The evolution of research articles on self-denigration: a systematic review across disciplines

1 Introduction

In the past few decades, interest in self-denigration has been growing in different disciplines ranging from linguistics (e.g., Kádár and Zhou 2021; Zare 2016) to communication science (e.g., Matwick and Matwick 2017; Guntzviller and Wang 2018), social psychology (e.g., Owens and King 2001; Speer 2019), and political science (e.g., Nesbitt-Larking 2003; Sills 2015). As a politeness maxim, self-denigration is a strategy through which individuals disparage or degrade themselves toward others “to appear humble, not necessarily to think humbly” (Chen 1993: 67). From a traditional approach to politeness, self-denigration has been studied in different languages from a (cross-)cultural standpoint (e.g., Gu 1990; Kádár 2010; Kim 2014; Owens and King 2001; Sharifian 2003, 2005]; among others).

The literature on the cultural facet of self-denigration suggests “a cline of self-denigration on which Western and Eastern cultures are plotted at the two extreme ends” (Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a: 47). From a cultural perspective, self-denigration is endorsed by most Eastern societies. From a Western culture perspective, however, it not only “does not contribute to achieving the goal of communication”, but also “deters the efficiency and automaticity that any interaction would aim for” (Kim 2014: 82). While the cultural analysis of self-denigration is beneficial in resolving these cultural issues, research in this area seems to be inconclusive leading to over-generalizations about the meanings and functions of self-denigration.

Considering the fact that self-denigration, similar to any other act of politeness, is “situated in more than just cultures” (Haugh et al. 2011: 1), the East-West dichotomy can be rebutted by recent research scrutinizing politeness as a situated phenomenon. Individuals, irrespective of their linguistic or cultural background, may “observe different degrees and forms of self-denigration co-constructed based on the context, which is due to the dynamicity of the language and the intentions behind self-denigration” (Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a: 47). That is why, in the past two decades, the focus of research on self-denigration has shifted from a pure cultural investigation to a more situational analysis of this phenomenon in face-to-face or virtual interactions in different settings (e.g., Dendenne 2021; Kádár and Zhou 2021; Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a, 2022b; Page 2019; Speer 2019; Walkinshaw et al. 2019; Zhou 2022). The evidence from the most recent research on self-denigration suggests novel functions, and not only indicates intra-cultural variations but also brings to the surface a common intention for denigrating self – that is, building relational connections.

It is now well established from several lines of evidence that self-denigration is gradually turning into a universal interactional strategy utilized in response to certain types of actions and interactions (Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a, 2022b). Therefore, a fine-grained analysis of self-denigration in different social settings seems indispensable, as no comprehensive evidence-based overview has ever been carried out for self-denigration. In addition, in light of the inconsistencies discerned in the literature regarding the perceptions concerning self-denigration in different contexts, a more systematic and theoretical analysis is required to map the different approaches to self-denigration, and determine how it has been operationalized across various methodologies and disciplines. Therefore, adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this systematic review strives to bridge different strands of literature and theoretical perspectives, hoping for new insights into self-denigration. Given the above, in the next section, we will briefly explain the literature on self-denigration from two perspectives. First, studies on self-denigration from a traditional perspective, mainly reflecting the cultural and linguistic variations, are reported. Then, pertinent literature reflecting the context-bound emergent functions of self-denigration is presented.

2 Politeness and self-denigration

Regardless of the context in which interactions take place, an emergent property of interaction is politeness, which is realized through two universal aspects: discernment and volition. Discernment, more common in Eastern cultures, is concerned with conformity to the expected norms regarding the addressee and the situation, such as age, occupation, and social status. Conversely, in Western cultures, volition is primary and the speakers are compelled to consciously choose the degree of politeness in their speech (Hill et al. 1986). These sociolinguistic aspects are apparently the underlying reasons for the various perceptions as regards politeness norms in different societies. For instance, according to the politeness maxim of self-denigration in Eastern cultures (Gu 1990), which resonates with the maxims of Approbation and Modesty (Leech 1983), individuals elevate others by maximizing praise of others, and denigrate themselves by maximizing dis-praise of self. However, from a historical perspective, the East/West controversy might stem from the different perspectives that these two cultures take toward self-denigration – namely, cultural and cognitive.

