Reflections: Mock impoliteness in Britain and Australia

Haugh and Bousfield (2012) undertook a cross-cultural study of banter in interactions amongst British (specifically North England) and Australian speakers of English. They focused on two particular forms of banter, jocular mockery and jocular abuse, and analyze how these can give rise to understandings of mock impoliteness (as opposed to genuine impoliteness) amongst participants. Jocular mockery and abuse are pragmatic acts. The former is a specific form of teasing where the speaker diminishes something of relevance to the target within a non-serious or jocular frame. The latter refers to a specific form of insulting, where the speaker casts the target into an undesirable category or as having undesirable qualities, using conventionalized impoliteness formulae within a non-serious or jocular frame. Both jocular mockery and jocular abuse are interactionally achieved, that is, they emerge as a joint effort of two or more participants. It is suggested that when they arise in a non-serious or jocular frame these pragmatic acts can be evaluated as having particular relational and attitudinal implications. These include reinforcing solidarity, disguising repressive intent, or amusing (at least some of) the participants (Culpeper 2011a). The existence of multiple interpersonal implications allows for slippage between evaluations of these pragmatic acts as mock impolite or as genuinely impolite in some cases. Haugh and Bousfield found that jocular mockery and jocular abuse were recurrent practices in both the British and Australian datasets, with only limited variation arising in the target themes of such forms of banter. They traced this to a shared societal ethos that places value on “not taking yourself too seriously” (Fox 2004; Goddard 2009). This contrasts with banter being treated as a kind of competitive activity where individuals attempt to “outdo” each other, as found in at least some situational contexts in American English (Butler 2007). However, this latter type of more competitive banter can also be observed in British and Australian English. There thus remains considerable research to be done to better understand the relational and attitudinal implications of banter across varieties of English, and indeed across other languages more generally.

Needless to say, impoliteness is frequently achieved and understood without the use of formulae; in other words, through implicit means, as illustrated in the following example (a diary report from a British undergraduate):

[7.8] As I walked over to the table to collect the glasses, Sarah said to Joe “come on Joe lets go outside”, implying she didn’t want me there. This was at the pub on Sunday night, and I just let the glasses go and walked away.

I didn’t particularly feel bad, but angry at the way she had said that straight away when I got there. We aren’t particularly friends but she was really rude in front of others.

The interpretation of Sarah’s utterance partly rests on assumptions about for whom the message is intended. Clearly, the informant assumes that, while the addressee is Joe, the target is her, something which seems to be supported by the fact that it was said “straight away when I got there”. It is possible, of course, that the offender also used non-verbal means to clarify the target, such as looking at her while she spoke. Taking the informant as the target, the utterance “come on Joe lets go outside” seems to have no relevance at all for her: it flouts the maxim of relation. The informant draws the implicature that going outside entails moving away from where she is, in other words, she is being excluded (see Haugh 2014 for further discussion of impoliteness implicatures).

In Culpeper’s (2011a) data, the most frequent implicit strategy by which impoliteness is understood is sarcasm. Sarcasm can be evaluated as mock politeness, that is, politeness which is not understood to be genuine (cf. Culpeper 1996, who draws on Leech 1983). The message conveyed is partially mixed: some aspects, such as the use of politeness formulae, suggest politeness; other aspects, typically contextual or co-textual, suggest impoliteness. For example, a member of staff at Lancaster University, writing to complain about somebody backing into her car in the car park and then disappearing, concludes her complaint: Thank you SO VERY MUCH. Note the capitalization here. The parallel in spoken language is the prosody. Mixed sarcastic messages often involve multi-modality; specifically, the verbal content conflicting with the prosody or visual aspects. In all such cases, the overall assessment must be weighted towards aspects suggesting impoliteness, leaving the aspects suggesting politeness (typically the formulaic polite words) as a superficial veneer, reminding the target of the distance between a polite context and the current impolite one.