Inherent linguistic impoliteness : The case of insultive YOU+NP in Dutch, English and Dutch

This article conducts a corpus analysis of insults in the form you+np (e.g. you (stupid) idiot), an impoliteness formula, in Dutch, English and Polish. It argues that impoliteness can be inherently associated with linguistic structures, a claim which contradicts the widely held view in current (im)politeness research that impoliteness, and indeed politeness, is primarily determined by context. However, whilst we show that our insultive form is strongly conventionalised in similar ways across languages, it is never completely conventional. We suggest that the generally high level of conventiona... Mehr ...