Self-denigration is, by and large, reported in studies on compliments and compliment responses in different languages, such as Persian, English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese (e.g., Cheng 2011; Drbseh 2015; Nhung 2014; Sharifian 2005, 2008]; Suh 2010; Tang and Zhang 2009; Yu 2013). In his cross-cultural study of self-denigration in Persian and Australian English, for instance, Sharifian (2005) observed that Persian receivers of praise do not accept compliments – instead, they mainly attribute what is being complimented to others, deny it, or simply downgrade it. Australians, however, showed more tendency toward accepting compliments using witty responses. As Sharifian (2005) argues, from the standpoint of Eastern cultures, self-denigration as a compliment response is an expression of modesty, good manners, and deference, while in Anglophone cultures, it may be portrayed as dishonest, exaggerated, or ironic.

Nevertheless, there is a contradiction between the variability in the intra-cultural perceptions of self-denigration illustrated through other empirical studies in pragmatics research. Tang and Zhang (2009), for example, demonstrated that self-deprecatory expressions, in some situations (e.g., responding to compliments on topics like possessions and character), may be used more frequently in Australian English as compared with American English or Mandarin Chinese. Thus, it turns out that even in the same cultural groups, people might have different interpretations of self-denigration because these cultural schemas “are represented in a distributed fashion across the minds in a cultural group” (Sharifian 2003: 187). On that account, “we must not simplify and over-generalize English culture, because there may be differences among English speaking cultures” (Tang and Zhang 2009: 339).

From a cognitive perspective, as Kim (2014) maintained, self-denigration (particularly in Western societies) is observed from a dispositional or pathological point of view. In cognitive psychology, self-denigration has been mainly studied as an emerging theme or a peripheral topic in the majority of prior research on mental or behavioral disorders, including depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem (e.g., Jones et al. 2010; Owens 1994; Owens and King 2001; Sciangula and Morry 2009). However, more recent studies in social psychology contradict the absolutely negative aspects attributed to self-denigration in the West by enumerating its positive interactional dimensions (Blickle et al. 2012; Brown 2019; Preuss and Alicke 2017; Speer 2019). These include acknowledging self-denigration as an act of modesty, a linguistic representation of self-enhancement, a communication practice for managing interactional troubles and developing social solidarity, and even as a sign of high self-esteem with affiliative intentions, which can be regarded as a strategic self-praise through humble-bragging (Rüdiger and Dayter 2020).

Moreover, the conflicting results of previous research could be associated with the intricate nature of self-denigration. That being the case, the sociolinguistic realization of self-denigration per se does not necessarily indicate its true meanings, as self-denigration may also be used ostensibly to fulfill a variety of intentions in different contexts (Kádár and Zhou 2021; Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a, 2022b; Zhou 2022). The above-mentioned variations may, indeed, be the reason for the shift in studying self-denigration as a situated phenomenon, because investigating self-denigration without considering situational factors may portray an incomplete picture of this phenomenon. In this systematic review, we tried to analyze the data extracted from heterogeneous contexts to excavate the contextual variations in using and perceiving self-denigration in social interactions.

3 Aims of the review

The purpose of this systematic review was to satisfy the need for improving academic literacy practices in applied linguistics, which is perceived as a multidisciplinary field of study drawing “from numerous outside sources, such as psychology, education, and sociology” (Hadley 2017: 11). In light of what was described above, further research is needed to signify a whole gamut of self-denigration, so as to construct a more comprehensive model by studying the state of the art to learn about the status quo of the field, and draw the trajectory for future research. This study adopts rigorous research methods to not only provide information on the characteristics of self-denigration, but also offer possible courses of action to individuals in the form of educational implications for the stakeholders in the field – that is, applied linguistics scholars, students, and policymakers. It also invites researchers from different disciplines to take a multi-disciplinary approach using qualitative or mixed-methods methodologies for analyzing and interpreting any social phenomenon. On that account, by delivering a meticulous review of the most impactful research, this systematic review seeks to improve our theoretical and empirical knowledge of the burgeoning topic of self-denigration in response to the following research questions:

4 Methodology

5 Results and discussion

In view of the first research question – How have the contextual, methodological, and theoretical dimensions of self-denigration in research articles (RAs) changed over the past four decades? – the RAs were read rigorously and the relevant data were extracted and counted manually. As for the first sub-question (RQ 1.1), the affiliation of the corresponding authors was the criterion established for determining the countries leading self-denigration research. The co-authors’ affiliations were also enumerated separately. As is shown in Figure 1, out of the 80 research articles from 24 countries, the United States and the United Kingdom were in the forefront of self-denigration research, comprising 40 % and 12.50 % of the articles, respectively. China and Australia, each with 6 studies (7.5 %), occupied the third place in our list. The articles from the rest of the countries comprised 1.25 %–3.75 % of the whole data.

