013 “Variational Pragmatics in Chinese: Some Insights from an Empirical Study.” In Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics, ed. by Istvan Kecskes, and Jesus Romero-Trillo, 283–314. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sharp, Sonia, and Peter K. Smith
(eds) 2002 School Bullying: Insights and Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Silver, Maury, Rosaria Conte, Maria Miceli, and Isabella Poggi
1986 “Humiliation: Feeling, Social Control and the Construction of Identity.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 16: 269–283. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Smart Richman, Laura, and Mark Leary
2009 “Reactions to Discrimination, Stigmatization, Ostracism, and Other Forms of Interpersonal Rejection: A Multimotive Model.” Psychological Review 116: 365–383. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen
2005 “(Im)politeness, Face and Perceptions of Rapport: Unpackaging Their Bases and Interrelationships.” Journal of Politeness Research 1: 95–119. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tavuchis, Nicholas
1993 Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2017, in press. “Convention and Ritual.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic Politeness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Daniel Kádár. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Angela 2007 Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Thornborrow, Joanna
2002 Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional discourse. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Twyman, Kimberly A., Conway F. Saylor, Danielle Saia, Michelle M. Macias, Lloyd A. Taylor, and Eve Spratt
2010 “Bullying and Ostracism Experiences in Children with Special Health Care Needs.” Journal of Developmental & Behavioural Pediatrics, 31: 1–8. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Goethem, Anne A.J., Ron H.J. Scholte, and Reinout W. Wiers
2010 “Explicit and Implicit Bullying Attitudes in Relation to Bullying Behaviour.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 38: 629–642. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Verschueren, Jef
2000 “Notes on the Role of Metapragmatic Awareness in Language Use.” Pragmatics 10: 439–456. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Whutnow, Robert
1989 Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zurcher, Louis A.
1985 “The War Game: Organizational Scripting and the Expression of Emotion.” Symbolic Interaction 8: 191–206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Badarneh, Muhammad A.
2020. ‘Like a donkey carrying books’. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Kádár, Dániel Z. & Sen Zhang
2019. Alignment, ‘politeness’ and implicitness in Chinese political discourse. Journal of Language and Politics 18:5 ► pp. 698 ff. Crossref logo
Moulinou, Iphigenia
2019. Explicit and implicit discursive strategies and moral order in a trial process. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 7:1 ► pp. 105 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 09 june 2021. 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.