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Article published In: New perspectives on conflict:
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:2] 2021
► pp. 185–214

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The metalinguistics of offence in (British) English

A corpus-based metapragmatic approach

ORCiD logo with link | Lancaster University, UK
ORCiD logo with link | University of Queensland, Australia
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00035.cul
Abstract
Offence is a central concept in impoliteness, aggression and conflict research, yet has received only passing mention in definitions of impoliteness and related concepts. . 2017. “What is conflict? What is aggression? Are these challenging questions?” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5 (1):156–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar argues that impoliteness and language aggression scholars are needlessly worried about definitions. We use . 2017. “What is conflict? What is aggression? Are these challenging questions?” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5 (1):156–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar work as a springboard into a discussion of definitions of impolite or taboo language, airing potential problems and suggesting that the study of metalanguage offers at least a partial solution. We report a study of the metalanguage of offence in British English, and briefly examine whether there are any differences in Australian English, using SketchEngine to interrogate data in the two-billion word Oxford English Corpus. In so doing, we tease out different uses of the term offensive, and show that concepts such as offence are coloured by the specific linguistic and cultural contexts in which they appear. We conclude that while corpus-based metalinguistic analyses cannot completely eliminate the problem of definitional infinite regress, they do, however, offer an empirically grounded way of defining words that allows us to move beyond the intuitions of individual researchers.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definitions in research on aggression and conflict
    • 2.1Janicki’s position
    • 2.2Drawing out issues for aggression and impoliteness scholars
  • 3.Metapragmatics and metalanguage
  • 4.A study of offence and its meaning
    • 4.1Some observations on the notion of offence in research on linguistic impoliteness and taboo language
    • 4.2The metalinguistics of offence: A corpus-based study
      • 4.2.1Our approach and focal point
      • 4.2.2Method
      • 4.2.3Offensive in British English
      • 4.2.4Are there differences between British and Australian English conceptions of offence, and if so, what are they?
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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