Figure 1:

Countries/authors leading self-denigration research.

Figure 2 shows the research settings of the studies consisting of natural settings, laboratory environment settings, or miscellaneous ones (RQ 1.2). About two thirds (66.25 %) of the studies were categorized under natural settings. These studies were either collected from naturalistic and authentic circumstances (47.50 %) or computer-mediated communication environments (18.75 %). Naturalistic settings comprised three types of settings: institutional (monologic or dialogic communications), ordinary (face-to-face or distance communications), and performative settings (TV shows). Computer-mediated communication data were collected from microblogs and websites. The other two research settings – laboratory and miscellaneous – were used in 27.50 % and 6.25 % of the articles, respectively.

Figure 2:

Research settings of self-denigration research.

Out of the 80 RAs, 24 studies (30 %) used technology as a data collection method, including television technology (10 %), microblogs (12.50 %), or websites (8.75 %). A total of 34 studies (42.50 %) were conducted in learning environments (32 universities, 1 school, and 1 university and school). With respect to the research programs of the references, 28 studies (35 %) were part of a research program including projects funded by universities and organizations, course credits such as universities’ introductory psychology courses, or other specialized projects (e.g., an internship program), with 17.50 %, 12.50 %, and 5 % respectively.

With respect to the third sub-question (RQ 1.3), as the coding of the data revealed, the majority of the RAs fell short of providing adequate information in terms of participant demographics. In 35 of the 80 total articles reviewed (or 38.75 % of the corpus), one issue was the lack of an explicitly stated sample size. A considerable number of articles provided a dearth of information pertaining to the participants’ gender (n = 45; 56.25 %), age (n = 59; 73.75 %), first language (n = 43; 53.75 %), second language (n = 60; 75 %), and language proficiency (n = 76; 95 %).

Table 1 presents the data extracted from the articles which specified their participants’ demographic information. As can be seen, considering the participants’ status, almost one third of the articles were students (n = 29 out of 80; 36.25 %). 19 RAs (23.75 %) collected data from a miscellaneous group of people (e.g., family, friends, acquaintances, urban people, etc.) in different settings. The third most common group of samples was the internet users (13.75 %). Although most of the studies in this category had miscellaneous participants in terms of, for instance, age, gender, and educational background, due to the distinctive nature of virtual communication, they were categorized as a separate group. The participants recruited in the rest of the studies fell under other categories, such as academics, comedians, and politicians, with a frequency distribution of less than 9 % each.

Forty-nine studies (61.25 %) reported the number of their participants (n = 8,521). Only 35 articles indicated the number of male (n = 1,808; 39.52 %) and female (n = 2,766; 43.75 %) participants separately. A similar result was obtained in regard to the age of the participants.

The participants’ age group was not specified in 75 % of the studies. The rest of the references either mentioned the age range of the samples (minimum 10 to maximum 90 years old), their average age (minimum 19.8 to maximum 52.5 years old), or both. Most of these studies (n = 16; 20 %) recruited participants between 18 and 60 years old. Only 5 % of the articles included participants younger than 18 or older than 60.

Pertaining to the linguistic background of the samples, of the 80 RAs, only 37 studies (46.25 %) specified the first language of their participants. The remaining RAs presented no information or simply referred to the participants’ ethnicity or their country of origin, where the first language of the participants could be inferred (e.g., Chinese). In other cases where it was not possible to infer the participants’ L1 from their ethnicity or country, such as Singapore, in which a multitude of languages are used, it was counted as unspecified. As indicated in Table 1, English and Chinese were the most common first languages of the participants. It is noteworthy that, by virtue of the content of the RAs, in most of the studies which did not specify their participants’ native language explicitly, the participants’ L1 seemed to be English, as they were conducted in English-speaking countries. The contribution of other languages was 5 % or less. 15 studies (18.75 %) had participants from 2 to 11 linguistic backgrounds.

