‘No eres inteligente ni para tener amigos… Pues anda que tú’ [‘You are not even clever enough to have any friends… Look who’s talking!’]: a quantitative analysis of the production and reception of impoliteness in present-day Spanish reality television

  • José Luis Blas Arroyo

Abstract

One of the conclusions reached in many of the studies conducted on impoliteness is that the nature and degree of impolite behaviour are closely linked to the contexts in which it takes place, whether private or institutional. With regard to the latter, for example, attention has been paid to certain kinds of discourse in which verbal aggressiveness and impoliteness are part of the interactional behaviour that is expected of participants, as occurs in political debates that take place in parliament and at election time (Martín Rojo 2000; Fernández 2000; Harris 2001; Pérez de Ayala 2001; Bolivar 2005; Blas Arroyo 2011) or in television programmes about military training (Culpeper 1996; Bousfield 2008), to mention but a few. In recent years there has been a growing interest in analysing impoliteness in different media genres, especially from television. Of course, in other (not-so-distant) times it was difficult to find many such programmes. Along with pseudo-debates and talk shows of different kinds (Grindstaff 2002; Patrona 2006; Brenes 2007; Lorenzo-Dus 2007, 2009a; Hutchby 2008; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2009, 2013; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich et al. 2010; Fuentes 2013), researchers have recently found reality shows to be an important source of material for studying impoliteness (see, e.g., Culpeper, Bousfield & Wichmann 2003; Culpeper 2005; Lorenzo-Dus 2008, 2009b; Blas Arroyo 2010a, 2010b).

