Culpeper - Impoliteness Revisited

Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1545–1579
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to

dynamic and prosodic aspects
Jonathan Culpepera,*, Derek Bousfielda, Anne Wichmannb
a
Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Bowland College, Lancaster University,
Bailrigg, Lancaster, Lancs LA1 4YT, UK
b
Department of Cultural Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancs PR1 2HE, UK
Received 11 November 2001; accepted 5 July 2002
Abstract
This paper focuses on impoliteness, the use of communicative strategies designed to attack
face, and thereby cause social conflict and disharmony. Using television documentary
recordings of disputes between traffic wardens and car owners as our data, we revisit the
impoliteness framework mapped out in Culpeper [J. Prag. 25 (1996) 349]. Having justified
why an impoliteness framework is needed, we explore the notion of impoliteness and consider
whether the impoliteness strategies identified in Culpeper can be found in another discourse
type. We argue that for impoliteness to be fully appreciated we need to move beyond the
single strategy (lexically and grammatically defined) and examine both how impoliteness pans
out in extended discourse and the role of prosody in conveying impoliteness. Our paper has
important implications for politeness theory and discourse studies in general, and the role of
prosody in discourse in particular.
# 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Although, as Leech points out, ‘conflictive illocutions tend, thankfully, to be

rather marginal to human linguistic behaviour in normal circumstances’ (Leech,
1983: 105), there are contexts in which conflictive illocutions are rather more central.
Conflictive talk has been found to play a role—and often a central one—in, for
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: j.culpeper@lancaster.ac.uk (J. Culpeper).
0378-2166/03/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00118-2
1546 J. Culpeper et al. / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1545–1579
example, army training discourse (Culpeper, 1996), courtroom discourse (Lakoff,

1989; Penman, 1990), family discourse (Vuchinich, 1990), adolescent discourse
(Labov, 1972; Goodwin and Goodwin, 1990), doctor-patient discourse (Mehan,
1990), therapeutic discourse (Labov and Fanshel, 1977; Lakoff, 1989), ‘workplace’
discourse (Andersson and Pearson, 1999), parliamentary discourse (Harris, 2001),
‘everyday conversation’ (Beebe, 1995), radio talk shows (Hutchby, 1996), and fic-
tional texts (Culpeper, 1998; Tannen, 1990) (see also Kienpointner, 1997, for a good
survey of types of ‘rude’ talk). In all these cases and in others, we would argue that
politeness theories are unable to account fully for the interaction.
This paper focuses on the notion of impoliteness, communicative strategies
designed to attack face, and thereby cause social conflict and disharmony (see, also,
Kienpointner’s 1997: 259–260 definition of ‘rudeness’, and that of Beebe, 1995: 159).
Note that we are primarily concerned with what other researchers have referred to
as ‘strategic’ (Lakoff, 1989) or ‘instrumental’ (Beebe, 1995) impoliteness, that is to
say, it fulfills ‘a function that the speaker intended, and was not [simply] failed
politeness’ (Beebe, 1995: 166). Also, we focus mainly on ‘genuine’ impoliteness, as
opposed to ‘mock’ or ‘ritual’ impoliteness (cf. Labov, 1972; Leech, 1983: 144). A
particular purpose of this paper is to build on the impoliteness framework mapped
out in Culpeper (1996). One limitation of Culpeper (1996) is that it is focussed rather
too narrowly on single impoliteness strategies, usually made up of particular gram-
matical or lexical items. In this paper, we will: (1) discuss the relationship between
politeness and impoliteness, (2) investigate how impoliteness pans out in discourse,
and (3) probe the role of prosody in communicating impoliteness. Although we
focus on impoliteness, it will be clear that much of what we say has important
implications for politeness theory, as well as for studies of discourse in general and
the role of prosody in discourse in particular. This is not to say that we are arguing
for a replacement of politeness theory. In fact, all the leading politeness theories at
least mention the notion of impoliteness. The problem is that in practice they all
focus solidly on politeness, with the result that their comments on impoliteness are
descriptively inadequate and often conceptually biased (i.e. it is assumed that the
concepts used to explain politeness can straightforwardly be applied to impoliteness)
(see Eelen, 1999: chapter 1 and Eelen, 2001: chapter 3, for an elaboration of this
point). We view our work here as partly a complement to politeness theory (specifi-
cally to the classical theory of Brown and Levinson, 1987), and partly a revision of
parts of it. We begin with a brief description of our data and a justification as to why
we chose it for our study.
2. The data
The data for this study was taken from the BBC’s documentary television series
The Clampers (1998). This series filmed the day to day activities of the London
Councils’ privatised traffic wardens, including the ‘clampers’, those traffic wardens
whose task it is to apply clamps to illegally parked cars and to tow them away. It
also followed the activities of legal officials who adjudicate in disputes over the
J. Culpeper et al. / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1545–1579 1547
penalties which have been applied by the traffic wardens.1 These activities often
resulted in confrontation. In most cases, these confrontational episodes took the
form of disputes, that is to say, ‘general disagreements in interaction which are dis-
played by the occurrence of some sort of opposition to an antecedent event’ (Corsaro
and Rizzo 1990: 26).
Two caveats regarding the data need to be borne in mind. Firstly, we have to remem-
ber that one of the likely goals of the television series is to entertain the viewing public.2
Thus, it is likely that the BBC have biased their selection of scenes for inclusion in the
documentary series towards the more confrontational scenes. As a consequence, one
cannot draw inferences about the norms of interaction between parking officials and car
owners. Secondly, the existence of a camera crew in these scenes obviously leads to
the problem of the observer’s paradox. The presence of the camera is likely, at least
in some cases, to have affected the conversational behaviour of the participants.
Culpeper (1996) and Bousfield (forthcoming) based much of their impoliteness
work on army training discourse. Such discourse is particularly rich in impoliteness,
because of the extreme inequality of power and the particular training philosophy,
which aims to depersonalise the recruits. The Clampers is less rich in impoliteness, and,
as a consequence, it represents a good data set for testing the margins of impoliteness.
3. The relationship with politeness theory
3.1. Why do we need an impoliteness framework? We’ve already got bald on record
One particular criticism of Culpeper (1996), personally communicated by a num-