In terms of the second language (L2) of the participants, 19 studies explicitly indicated English as the L2 of their samples, and only one study mentioned Japanese as the participants’ L2. In the remaining studies (n = 60; 75 %), L2 was either unspecified or inapplicable. The participants’ proficiency was also either unspecified or inapplicable in the corpus. Only 4 studies out of the 80 RAs (5 %) alluded to the linguistic proficiency of their subjects as intermediate, advanced, intermediate and advanced, and mixed proficiency levels.

Concerning the next review question (RQ 1.4), the analysis indicated that almost all of the articles (n = 76; 95 %) made an explicit reference to at least one specific research methodology, theory, approach, or framework. The predominant research methodologies were conversation analysis, experimental methodology, and discourse analysis utilized in more than 17 (21.25 %), 15 (18.75 %), and 9 (11.25 %) studies respectively. The analysis of the data led to the identification of 23 different theories. Politeness theory, the most pervasive theory in the corpus, appeared straightforwardly in only 5 % of the articles. Cultural schema theory, self-completion theory, and rapport management theory – each appearing in only 2 RAs – were the next most common theories detected in the RAs. The rest of the theories occurred in less than 2 % of the articles. Concerning the approaches taken by the researchers, discursive analysis (n = 8; 10 %) was the most common approach. Only 5 articles specified the underlying framework of their studies as a feminist framework, face-based framework, self-presentational framework, interactional pragmatics framework and Partington’s framework of laughter interpretation. Appendix 7 presents a full account of the methodologies, theories, approaches, and frameworks extracted from the corpus.

As for research question 1.5, only 16.25 % of the references (n = 13 out of 80) measured the participants’ attitudes and surveyed their experiences in regard to self-denigration (Appendix 8). Interestingly, although less than half of the whole corpora (n = 34; 42.50 %) were conducted in academic settings, they were mainly concerned with the analysis of the participants’ self-denigration in different cultural, linguistic, and social settings, and only one study – carried out by Tunnisa et al. (2019) – investigated the effect of EFL teachers’ use of related, unrelated, self-disparaging, and unplanned humor on the learning outcomes of EFL students by conducting interviews and observations. According to the results of this study, the least common type of humor was self-disparaging humor (2.81 %). The students’ perceptions of teachers’ use of humor in English courses were positive, as they evaluated their teacher favorably as smart, funny, and a good friend. Furthermore, they delineated the class environment and the teacher’s style of teaching as relaxed, enjoyable, remarkable, pleasant, and fun. The following excerpts refer to two students’ attitudes concerning the learning outcome of using humor in class (Tunnisa et al. 2019: 110):

(1) So naturally, we understood the material more easily and quicker. So much knowledge we could get.

(2) Although we were very tired and just came back from schools, we could learn well.

An in-depth analysis of the 13 RAs measuring the participants’ sense-making of self-denigration was undertaken to see how this phenomenon was regarded by the interactants in various settings, so as to determine the possible variations across gender, social status, language background, etc. To identify, analyze, and interpret patterns of meanings, using the in vivo coding feature in MAXQDA,^[2] all relevant pieces of texts within the RAs were inductively coded and grouped into different categories (Figure 3). Then, each category was tagged a label specifying the common theme of the codes. For a better understanding of what is meant by the categories and sub-categories, Appendix 9 reports the summary of the thematic analysis with coded segments. Figure 3 displays the visual representation of the overarching themes and sub-themes illustrating the explicit and implicit attitudes and perceptions of the participants. As can be seen in Figure 3, self-denigration is susceptible to multiple interpretations, meanings, and functions, namely civility, defiance, coercion, self-enhancement, manipulation, congruity, and conservativeness.

Figure 3:

Thematic representation of the participants’ sense-making of self-denigration.