Keywords

Discourse Move Reality Show Power Axis Entertainment Programme Politeness Research 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2001) ‘No diga chorradas..’ La descortesía en el debate político cara a cara. Una aproximación pragma-variacionista. Oralia, 4: 9–45.Google Scholar
  2. Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2003) ‘Perdone que se lo diga, pero vuelve usted a faltar a la verdad, señor González’: Form and function of politic verbal behaviour in face-to-face Spanish political debates. Discourse and Society, 14(4): 395–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Bias Arroyo, José Luis (2010a) La descortesía en contextos de telerrealidad mediática. Análisis de un corpus español. In Francesca Orletti & Laura Mariottini (eds.), (Des)cortesía en español. Espacios teóricos y metodológicos para su estudio (Roma-Estocolmo: Università Degli Studi Roma Tre-EDICE), pp. 183–207.Google Scholar
  4. Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2010b) Niveles en la caracterización de las estrategias discursivas. Aplicaciones al estudio de la descortesía en un corpus mediático. Español Actual, 94: 47–76.Google Scholar
  5. Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2011) Políticos en contlicto. Una aproximación pragmáticodiscursiva al debate electoral cara a cara (Bern: Peter Lang).Google Scholar
  6. Bolivar, Adriana (2005) La descortesía en la dinámica social y politíca. In Jorge Murillo (ed.), Actos de habla y cortesía en distintas variedades de español: Perspectivas teóricas y metodológicas. Actas del II Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (San José de Costa Rica: Universidad de Costa Rica), pp. 137–64.Google Scholar
  7. Bousfield, Derek (2007) Beginnings, middles and ends: Towards a biopsy of the dynamics of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(12): 2185–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bousfield, Derek (2008) Impoliteness in Interaction (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Brenes, Ester (2007) Estrategias descorteses y agresivas en la figura del tertuliano televisivo: ¿transgresión o norma? Linred, 2: 1–19.Google Scholar
  10. Brenes, Ester (2009) La agresividad verbal y sus mecanismos de expresión en el español actual. Doctoral thesis, Universidad Sevilla.Google Scholar
  11. Briz, Antonio & Grupo Valesco (2002) Corpus de conversaciones coloquiales (Barcelona: Ariel).Google Scholar
  12. Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson (1987) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
  13. Culpeper, Jonathan (1996) Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 25(3): 349–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Culpeper, Jonathan (2005) Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz-show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1): 35–72.Google Scholar
  15. Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield & Anne Wichmann (2003) Impoliteness revisited with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 35: 1545–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Eelen, Gino (2001) A Critique of Politeness Theories (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing).Google Scholar
  17. Fernández, Francisco (2000) Estrategas del diálogo. La interacción comunicativa en el discurso político-electoral (Granada: Método Ediciones).Google Scholar
  18. Fuentes, Catalina (ed.) (2013) (Des)cortesía para el espectáculo: estudios de pragmótica variacionista (Madrid: Arco Libros).Google Scholar
  19. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2009) Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: The ‘Culture Wars’. Journal of Politeness Research, 5(2): 273–304.Google Scholar
  20. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2010) The YouTubification of politics, impoliteness and polarization. In R. Taiwo (ed.), Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction (Hershey, PA: IGI Global), pp. 540–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2013) El modelo del género y la des/cortesía clasificatoria en las valoraciones de Sólvame por parte de la audiencia. In Catalina Fuentes (ed.), (Des)cortesía para el espectáculo: estudios de pragmática variacionista (Madrid: Arco Libros).Google Scholar
  22. Grindstaff, Laura (2002) The Money Shot. Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Harris, Sandra (2001) Being politically impolite: Extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse and Society, 12(4): 451–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Herring, S. C. (2004) Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behaviour. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling & J. H. Gray (eds.), Designing for Virtual Communities in the Services of Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 338–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Holmes, Janet & Stephanie Schnurr (2005) Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace: Negotiating norms and identifying contestation. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1): 121–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Hutchby, Ian (2008) Participants’ orientations to interruptions, rudeness and other impolite acts in talk-in-interaction. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(2): 221–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Kienpointner, Manfred (1997) Varieties of rudeness: Types and functions of impolite utterances. Functions of Language, 4(2): 251–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Locher, Miriam & Richard J. Watts (2008) Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguistic behaviour. In Derek Bousfield & Miriam A. Locher (eds.), Impoliteness in Language (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter), pp. 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2007) (Im)politeness and the Spanish media: The case of audience participation debates. In María E. Placencia & Carmen Garcia (eds.), Research on Politeness in the Spanish-Speaking World (Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 145–66.Google Scholar
  30. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2008) Real disorder in the court: An investigation of conflict talk in US courtroom shows. Media, Culture and Society, 30(1): 81–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2009a) Television Discourse: Analysing Language in the Media. (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
  32. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2009) ‘You’re barking mad, I’m out’: Impoliteness and broadcast talk. Journal of Politeness Research, 5(2): 159–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich & Patricia Bou-Franch (2011) On-line polylogues and impoliteness: The case of postings sent in response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube video. Journal of Pragmatics, 43: 2578–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Martin Rojo, Luisa (2000) Enfrentamiento y consenso en los debates parlamentarios sobre la política de inmigración en España. Oralia, 3: 113–48.Google Scholar
  35. Mills, Sara (2002) Rethinking politeness, impoliteness and gender identity. In Lia Litosseliti & Jane Sunderland (eds.), Gender, Identity and Discourse Analysis (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins), pp. 69–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Montgomery, Martin (1999) Talk as entertainment: The case of The Mrs. Merton Show. In Louann Haarman (ed.), Talk about Shows: La Parola e lo Spettacolo (Bologna: CLIJEB), pp. 101–50.Google Scholar
  37. Patrona, Marianna (2006) Conversationalization and media empowerment in Greek television discussion programs. Discourse and Society, 17(1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Pérez de Ayala, Soledad (2001) FTAs and Erskine May: Conflicting needs? Politeness in Question Time. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(2): 143–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor & Xosé Padilla Garcia (2009) Dime cómo ironizas y te diré quién eres: Una aproximación pragmática a la ironía (Frankfurt: Peter Lang).Google Scholar
  40. Watts, Richard J. (2008) Rudeness, conceptual blending theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 289–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© José Luis Blas Arroyo 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • José Luis Blas Arroyo

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations