Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 6:3 (2015) ► pp.338–366

Collateral damage

An investigation of non-combatant teasing by American service personnel in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan

This investigation examines ‘teasing’ of non-combatant children by US military service personnel in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. The majority of existent investigations of teasing and related practices place significant conceptual importance on the intentions of the teaser – such that a target can understand that the tease is not true. However, in data examined here it appears that targets (children) do not understand the language in which the teasing is undertaken. Drawing from publicly available video footage posted on the video sharing website Liveleak, we provide an ethnomethodological (e.g., Garfinkel 1967) and conversation analytic informed (e.g., Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 2007) examination of how persons initiating teasing (soldiers) strategically exploit asymmetries in the sequential and preferential organization of interactions when tease recipients (children) do not have sufficient English skills to redress (or understand) the negative assessments being made of them. Three types of candidate teasing practices are identified: soldier initiated negative other-assessments; target parroting negative other-assessments; and offer-withdrawal games. Analysis examines how such interactions effectively fail as teases and explores how children can resist soldiers’ pursuit of degrading responses.

Keywords: ethnomethodology, assessments, teasing, conversation analysis, social interaction
Published online: 28 September 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.6.3.02bys
References (43)
Abrahams, Roger D
1962 “Playing the Dozens.” Journal of American Folklore751: 209–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bandura, Albert
1999 “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities.” Personality and Social Psychology Review31: 193–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael
1999 “WhoseTerms? Whose Ordinariness? Rhetoric and Ideology in Conversation Analysis.” Discourse and Society10 (4): 543–558. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bowman, Shane, and Chris Willis
2003 “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.” The Media Center at the American Press Institute.
Christensen, Christian
2008 “Uploading Dissonance: YouTube and the US Occupation of Iraq.” Media, War & Conflict1 (2): 155–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul
1998 “Complaints About Transgressions and Misconduct.” Research on Language and Social Interaction31 (3&4): 295–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, Ann R
1986 “Teasing: Verbal Play in Two Mexicano Homes.” InLanguage Socialization Across Cultures: Studies in the Social Cultural Foundations of Language, ed. byBambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs, 182–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., and Lasana T. Harris
2004 “Why Ordinary People Torture Enemy Prisoners.” Science3061: 1482–1483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold
1956 “Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies.” The American Journal of Sociology61 (5): 420–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
1981 Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1994 “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist96 (3): 606–633. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H
1990 He-Said-She-Said. Talk as Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
2006 The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status, and Exclusion. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie H. Goodwin
1987 “Concurrent Operations on Talk: Notes on the Interactive Organization of Assessments.” IPrA Papers in Pragmatics1 (1): 1–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Susan, and Don Bysouth
2008 “ ‘Now Calm Down Ma’am’: A Preliminary Investigation of Police-Citizen Interactions that Achieve ‘Conflict Resolution’ through Force, or Threats of Force.” Paper presented at the Economic and Social Research Council Symposium Conflict Resolution and Mediation in Talk-in-Interaction , Newcastle University, UK.
2009a “ ‘Whaddaya Pulling Me Over for?’ A Preliminary Analysis of the Institutional Trajectory of a Police Traffic Stop.” Paper presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association , San Francisco, USA.
2009b ‘Step Out of the Car, Ma’am.’: On Some Features of Routine Traffic Stops.”Paper presented at the 11th International Pragmatics Association Conference , Melbourne, Australia.
Heritage, John
2002 “The Limits of Questioning: Negative Interrogatives and Hostile Question Content.” Journal of Pragmatics341: 1427–1446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hills, Sarah, and Tom Phillips
2006, November 22. “US Troops in Sick Taunt of Boys.”Metro.co.uk. Retrieved from: [URL]
Jefferson, Gail
2004 “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” InConversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. byGene H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamber, Michael, and Tim Arango
2008, July26. “4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images.” The New York Times.Retrieved from: [URL]Google Scholar
Keltner, Dacher, Lisa Capps, Ann M. Kring, Randall C. Young, and Erin A. Heerey
2001 “Just Teasing: A Conceptual Analysis and Empirical Review.” Psychological Bulletin127 (2): 229–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laurier, Eric, and Chris Philo
2006 “Natural Problems of Naturalistic Video Data.” InVideo-Analysis. Methodology and Methods. Qualitative Audiovisual Data in Sociology, ed. byHubert Knoblauch, Jürgen Raab, Hans-Georg Soeffner, and Bernt Schnettler, 181–190. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael
2002 “From Naturally Occuring Data to Naturally Organized Ordinary Activities: Comment on Speer.” Discourse Studies4 (4): 531–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lytra, Vally
2007 “Teasing in Contact Encounters: Frames, Participant Positions and Responses.” Multilingua261: 381–408. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Peggy
1986 “Teasing as Language Socialization and Verbal Play in a White Working-Class Community.” InLanguage Socialization Across Cultures: Studies in the Social Cultural Foundations of Language, ed. byBambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs, 199–212. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2009 “Video Recording Practices and the Reflexive Constitution of the Interactional Order: Some Systematic Uses of the Split-Screen Technique.” Human Studies32 (1): 67–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1984a “Agreeing and Disagreeing With Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” InStructures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. byJohn M. Atkinson and John C. Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1984b “Pursuing a Response.” InStructures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. byJohn M. Atkinson and John C. Heritage, 152–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey
2003 “Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/No Interrogatives and the Structure of Responding.” American Sociological Review681: 939–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reddy, Vasudevi
1991 “Playing with Others’ Expectations: Teasing and Mucking About in the First Year.” InNatural Theories of Mind: Evolution, Development, and Simulation of Everyday Mindreading, ed. byAndy Whiten, 143–158. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language501: 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1978 “Some Technical Considerations of a Dirty Joke.” InStudies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, ed. byJim Schenkein, 249–270. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A
1997 “Whose text? Whose context?” Discourse and Society8 (2): 165–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis (Vol. 11). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Gail Jefferson, and Harvey Sacks
1977 “The Preference for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation.” Language531: 361–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schieffelin, Bambi B
1986 “Teasing and Shaming in Kaluli Children’s Interactions.” InLanguage Socialization Across Cultures: Studies in the Social Cultural Foundations of Language, ed. byBambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs, 165–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sharrock, Wes, and Graham Button
1991 “The Social Actor: Social Action in Real Time.” InEthnomethodology and the Human Sciences, ed. byGraham Button, 137–175. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth, and Derek Edwards
2008 “ ‘Did you have Permission to Smash your Neighbour’s Door?’ Silly Questions and their Answers in Police Suspect Interrogations.” Discourse Studies10 (1): 89–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Zoonen, Liesbet, Fadi Hirzalla, and Floris Müller
2009 “Fitna: The Video Battle.” Paper presented at the Etmaal voor Communicatiewetenschap , Nijmegen, Netherlands, January 2009. Retrieved from: [URL]
Zimbardo, Philip
2007 The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. London: Ridder.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Kronrod, Ann & Yakov Bart
2018. Taking a Leaf Out of a Review: The Asymmetrical Link Between Linguistic Similarity and Attitude Certainty for Writers and Readers of Product Reviews. SSRN Electronic Journal DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 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.