Out of the 13 RAs exploring the attitudes of the participants, 5 articles (38.46 %) documented favorable overall evaluations of self-denigration, and in the rest of the RAs (n = 9; 69.23 %), self-denigration was construed as a context-dependent phenomenon demonstrating contradictory or multiple flexible interpretations regardless of the gender, social status, and the language background of the participants. From a psychological perspective, self-denigration was perceived unfavorably in two Western contexts, namely the United States and New Zealand. The first context was the competitive context, when outperformers deprecated themselves to the outperformed by initiating a conversation immediately after winning the game, using a first-turn self-denigrating utterance to downplay their own accomplishment. In these circumstances, as the researchers argue, by attributing success to factors such as luck, the “outperformed people take winners’ self-deprecation as informative at face value” as a means to confess their weakness (Zell and Exline 2010: 81).

The second negative conception toward self-denigration emerged in the workplace asymmetrical relationship of the superior-subordinate, where the superior’s denigration of a joint work (i.e., the success of the organization) was perceived as face-threatening, as he not only denigrated himself but also implicitly degraded his subordinates’ role and achievements. Teasing was the subordinates’ reaction to the superior’s self-denigrating humor, as it posed a threat to the “subordinates’ identity face and association rights” (Schnurr and Chan 2011: 30).

In terms of gender, none of the studies compared male and female use of self-denigration or reported specific gender differences. However, an alluring finding of the in-depth analysis which was implicit in the attitudes of the participants, is the frequent use of self-denigrating humor or self-mockery in the discourse of the marginalized, be they males or females. Self-denigration in this sense seems to be the shared repertoire of the participants, which is performed as an affiliative bond of solidarity, and functions as a membership-indicating device. The analysis also suggests that minority groups use self-denigration as a delicate interaction strategy in their discourse to ironically challenge social norms, aspiring for equality, equity, and social justice. The term minority in this case does not necessarily refer to a demographic which takes up the smallest fraction within a population. Rather, it refers to its academic conception indicating the non-dominant status of the individuals who do not share the same power, status, and opportunities in society, such as students, women, and incels. This is illustrated in two examples from communication studies and linguistics (Examples 3 and 4 respectively) where self-denigration is viewed as a strategy for coping with difficulties or confronting hegemony, social inequalities, and gender stereotypes. As indicated by Example 3, in response to the question, “How would you describe your university career?”, a Facebook user posted a meme with an exaggerated self-denigrating humorous comment, implicating the challenging and painful experience of higher education.

(3) “I sometimes consider dropping out and becoming a stripper, but then I remember that I’m ugly and can’t dance” (Ask and Abidin 2018: 841).

In this context, as the authors assert, the student used self-deprecating humor to identify and relate with the depicted experience of higher education to construct a collective identity. In another study, Chen and Gao (2023) regarded self-denigration as a rhetoric transgression adopted as an anti-discriminatory practice in the positive energy discourse of standup comedians, to fulfil their responsibility in elevating their marginalized status. Example 4 depicts a female standup comedy contestant’s sarcastic self-deprecation, portraying herself “as an ‘ugly’ woman with no male pursuers” to mock the male contestants for “picking on the inexperienced in order to win the race”, for being “obsessed with female physical appearance”, and for their “neoliberal and patriarchal values and practices” (Chen and Gao 2023: 10).

(4) “This round of competition is single-elimination with only the winner entering the next round. You have never seen those who are eager to win. They scramble to pick me as their opponent. I have never been competed for by so many men in my entire life” (Chen and Gao 2023: 10).

Contrary to gender, the social status of the interactants in different socio-cultural contexts aroused a diverse range of feelings and attitudes toward self-denigration, namely, persuasive, face-threatening, collegial, polite, and politic (see Figure 3). For instance, in Schnurr and Chan (2011), pragmatically speaking, self-denigration of the superiors in Hong Kong and in New Zealand workplace discourse – though not taken at face value in both contexts – was perceived and responded to totally differently. In Hong Kong, where attending to hierarchical power relationships is culturally essential and subordinates are compelled to attend to the social status of their superiors, the superior’s self-denigration (Example 5) was perceived as ironic, eliciting collective laughter acknowledging the non-serious yet reprimanding nature of the superior’s self-denigrating comment, which is apparently used for the purpose of defending and reinforcing power relations.

(5) “You can be impolite to your boss you can’t be impolite to your father” (Schnurr and Chan 2011: 28).