ber of academics, is that an impoliteness framework is unnecessary, since Brown and
Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework already postulates a category, bald on
record, which accommodates ‘impolite’ phenomena. Evidence of this argument is
also in print. For instance, Thomas (1995: 171) places examples where the speaker
has ‘deliberately chosen to be maximally offensive’ in bald on record. However,
when we consider how the bald on record superstrategy is conceptualised, we find
that such a view is problematic. Simply stating what bald on record is in a particular
context is a very complex issue, not least of all because Brown and Levinson’s defi-
nition is not watertight. Their definition of bald on record utterances is those which
are issued ‘in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way as possible [...]
following the specifications of Grice’s Maxims of Co-operation’ (Brown and Levin-
son, 1987: 69). Moreover, it is clear from the position of the bald on record super-
strategy in their scheme that it is associated with a specific context, namely, one where
the face threat is very small and so minimal politeness work is required. Specifically,
1
The full list of ‘officials’ includes traffic wardens acting as ticketers, clampers and those who tow
away illegally parked vehicles; direct employees of the council, namely, public servants who work at the
council’s vehicle storage pound (where towed vehicles are stored); court appointed bailiffs who operate to
collect unpaid parking fines or offenders’ vehicles; and adjudicators, who hear from drivers appealing
against fines levied on parking tickets, clamps, or towed vehicles.
2
For the link between impoliteness and entertainment, see Culpeper (1998).
they suggest that bald on record is used when: (1) the speaker and hearer recognise that
face wants are suspended in the interests of some emergency, (2) the face threat is very
small, and (3) the speaker is much more powerful than the hearer (1987: 69).
For the purpose of discussion, let us review an example of the bald on record
strategy used in an emergency situation, given in Thomas (1995: 170):
[The speaker knows that a bomb has been planted in the stand at his racecourse.
He thinks his young nephew is hiding in the stands]
... Toby, get off the stands. The stands are not safe. Toby, for Christ’s sake
do what I say. This is not a game. Come on you little bugger ...
for once in your life be told.
Our first observation would be that the example does not appear to adhere to Grice’s
(1975) maxims, and thus a key part of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) definition of bald
on record. A maximally efficient bald on record version might be simply: ‘Toby, get
off the stands’. This version would fit Thomas’s suggestion that in emergencies ‘the
speaker is likely to focus on the propositional content of the message, and pay little
attention to the interpersonal aspect of what is said’ (Thomas, 1995: 170). Thomas’s
original version is inefficient through the use of linguistic devices that appear to
attack face. In the final sentence, ‘you little bugger’ is an abusive term of address,
and ‘for once in your life’ implicates, via the maxim of quality (Grice, 1975), the
impolite belief that Toby is generally disobedient. Clearly, the focus is not purely on
the propositional content, but also has an important interpersonal aspect. What
seems to be happening here is that the speaker employs a short-term goal of causing
face damage, in order to achieve the long-term benefit of saving his nephew’s life.
Moreover, there are ‘maximally offensive’ examples that fall outside the specific
contexts for bald on record mentioned by Brown and Levinson (1987). Thomas
(1995: 171) supplies as one such example Tam Dalyell’s reference to Margaret
Thatcher (then Prime Minister) in the British House of Commons: ‘I say that she is a
bounder, a liar, a deceiver, a crook’. This does not fit Brown and Levinson’s (1987)
contexts. There is also the issue of whether one can comfortably label such offensive
phenomena as this bald on record politeness, when politeness is defined thus:
[...] politeness, like formal diplomatic protocol (for which it must surely be the
model), presupposes that potential for aggression as it seeks to disarm it, and
makes possible communication between potentially aggressive parties.
(Brown and Levinson 1987: 1, our emphasis)
It is clear that bald on record does not adequately describe the variety of phenom-
ena, including impoliteness phenomena, that can be—and have been by many
researchers—placed within it.3
3
See also Watts’ (1992: 47–48) argument that the term ‘politeness’ is inadequate, given the variety of
phenomena, including conflictual phenomena, which it attempts to cover.
3.2. Politeness, impoliteness and directness
In fact, some impolite utterances are far from the directness associated with bald
on record. Leech’s (1983: 108) comments on the relationship between politeness and
indirectness are frequently cited. Indirect utterances, such as ‘Could you possibly
answer the phone’, tend to be more polite because they increase optionality for the
hearer, whilst decreasing illocutionary force (cf. Leech, 1983: 108). Less well known
is Leech’s idea that indirectness can increase impoliteness:
[. . .] in this case obliquity works in the opposite direction: because ‘You have
something to declare’ is an impolite belief, the more indirect kinds of question
[e.g. ‘Haven’t you something to declare’] are progressively more impolite, more
threatening, than the ordinary yes–no question. (1983: 171)
To take another example, You have shit for brains is clearly more indirect than You
fool, and, context permitting, could be interpreted as very impolite for several rea-
sons: (1) the criticism is personalized through the use of you (this is, of course, also
true of You fool), (2) shit is a taboo word, and (3) the speaker flouts Grice’s maxim
of quality, in order to implicate the impolite belief that the target has absolutely no
intelligence.
Of course, Leech would be the first to admit that the bi-directional correlation
between indirectness and politeness/impoliteness does not apply in all contexts, and
that other factors, aside from indirectness, affect politeness/impoliteness. For
example, note that the quotation from Leech above refers to an ‘impolite belief’; in
the case of polite beliefs, increased directness correlates with increased politeness (cf.
Leech 1983: 109–110). Note that in the analysis of You have shit for brains we
observed that shit as a taboo word partly accounts for its impoliteness. Taboo words
are not an issue for directness–indirectness: ‘tabooness’ is conventionally associated
with a word; it does not require the inferencing associated with indirectness. Fur-
thermore, Blum-Kulka (1987), for example, reports that conventionally indirect
strategies (e.g. Can you pass the salt?) are perceived as most polite by English and
Hebrew speakers. This suggests not only that the indirectness–politeness scale is
sensitive to cross-cultural variation, but also that the process of conventionalisation
can ‘short-circuit’ the indirectness scale. Many impolite expressions are con-
ventionalized to a degree (cf. Jay, 1992: 2), but whether the same would apply to the
indirectness–impoliteness scale—namely, that conventionalized strategies short-cir-
cuit the indirectness scale and therefore are less impolite—is an area that could
benefit from future investigation.
Interestingly, it is precisely those utterances that have the directness of bald on
record which are difficult to interpret as either polite, impolite, or something in
between. As Brown and Levinson (1987) realized, the context is crucial. For exam-
ple, if it were not part of someone’s role (as a tutor, say) to make a criticism, and if it
were known that the addressee was particularly sensitive to criticism, then It was
bad, as a description of the addressee’s work, would seem to be impolite. It should
be noted that a key difference between politeness and impoliteness is intention:
whether it is the speaker’s intention to support face (politeness) or to attack it

