[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

Maia Ponsonnet maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au
Fri Dec 17 10:41:57 UTC 2021 

Hi Jocelyne,

It seems to me that in your examples, although the term "génie" is inherently positive, the addition of "à la con" or "de mes fesses" renders it negative. I think this works with any word.

In fact "de mes fesses" in my view can also imply a sense of usurpation, i.e. the person is not a true "x". E.g. "ouais, un copain de mes fesses" "a friend of my ass", means that the person is not a good friend.

But "Espèce de copain" doesn't work at all unless you're making a joke.
(Which I would have thought was the same in English, "you friend!" jokingly accusing someone to be a friend; or "you genius" in the same way; but maybe not.)

Cheers and many thanks for these interesting discussions,
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 MM Jocelyne Fernandez <mmjocelynefern at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, 17 December 2021 12:53 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)


@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<https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F300633947_Impoliteness_Strategies&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136900891580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=cVZcjt%2F86Qr6NaLXNpu8Itvnv9%2BoGAyFNbkdgP48ERE%3D&reserved=0>

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. brutto pezzo di cretina, as opposed to *brutta 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<mailto: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<mailto: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<https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.research.manchester.ac.uk%2Fportal%2Fen%2Fresearchers%2Fnigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136900891580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=kqwRSP3KGR9vpQwQCde2gbu2OwvMXmt%2FOJWilOI2FDs%3D&reserved=0>
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au<mailto:maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au>>
Sent: 15 December 2021 1:54 AM
To: Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi<mailto:jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi<mailto:jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>>
Sent: Wednesday, 15 December 2021 6:09 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901047734%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=epUSlpcyYNkWhFUtxjSROG4kA%2FN7nGCx3dZOBAdPyvU%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%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901047734%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=JV3exAEmpaPp6Y9kKvjw6jPWhSGmt8GgDRXQNv4wTKk%3D&reserved=0> (and so forth).

Best regards,

Jussi


________________________________
Frá: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> fyrir hönd Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de<mailto:sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de>>
Sent: þriðjudagur, 14. desember 2021 22:50
Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fshut.up.imp.2.sg%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901047734%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=OaDk%2F7hFrvRtpOBhfKwUevC8smNd3Chcubfwp7so7Kk%3D&reserved=0> <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%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901203957%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=QiGh68aQjYiGJXFoTdzbzhPVG62KT%2B5KgkVLecDlf5Q%3D&reserved=0>>=2.SG.OBJ 3.SG.REFL.POSS
> 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%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901203957%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=OXB1nU8%2FpyDVV37ywRUycl5yM8UNldDFN0SEkUrkcJc%3D&reserved=0> <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%7C237a5407f6484670e3ba08d9c11958d9%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637753136901360240%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=mXxOz4tSaZScIlns23tyjhfPdfYtwK%2FsIjlbKj88Tks%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)
> //
>
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--
Prof. M.M.Jocelyne FERNANDEZ-VEST CNRS & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
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