By contrast, in the New Zealand workplace context, the superior used self-deprecating humor about his personal attribute or quality (Donald in Example 6) to portray himself and his clothing style as equal to or even lower than his subordinates. In this instance, by minimizing the status differences between himself and his subordinates, the superior depicted himself as close, intimate and equal, rather than a stereotypical leader, which seems to be more common in Western cultures. The participants had contrasting reactions to the superior’s self-denigration. The interlocutor who had not yet joined his team chose the safe strategy of laughter to acknowledge his interpretation of the humor. The subordinate, on the contrary, responded by teasing the casual style of the superior, which, as can be seen in the excerpt, was also supported by the superior. This indicates that the superior-subordinate relationship in this community of practice, “albeit being primarily professional, is close and intimate enough so that their teasing does not threaten their association rights but in fact reinforces the friendly and collegial relationship they share” (Schnurr and Chan 2011: 30).

(6) Donald: You can see the quality of my suit.

Michael: [Laughs]

Ann: He’s got shoes on so he must be having a good day.

Donald: [Laughs] Oh yes we try and run a relaxed atmosphere [Laughs] (Schnurr and Chan 2011: 30)

In regard to the language background of the participants, in contrast to the common belief that self-denigration is “popularly associated with East Asian languages” (Kádár et al. 2023: 153), most of the studies (10 out of 13 RAs, or 76.92 %) in our in-depth analysis phase investigated self-denigration in English. The participants’ attitudes were predominantly measured with respect to self-deprecating humor in English L1 contexts. 8 studies were conducted in Western contexts, out of which 2 studies were performed in multi-ethnic laboratory contexts in the US including both L1 and L2 speakers of English. 2 studies were carried out in Iran and Indonesia, where English plays the role of a foreign language. The remaining studies were conducted in China, Hong Kong and Japan, exploring self-denigration in Chinese and Japanese. As the review shows, self-denigration in Eastern countries is mainly a culturally-driven experience, whereas in Western countries, it seems to be a social phenomenon. However, as is suggested by some recent studies on Eastern languages, interestingly, the East-West distinction is perhaps becoming less conspicuous in this regard. By way of illustration, according to the attitudes of the Chinese participants in the linguistic study conducted by Kádár and Zhou (2021), self-denigration in modern Chinese is moving away from its conventional cultural enactment toward a more social practice, fulfilling a variety of novel functions.

The second research question reviews the evidence for the research foci in high-impact self-denigration RAs to identify how research foci have developed over time. It should be noted that research focus in this study refers roughly to the area of research wherein self-denigration is put forward and explored as the main, peripheral, or emerging theme of the study. To answer this question, firstly, the RAs were classified chronologically by decade into four timelines, ignoring the papers published after 2020 (n = 14; 17.50 %). Then, the impact of the studies was determined by extracting the citation counts of the RAs on Google Scholar. Subsequently, the first 30 percent of the highly-cited RAs in each decade were identified, leading to a corpus of 20 out of 66 RAs for further comparison (Appendix 10). In an attempt to designate the core themes of the studies in these highly-cited papers, the full texts of the RAs were perused, which ultimately led to the identification of three main inter-related research foci investigating self-denigration from psychological, interactional, and socio-cultural perspectives.

As illustrated in Figure 4, from 1981 to 2020, research on self-denigration with a focus on self-presentational strategies gradually lost its appeal and declined significantly from 100 % of the impactful studies in the 1980s to 16.66 % in the 2010s. One plausible reason can be the change in social contexts, norms, and values, particularly due to the impact of technology and social media. The interactional dynamics and the social, cultural, and linguistic norms, on the other hand, experienced an upward trend increasing from zero to 50 % of the impactful studies in the first three decades. However, this trend changed in the 2010s, where interactional dynamics developed into a more popular research focus as compared with the social, cultural, and linguistic norms. The borderline between interactional dynamics and the social, cultural, and linguistic norms seems to be hazy, and as is implied in the content of the RAs, in the majority of cases, these norms drive, reinforce, or impair interaction dynamics.

Figure 4:

Development of the research foci in high-impact self-denigration RAs from 1981 to 2020.

As the analysis revealed, the research foci in self-denigration RAs have switched from a more personal, cognitive orientation manifested through self-presentation into a more interpersonal and interactional endeavor, which is bounded by the social, cultural, and linguistic background of the individuals. Figure 5 displays the detailed visual illustration of the development of the research foci and the core concepts of the impactful research RAs from 1981 to 2020.