(impoliteness). Of course, identifying speaker intention is a problematic business,
and this is one of the issues we will attend to in the following section, where we will
also consider types of (im)politeness.
3.3. Notions of politeness and notions of impoliteness
In order to help understand the notion of impoliteness, we will first briefly con-
sider the types of action that may lead to face damage. Goffman (1967: 14) suggests
to us that there are three types of action which constitute a threat to face.
Firstly, ‘the offending person may appear to have acted maliciously and spitefully,
with the intention of causing open insult’ (Goffman, 1967: 14). For example, in the
clampers data the following interchange between S1 (a traffic warden) and S2 (who
owns a car which has received a parking penalty) contains an offence which aims at
aggravating the face of the intended recipient (throughout this paper italics indicate
the particular part of the discourse we wish to focus on):4
[1] S1: I’m afraid I have sir=

S2: you have no authority to put a ticket on a disabled err car =why didn’t you
S1: I’d . what do you mean I did do it before

S2: do it before then I’ve parked here every day because I have a
S1: yes sir I never really

S2: prescription from the chemist you don’t put any tickets on my car and then and
S1: I’m not I’m not always down here sir

S2: then you just come in and out of the blue and put one on ohh fuck off
Our understanding of impoliteness falls within this category.

Secondly, ‘[t]here are incidental offences; these arise as an unplanned but some-
times anticipated by-product of action—action the offender performs in spite of its
offensive consequences, though not out of spite’ (Goffman, 1967: 14). In the fol-
lowing example, S1 is an adjudicator for London’s Southwark council. He hears and
decides upon appeals concerning all types of parking offences. S2 and S3 are a hus-
band and wife (respectively) who are appealing against a ticket which they have
received. This extract is taken from the final stages of their appeal hearing:
[2] S1: well look I must draw this to a close . I’ve listened to you very carefully and I’m . do
S2:
S3:
4
Throughout our study we have used the stave transcription method for representing interaction.
Within this approach, (S1) or (S2), for example, represent a particular speaker; a full-stop represents an
audible pause of more than 1 second; an equals sign represents latching (i.e. one interactant speaking
immediately another finishes); non-verbal actions, contextual information, and transcription difficulties
(e.g. ‘indistinct’) are placed in angle brackets.
S1: understand entirely what your point is but I can’t allow your appeal I’m afraid=
S2: =Oh why
S3:
S1: erm erm I can’t say that the ticket has been incorrectly issued because it’s been
S2: not I I
S3:
S1: correctly issued not incorrectly issued

S2: we’re not we’re not arguing that I
S3: but it hasn’t been correctly issued
S1: well in my opinion it has

