Page 230 - 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. 230
What Do We Know about the World?
cant the role of the intonation, while at the same time the importance of
lexical (linguistic) material diminishes“5 (Vuletić, 1980: 35). Finally, we
can conclude that insults are defined through both linguistic and para-
linguistic cues.
When used in Parliament, insults represent deviations from the
norm in a highly normative context where MPs’ conduct is controlled
by the speaker and the proscribed rules, i.e. Standing Orders of the Cro-
atian Parliament, Code of Conduct, and Code of Ethics for Civil Serv-
ants6. Parliament sessions provide a highly competitive context and po-
litical discourse “involves cooperation as well as conflict“ (Chilton,
2004: 198). These parliamentary divergences quite often turn into de-
bates which can be defined as “institutionalised deliberation ritual that
starts with a basic assumption on the part of the debaters concerning the
desirability of deliberating and taking action in order to bring about cer-
tain agreed upon changes in society“ (Ilie, 2001: 242). Debates that are
held in the parliament are commonly known to be adversarial, and MPs
try to show their power by attacking and counter-attacking each oth-
er, so it is of no surprise that they will use unparliamentary language.
Face – threatening acts include requesting, advising, refusing or criticiz-
ing and reflect “social-power structures“ (Held, 2005: 294) and quite of-
ten evolve into insults or are perceived as insults. Insults serve to under-
mine MPs’ credibility or a party’s institutional trustworthiness and con-
sequentially, serve to enhance the ethos of the insult initiator and shat-
ter the opposing party’s reliability. Ethos is seen in the Aristotelian tra-
dition (Habinek, 2005), where proofs, in this case insults, are based on
some feature of the insult target character.
3. Methodology
3.2. Corpus
The examined corpus consists of transcripts of two sessions of the
6th Parliamentary term and 5 randomly selected sessions from each of
the previous Parliamentary terms as well as Question time (Aktualno
prijepodne), randomly chosen from the 1992–2011 period. The sessions
were: fourth session in the Second Term (November 1992), 22nd session
from the Third Term (November 1997), 36th session from the Fourth
Term (September, 2003), 17th Session form the Fifth Term (November,
2005), 23rd and 24th session from the Sixth Term (April, October 2011).
One session, i.e. debates about different proceedings, lasts on average
5 Originally in Croatian, translated by Vančura.
6 http://www.sabor.hr/Default.aspx?sec=714
cant the role of the intonation, while at the same time the importance of
lexical (linguistic) material diminishes“5 (Vuletić, 1980: 35). Finally, we
can conclude that insults are defined through both linguistic and para-
linguistic cues.
When used in Parliament, insults represent deviations from the
norm in a highly normative context where MPs’ conduct is controlled
by the speaker and the proscribed rules, i.e. Standing Orders of the Cro-
atian Parliament, Code of Conduct, and Code of Ethics for Civil Serv-
ants6. Parliament sessions provide a highly competitive context and po-
litical discourse “involves cooperation as well as conflict“ (Chilton,
2004: 198). These parliamentary divergences quite often turn into de-
bates which can be defined as “institutionalised deliberation ritual that
starts with a basic assumption on the part of the debaters concerning the
desirability of deliberating and taking action in order to bring about cer-
tain agreed upon changes in society“ (Ilie, 2001: 242). Debates that are
held in the parliament are commonly known to be adversarial, and MPs
try to show their power by attacking and counter-attacking each oth-
er, so it is of no surprise that they will use unparliamentary language.
Face – threatening acts include requesting, advising, refusing or criticiz-
ing and reflect “social-power structures“ (Held, 2005: 294) and quite of-
ten evolve into insults or are perceived as insults. Insults serve to under-
mine MPs’ credibility or a party’s institutional trustworthiness and con-
sequentially, serve to enhance the ethos of the insult initiator and shat-
ter the opposing party’s reliability. Ethos is seen in the Aristotelian tra-
dition (Habinek, 2005), where proofs, in this case insults, are based on
some feature of the insult target character.
3. Methodology
3.2. Corpus
The examined corpus consists of transcripts of two sessions of the
6th Parliamentary term and 5 randomly selected sessions from each of
the previous Parliamentary terms as well as Question time (Aktualno
prijepodne), randomly chosen from the 1992–2011 period. The sessions
were: fourth session in the Second Term (November 1992), 22nd session
from the Third Term (November 1997), 36th session from the Fourth
Term (September, 2003), 17th Session form the Fifth Term (November,
2005), 23rd and 24th session from the Sixth Term (April, October 2011).
One session, i.e. debates about different proceedings, lasts on average
5 Originally in Croatian, translated by Vančura.
6 http://www.sabor.hr/Default.aspx?sec=714
