[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

MM Jocelyne Fernandez mmjocelynefern at gmail.com
Fri Dec 17 04:53:05 UTC 2021


@Maia, Paolo, Riccardo

Of course, when you start looking for insult of colloquial language, 
counter-examples are numerous.

As for French, I would not assert that "espèce de" can never be used 
with a positive substantive – provided it is immediately followed by 
another expression that contradicts it, e.g.

     - Espèce de (petit) génie à la con!

        ≈         (small)  crummy genius!

- Espèce de génie de mes fesses!

       ≈         genius of my buttocks!

(Sorry for the over-familiarity, but such expressions can be found in 
spontaneous corpora, either ironical or referring to a previous co-text.)

Maybe it is a further argument for considering  that "espèce de" is a 
lexical construction.

     Best wishes from Quartier Latin

     MMJocelyne Fernandez


Le 15/12/2021 à 12:17, Volker Gast a écrit :
>
> If you need some type of theoretical framework for this study, you 
> could use Jonathan Culpeper's work on impoliteness, see for instance 
> this paper on 'impoliteness strategies':
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300633947_Impoliteness_Strategies
>
> Culpeper distinguishes eleven types of insults in Section 8 on 
> 'impoliteness triggers' (referring to his own earlier work from 2011). 
> He extended Brown/Levinston-style politeness theory to impoliteness -- 
> communicative actions intended to damage someone's (positive) face.
>
> I doubt that languages have grammaticalized ways of expressing, for 
> instance, positive impoliteness, in the same way as they encode 
> positive politeness (e.g. in the V/T-forms of European languages). 
> Perhaps you could consider the use of T-forms in a V-context as 
> impolite (and potentially offensive). I wouldn't regard the types of 
> structures found in 'personalized negative vocatives' (Culpeper's 
> term) "grammaticalized". I think they rather belong in the lexicon, 
> but that's obviously a matter of definition.
>
> Volker
>
>
> On 15.12.21 11:39, Riccardo Giomi wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Thank you very much for a nice set of data and references. This will 
>> be extremely useful.
>>
>> I will reply to some of you privately, asking for further 
>> comments/data/references. In the mean time, any further feedback is 
>> of course more than welcome!
>>
>> @Maia & Paolo: I agree with Paolo that /pezzo di / espèce de/ are not 
>> grammaticalized, although not for the reason he mentions. After all 
>> the working hypothesis is precisely that languages can have 
>> grammaticalized means of marking a speech act as an insult, so, 
>> according to this hypothesis, the fact that /pezzo di X/ never occurs 
>> with positively connotated epithets does not entail that the 
>> construction is not grammaticalized.
>> A different type of argument for regarding these as lexical 
>> constructions is the fact that premodifying adjectives must agree 
>> with /pezzo /and not with the epithet (and I guess the same goes for 
>> French /espèce/), cf. /brutt_o_ pezzo di cretina/, as opposed to 
>> */brutt_a_ pezzo di cretina/. This suggests that /pezzo /is the head 
>> of the construction; if it had been a grammaticalized element, I 
>> suppose agreement would have been with the epithet. At any rate, 
>> these nouns are not really reserved for marking a speech act as an 
>> insult -- they can also occur in other types of speech act, e.g. 
>> declarative /Quel pezzo di X mi ha rubato la bici /(roughly, 'That 
>> dirty X stole my bike').
>>
>> Best wishes to all,
>> Riccardo
>>
>> Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it> escreveu no dia quarta, 15/12/2021 à(s) 
>> 11:03:
>>
>>     In Italian too /pezzo di X /'espèce de X' , as in /pezzo di
>>     idiota /and the very insulting, derogating/ (/but very much
>>     used)/pezzo di merda, /appears  just in derogating expressions:
>>     you will never hear /*pezzo di  genio, /nor/*pezzo di benefattore
>>     ! /This is, I think, an argument for not considering  the
>>     construct /'pezzo di X ' /as belonging to the grammar (Maia).
>>
>>     Paolo
>>
>>     Prof. Dr. Paolo Ramat
>>     Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
>>     'Academia Europaea'
>>     'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
>>     Università di Pavia (retired)
>>     Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)
>>
>>     piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
>>     ##39 0382 27027
>>     347 044 98 44
>>
>>
>>     Il giorno mer 15 dic 2021 alle ore 07:48 Nigel Vincent
>>     <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> ha scritto:
>>
>>         Maia is of course right that the English 'you X' is a way of
>>         insulting people but that depends on X being an insult. The
>>         same construction can be used to praise: 'you genius', 'you
>>         darling', etc.
>>         Nigel
>>
>>
>>         Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>>         Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>>         The University of Manchester
>>
>>         Linguistics & English Language
>>         School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>>         The University of Manchester
>>
>>
>>
>>         https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>>         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>         *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         on behalf of Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au>
>>         *Sent:* 15 December 2021 1:54 AM
>>         *To:* Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>;
>>         lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>         Hello,
>>
>>         Doesn't the English "you idiot" (you [insult]) qualify as an
>>         example?
>>         Copula-free adposition is not standard in English
>>         predication, and it seems largely limited to second person
>>         sing and derogatory adjectives?
>>         French has "espèce d'idiot" - not sure whether it qualifies
>>         as grammatical or lexical.
>>         Cheers, Maïa
>>
>>         Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
>>         Senior Lecturer, Discipline of Linguistics
>>
