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Article published In: Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres
Edited by Monika Kopytowska
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3:1] 2015
► pp. 107–127

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The politics of being insulted

The uses of hurt feelings in Israeli public discourse

Published online: 2 October 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.3.1.05kam
Scholars of politeness admit that being insulted may be the result of the hearer’s assumptions about the other’s behavior and may not necessarily relate to the actual words or intentions of the speaker. Thus, it is surprising to find only a few accounts of how people are doing “being insulted” or of how, in public discourse, responses to insults are strategically employed for various ends. In this paper, I analyze the meta-pragmatics of “hurt feelings” in order to understand how speakers do things with emotions and the role of hurt feelings in political democratic discourse. By examining instances in which public figures have stated their feelings of insult in Israeli public discourse (1997–2012), I show both how hurt feelings are strategically employed to protest against politically unacceptable acts, and how public actors sometimes explicitly refuse to be insulted, shifting the meaning of what is perceived as an insult by side-participants into a compliment. I conclude by discussing the consequences of manifesting hurt feelings in political discourse.
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