S2: what happens if a sign changes overnight
S3: but
The adjudicator’s act of denying an appeal and ‘disagreeing’ with the interlocutors
does not appear to be impoliteness, as we understand it, since the intention is not
likely to be primarily to cause face damage per se to the vehicle’s owners, but to
perform actions consistent with the duties and constraints his job imposes (e.g. he
could not allow the appeal in the context of insufficient evidence). However, face
damage is likely to be an anticipated by-product of the action of denying an appeal
(indeed of ‘disagreeing’ generally). The action is done in spite of the offensive con-
sequences, but not out of spite for the vehicle’s owners. This kind of by-product
offence is captured within politeness frameworks. Note that the adjudicator takes
into account the potential offensive consequences of denying an appeal by showing
empathy with the vehicle’s owners (I’m . do understand entirely what your point is),
expressing regret (I’m afraid), and couching his refusal as a matter of his inability to
do otherwise in this context rather than as his own desire (I can’t allow your appeal
and I can’t say that the ticket has been incorrectly issued because it’s been correctly
issued). In other words, he predominantly uses positive politeness (cf. Brown and
Levinson, 1987).
Thirdly, the offending person ‘may appear to have acted innocently; his offence
seems to be unintended and unwitting [. . .]. In our society one calls such threats to
face faux pas, gaffes, boners or bricks’ (Goffman, 1967: 14). No clear examples of
this type of offence occurred within our data. An ‘unwitting’ offence might consist of
something like the following example, reconstructed from an actual conversation
which took place between a high ranking member of Lancaster University’s senate,
S1, and a member of the academic staff, S2:
[3] S1: < sincerely >when is it due?

S2: .. I’m not pregnant
Here S1 has unwittingly drawn attention to the fact that S2 looks overweight.
Such an action could be construed as face threatening within a Western cultural
setting.
Whilst Goffman’s categorisation is helpful, it does not capture the indeterminate

instances one finds in real data. For example, the following exchange occurs at the
very end of a dispute which has taken place between S1 (a parking official) and S2
(the owner of a clamped van). S2 has been disputing S1’s right to clamp and the
ethics of clamping. Neither participant has been willing to concede to the other, and
eventually S2 ‘closes’ the exchange, thus:
[4] S1: that’s right I clamped your car sir and I won’t dispute that fact that I clamped your car
S2: well
S1: well that’s fine by me if you don’t want to talk we don’t have to talk
S2: end of conversation
The problem which concerns us here is that we cannot be sure whether S2’s utter-
ance was performed maliciously, with ‘the intention of causing open insult’ (Goff-
man 1967: 14) to S1 (by snubbing him), or whether S1 simply grew tired of the
discussion and its apparent lack of progress, and thus decided to end the conversa-
tion in spite of the offensive consequences of doing so, though not out of spite for S1.
Interlocutors do not wear their intentions on their sleeves. Speakers’ intentions, of
course, are not just the basis of Goffman’s categorisation above, they are also fun-
damental to speech act theory. And, as a consequence of the fact that Brown and
Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory is built on speech act theory, it too has speakers’
intentions at its heart. However, even within conversation analysis and other more
sociologically oriented approaches to interaction, there is an admission that partici-
pants in conversation do attribute intentions and purposes of some kind to talk.
Grimshaw (1990: 281), reviewing a collection of sociolinguistic investigations into
‘conflict talk’, makes the following points:
[The] attribution of purposiveness to participant behaviours, will be sharply

criticized by those students of talk (e.g. conversation analysts) who argue that
this implies the ability to ‘‘get into people’s heads’’ and requires unwarranted
inferences and claims. The researchers whose work is reported here do not
contest the position that what is in people’s heads is accessible neither to ana-
lysts nor to interlocutors (nor even, ultimately, fully accessible to those whose
behaviour is under investigation). I believe most of them will also argue, how-
ever, that the availability of ethnographic context and of an optimally complete
behaviour record permits analysts to make such inferences and attributions
which are ‘‘for-the-most-practical-purposes’’ (paraphrasing Garfinkel) no less
plausible than those of actual participants. This claim is subject to qualification
but the disambiguation process is that which we ourselves employ in interac-
tion—where, it must be conceded, we sometimes err.
There is no claim, then, that one can reconstruct the actual intentions of speakers,
but rather that ‘plausible’ intentions can be reconstructed, given adequate evidence.
One of the main reasons why we consider impoliteness in its discourse context in
Section 4 and prosody in Section 5 is precisely to provide that adequate evidence,