>>         Graduate Research Coordinator, School of Social Sciences
>>
>>         Building M257, Room 2.36
>>
>>         The University of Western Australia
>>         35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
>>         P.  +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M.  +61 (0) 468 571 030
>>
>>
>>
>>         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>         *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         on behalf of Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>
>>         *Sent:* Wednesday, 15 December 2021 6:09 AM
>>         *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>         Dear Riccardo and all,
>>
>>         D’Avis and Meibauer's paper "Du Idiot! Din idiot!
>>         Pseudo-vocative constructions and insults in German (and
>>         Swedish)"
>>         (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110304176.189/html
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.degruyter.com%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110304176.189%2Fhtml&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Qm0dhs6L0wUoC0ozwJeshZnGlztNFYs2tB0%2FwjH91yo%3D&reserved=0>)
>>         might be of interest; see also the thirty studies referring
>>         to this paper according to Google Scholar:
>>         https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9645899484374998601
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fcites%3D9645899484374998601&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=SiEIXLU6h58y3oPt6JDnSMiqxAD9CDEmDdvrhfbB%2F64%3D&reserved=0>
>>         (and so forth).
>>
>>         Best regards,
>>
>>         Jussi
>>
>>
>>         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>         *Frá:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         fyrir hönd Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de>
>>         *Sent:* þriðjudagur, 14. desember 2021 22:50
>>         *Til:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>         *Efni:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>         Dear Riccardo,
>>         Sinhala has several levels of politeness in imperatives
>>         (marked by
>>         affixes), one of which would be rendered as "Do X, you $#!%
>>         !!!". I once
>>         nearly got beaten up when underestimating the impact that the
>>         use of
>>         this form can have. I can look up the reference if you want to.
>>         Best wishes
>>         Sebastian
>>
>>         On 12/14/21 19:49, Riccardo Giomi wrote:
>>         > Dear all,
>>         >
>>         > A student of mine would like to investigate the linguistic
>>         coding of
>>         > insults across languages. She is particularly interested in
>>         finding out
>>         > whether languages can have dedicated (uses of) grammatical
>>         > forms/constructions for this specific purpose. The best
>>         example I could
>>         > come up with so far is the use of the Portuguese third
>>         person reflexive
>>         > possessive adjective (determiner in Brazilian Portuguese)
>>         /seu/sua/ with
>>         > epithets which are meant as insults. An example would be
>>         >
>>         > /Cala=te, seu burro!/
>>         > shut.up.IMP.2.SG <http://shut.up.IMP.2.SG>
>>         <http://shut.up.IMP.2.SG
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fshut.up.imp.2.sg%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Wsd38z3IS7%2FaqTyJkGPUkncKamWvN1IwGXTun%2F7NpTI%3D&reserved=0>>=2.SG.OBJ
>>         3.SG.REFL.POSS
>>         > donkey.M.SG <http://donkey.M.SG> <http://donkey.M.SG
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdonkey.m.sg%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=DAnllkzoCwHEhKOA07WYqh25abAsY2i7%2Fp4%2Bmj134VM%3D&reserved=0>>
>>         > 'Shut up, you idiot!'
>>         >
>>         > (Where, funnily enough, the third person of the
>>         adjective/determiner is
>>         > presumably the polite form!) This is an interesting case, I
>>         think,
>>         > because as far as I can see you never use /seu/sua /in 'plain'
>>         > vocatives, nor with terms of endearment, nor, for that
>>         matter, with NPs
>>         > which are not used as invocations.
>>         >
>>         > I am wondering whether anyone is aware of a language which
>>         has some
>>         > grammaticalized form or construction that can be used in
>>         this specific
>>         > way. Note that I am not interested in, say, abusive
>>         pronouns or
>>         > honorifics or general expressions of the speaker's
>>         disappointment
>>         > ('frustrative' markers) but only in grammaticalized means
>>         of marking the
>>         > speech act as an insult.
>>         >
>>         > Many thanks in advance and best wishes to all,
>>         > Riccardo
>>         >
>>         > --
>>         > Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.
>>         > University of Liège
>>         > Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature
>>         et traduction
>>         > Research group /Linguistique contrastive et typologie des
>>         langues/
>>         > F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)
>>         > //
>>         >
>>         > _______________________________________________
>>         > Lingtyp mailing list
>>         > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=tXVv1UmQRpc6FL%2FBIEeQEkvgOZvHNaC%2BkzSfZI9wJ%2BY%3D&reserved=0>
>>         >
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         Lingtyp mailing list
>>         Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>         <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=tXVv1UmQRpc6FL%2FBIEeQEkvgOZvHNaC%2BkzSfZI9wJ%2BY%3D&reserved=0>
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         Lingtyp mailing list
>>         Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>         http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Lingtyp mailing list
>>     Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>     http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-- 
Prof. M.M.Jocelyne FERNANDEZ-VEST CNRS & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20211217/0b7e8c41/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list