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The complexity of non-seriousness: a case study of a (mock?) mock impolite utterance

  • Jim O’Driscoll

    Jim O’Driscoll (BA Cambridge 1974, MA Essex 1986, PhD Ghent 1999) has held posts in six different countries, mostly recently at the Universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield and Leeds in England. His research interests straddle several aspects of language-in-situated-use. His articles have appeared in Functions of Language, Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of Politeness Research, Journal of Pragmatics, Multilingua and Pragmatics and Society. His book on Offensive Language was published in 2020. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Politeness Research.

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Published/Copyright: January 22, 2024

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of verbal behaviour which, being neither markedly polite nor markedly impolite nor simply politic, is interpersonally ambivalent. It focuses on what are known as mock impolite utterances (in which a positive attitude to the addressee(s) masquerades as a negative one). Through the detailed analysis of one attested utterance, it shows that apparently non-serious utterances of this kind can be more than simply the opposite of their surface realisations, that they can contain within them varying degrees of ‘seriousness’, so that interpretation of them is not just a binary matter of serious versus non-serious. It proceeds to propose that we can go some way to capturing this complexity by recognising that (non)seriousness operates on at least two dimensions – the affective and the propositional – and moreover that the precise degree of (non)seriousness of an utterance on each dimension is independent of the other. Two further examples are briefly examined to illustrate this variability.


Corresponding author: Jim O’Driscoll, E-mail:

About the author

Jim O’Driscoll

Jim O’Driscoll (BA Cambridge 1974, MA Essex 1986, PhD Ghent 1999) has held posts in six different countries, mostly recently at the Universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield and Leeds in England. His research interests straddle several aspects of language-in-situated-use. His articles have appeared in Functions of Language, Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of Politeness Research, Journal of Pragmatics, Multilingua and Pragmatics and Society. His book on Offensive Language was published in 2020. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Politeness Research.

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Received: 2023-12-13
Accepted: 2023-12-18
Published Online: 2024-01-22
Published in Print: 2024-02-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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