Workshop: (Im)politeness, Aggression and Conflict in Language
Led by: Prof. Daniel Kadar, University of Huddersfield, UK
11 – 12 December, 2015
Click here to apply for this workshop
Traditionally in pragmatics it has been assumed that the main goal of the participants in any conversation is to avoid conflict and preserve some kind of social equilibrium and solidarity. This underlies the huge amount of work in pragmatics (especially those on politeness), triggered largely by Brown and Levinson's theorisation of politeness that was influenced by Gricean views on cooperation. It has been only recently that scholars have begun to question this assumption which has led to studies exclusively focussed on aggression, impoliteness and conflict. Several researchers have been trying to come up with models that could explain non-coopeartive aspects of conversation, thereby, questioning the traditional belief that aggression and conflict occur only in exceptional cases and establishing these as the central part (which could even be beneficial in certain cases) of communication.
This workshop will give an advanced introduction to impoliteness and aggression studies. It will discuss methodological as well as theoretical issues in studying aggression and impoliteness in a specific language/culture. The participants will be trained in aspects ranging from data collection to theoretical underpinnings of aggression and impoliteness and at the end of the workshop, they would be expected to be well-equipped to carry out such studies for their research.
Readings:
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Kadar, Daniel and Michael Haugh. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Number of Participants
15 - 20