Page 229 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 229
the analysis of insulting practices – sticks and stones
in the croatian parliament 229
is still much more formal and rigid than the more spoken-oriented style,
characterized by more simplified syntactic patterns, less complex vocab-
ulary and direct language, all “with the aim of realizing spontaneity“
(Galli de’ Paratesi, 2009: 138). As a result, the public “has learned not to
be surprised any more at expressions that were once confined to dialect
and lower registers, typical of extremely familiar and highly informal sit-
uations“4 (Galli de’ Paratesi, 2009: 140). With this gradual erosion of re-
spect for institutional conduct, it is only natural to expect the common
usage of verbal transgressions in the Croatian Parliament, as they repre-
sent one of the basic expressions of a linguistic substandard.
2.2.Insults as Unparliamentary Language
The unparliamentary language was defined and described extensive-
ly in the work of Ilie (2001; 2004), who says that those are “subversive
transgressions of the institutional boundaries of parliamentary language
use and practices“ (2001: 259). One is immediately aware that the con-
text of argumentation (Tindale, 2007), beside being multi-layered, var-
ied and complex, is extremely important for the analysis of these trans-
gressions. Richards (1938, qtd. in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 2008:
124) stresses that “it is always the context that gives a word its meaning,
and it is only through the context that we can discover what the word
does“. Irvine (1993: 110) specifies that “insult is a communicative effect
constructed in interaction“, which presupposes a context of some kind.
On the other hand, whether or not something is going to be perceived as
an insult and bring about any kind of response relies heavily on the af-
fective characteristics of the insult target. This is what J. L. Austin (1975)
calls illocutionary force of an utterance, where in order to properly un-
derstand the message the listener needs to understand the intention of
the speaker and what he meant, how the words spoken were used, or
how the utterance was to be taken or ought to have been taken. As Ilie
(2001: 237–238) says “words are not insulting in themselves, but rather
that it is their underlying conceptualisations which are perceived as of-
fensive“. These underlying conceptualizations mostly derive from a lin-
guistic base, but we believe that insult categorization also strongly re-
lies on an extralinguistic base, i.e. paralinguistic cues. Thus, it is both
the emotional characteristic of the insult target/s, as well as the emo-
tionality of the insult initiator that are indispensable for understand-
ing an utterance. “The more emotional an utterance is, the more signifi-
4 Originally in Italian, translated by Vančura.
in the croatian parliament 229
is still much more formal and rigid than the more spoken-oriented style,
characterized by more simplified syntactic patterns, less complex vocab-
ulary and direct language, all “with the aim of realizing spontaneity“
(Galli de’ Paratesi, 2009: 138). As a result, the public “has learned not to
be surprised any more at expressions that were once confined to dialect
and lower registers, typical of extremely familiar and highly informal sit-
uations“4 (Galli de’ Paratesi, 2009: 140). With this gradual erosion of re-
spect for institutional conduct, it is only natural to expect the common
usage of verbal transgressions in the Croatian Parliament, as they repre-
sent one of the basic expressions of a linguistic substandard.
2.2.Insults as Unparliamentary Language
The unparliamentary language was defined and described extensive-
ly in the work of Ilie (2001; 2004), who says that those are “subversive
transgressions of the institutional boundaries of parliamentary language
use and practices“ (2001: 259). One is immediately aware that the con-
text of argumentation (Tindale, 2007), beside being multi-layered, var-
ied and complex, is extremely important for the analysis of these trans-
gressions. Richards (1938, qtd. in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 2008:
124) stresses that “it is always the context that gives a word its meaning,
and it is only through the context that we can discover what the word
does“. Irvine (1993: 110) specifies that “insult is a communicative effect
constructed in interaction“, which presupposes a context of some kind.
On the other hand, whether or not something is going to be perceived as
an insult and bring about any kind of response relies heavily on the af-
fective characteristics of the insult target. This is what J. L. Austin (1975)
calls illocutionary force of an utterance, where in order to properly un-
derstand the message the listener needs to understand the intention of
the speaker and what he meant, how the words spoken were used, or
how the utterance was to be taken or ought to have been taken. As Ilie
(2001: 237–238) says “words are not insulting in themselves, but rather
that it is their underlying conceptualisations which are perceived as of-
fensive“. These underlying conceptualizations mostly derive from a lin-
guistic base, but we believe that insult categorization also strongly re-
lies on an extralinguistic base, i.e. paralinguistic cues. Thus, it is both
the emotional characteristic of the insult target/s, as well as the emo-
tionality of the insult initiator that are indispensable for understand-
ing an utterance. “The more emotional an utterance is, the more signifi-
4 Originally in Italian, translated by Vančura.