Figure 5:

Development of the research foci in high-impact self-denigration RAs from 1981 to 2020.

In terms of context, the evolution of research foci exhibits a trend from hypothetical elicitation settings (35 %) toward more actual face-to-face and virtual communication contexts (65 %). Interestingly, contrary to the common belief that self-denigration is an Eastern linguistic phenomenon, 65 % of these studies were conducted in Western contexts investigating self-denigration in English, 10 % in Eastern contexts, and the remaining 25 % carried out a cross-linguistic contrastive study of self-denigration in two or more languages. Figure 6 shows the evolution of the research context from 1981 to 2020. Another feature worth noting regarding the development of context in high-impact RAs is the use of self-denigration in humorous contexts, which may be due to the fact that humor fosters a positive environment that encourages more interactional collaboration among interlocutors. In line with the increasing interest in the interactional dynamics of self-denigration, focus on the impact of self-denigration in conversational humor (e.g., self-deprecating humor and self-mockery), particularly in Western interaction settings, increased from zero in the 1980s to 45 % in the 2010s. Further details concerning other important issues of the impactful studies are presented in Appendix 11.

Figure 6:

Development of the research context in high-impact self-denigration RAs from 1981 to 2020.

6 Reflection on current research

This systematic review was conducted to critically explore and synthesize research on self-denigration in the past 40 years. The findings suggest that self-denigration in social interactions, from a pragmatic point of view, is predominantly a cooperative behavior and an interaction resource which is not exclusively associated with Eastern cultures. The findings of this review align with existing literature, suggesting that self-denigration serves as a cooperative strategy in social interactions, challenging the notion that it solely serves as a sign of low self-confidence, which has been the common perception of self-denigration in the West (e.g., Speer 2019). This shift is perhaps due to globalization and the burgeoning face-to-face or virtual exchange of cultural values, which might have led to the spread of this cultural schema around the world with different forms and variations. Recent studies indicate that self-denigration varies across cultural contexts, necessitating further exploration of its implications in both online and offline settings (e.g., Kádár and Zhou 2021). This highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of self-denigration as it relates to communication and relational dynamics. Self-denigration, according to the findings of this systematic review, is a highly role-governed affiliative social act adopted to achieve “a ritualized relational equilibrium” (Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a, 2022b) in social interactions, as it tends to be associated with managing relationships, impressions, negotiations, arguments, tensions, and conflicts among others. Therefore, when individuals denigrate themselves in a social interaction, they do not necessarily intend to devalue themselves. They are, on the contrary, building relational connections with or separation from others. In fact, they seem to be consciously adopting this strategy to implicitly enact and defend their values, social rights, and obligations.

The evidence from this systematic review suggests that the social act of denigrating self in interactions is apparently a context-bound “collective intention” (Searle 1990). It is the context of situation that frames and re-frames this shared intention in the course of an interaction so that the intentions and actions fit the situational context. That being the case, self-denigration as a collective intentionality is associated with the social representations of the interactants in a discourse community (Mayahi and Jalilifar 2022a), as it seems to be consciously used “to establish social order, orient participants and enable communication among members of groups and communities” (Sammut and Howarth 2014: 1800). This collective intentionality “implies the notion of cooperation” (Searle 1990: 406) which facilitates the flow of interaction, and leads to relational equilibrium in social interactions.

In conclusion, it is noteworthy that due to the interdisciplinary collection of data in this research, the findings need to be confirmed separately by more research in each discipline. In the screening phase of the review, it became evident that most of the studies on self-denigration are secondary quantitative research relying on different models of personality types (e.g., HEXACO, Big-Five, etc.). Therefore, future explorations need to embrace more innovative and qualitative research methods in order to investigate this interdisciplinary phenomenon. Generally, to further assess the meanings and functions of self-denigration, and to eliminate the psychological misconceptions toward self-denigration which seems to be derived from studies taking the existing personality type models for granted, additional empirical research in authentic real-life contexts which investigate the actual interactions of the participants and their attitudes and feelings is warranted. This is especially important in high-stakes international contexts (e.g., academic and workplace settings) where the social, cultural, and linguistic differences of the participants can be a source of misunderstanding, threatening their academic and professional endeavor.