something that politeness theory analyses tend not to do.5
3.4. Impoliteness work inspired by Brown and Levinson (1987)
Three papers, Lachenicht (1980), Austin (1990) and Culpeper (1996), have postu-
lated impoliteness frameworks, each using Brown and Levinson (1987) as their point
of departure. Lachenicht (1980), in what has been described as a ‘rarely cited but
nevertheless meritorious paper’ (Turner, 1996: 7), focuses on ‘aggravating language’,
a rational and intentional attempt to ‘hurt’ or damage the addressee (1980: 607).
Lachenicht (1980) views ‘aggravating language’ as an extension to Brown and
Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework. He considers four ‘aggravation’ super-
strategies, presented below in order of face threat :
(i) Off record: ambiguous insults, insinuations, hints, and irony. This strategy is
of much the same kind as the politeness strategy, and is designed to enable
the insulter to meet an aggrieved challenge from the injured person with an
assertion of innocence.
(ii) Bald on Record: directly produced FTAs and impositions (‘Shut that door’,
‘Do your work’, ‘Don’t talk’, etc.) of the same kind as in the politeness
strategy.
(iii) Positive aggravation: an aggravation strategy that is designed to show the
addressee that he is not approved of, is not esteemed, does not belong, and
will not receive cooperation.
(iv) Negative aggravation: An aggravation strategy that is designed to impose on
the addressee, to interfere with his freedom of action, and to attack his social
position and the basis of his social action.
(Lachenicht, 1980: 619).
Note that the first two strategies are not in fact part of a new impoliteness frame-
work, but are taken from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework.
Positive aggravation and negative aggravation appear to be distinguished in terms of
their orientation to positive and negative face wants (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987).
Undoubtedly, the chief merit of Lachenicht’s (1980) work lies in the fact that it
provides an extensive review of linguistic strategies that may be used to aggravate
face.
There are, however, a number of issues concerning the consistency, speculative
nature, and validity of Lachenicht’s (1980) model. For example, Lachenicht claims
(1980: 631) that ‘[p]ositive aggravation informs the hearer that he is not liked, will
not be cooperated with, and does not belong. Essentially it attacks his need for
freedom of action, for status, and for power’. But, as indicated by other references
and claims in other parts of Lachenicht (1980), attacks on ‘freedom of action’
5
Of course, not all notions of politeness in the literature have intention at their heart. For example,
Watts’ (1992) notion of ‘politic behaviour’ emphasises doing what is socially and culturally appropriate.
concern negative and not positive face. Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) point out
that positive face is the desire that an individual’s wants and needs are respected by
others, whereas negative face is the desire for ‘freedom of action’. If positive and
negative aggravation are supposed to relate to positive and negative face, as defined
by Brown and Levinson (1987), they fundamentally fail to do so. Another significant
issue is that Lachenicht’s (1980) model is based upon and describes anecdotal, con-
structed examples, and written material from a number of dictionaries of insults. No
‘real life’ conversational data, either written or verbal, are utilised. Turner (1996: 7)
writes, ‘it might be stressed that the paper is an essay not in analysis but in con-
structivism and so the specific details are subject to trial and revision by the data
that are collected.’ Indeed, lack of any such trials or revisions of Lachenicht (1980)
relegates numerous claims made therein to purely hypothetical ones. One brief
example will suffice: ‘Probably swearing is past its prime today, for the decline of
religious belief has made it less useful. Today, it is manly ‘God-damns’ and ‘bloodys’
that are popular’ (1980: 641).
Superficially, Austin (1990) and Culpeper (1996) appear to have a lot in common.
Both talk about ‘face attack’ and both derive a framework from Brown and Levinson
(1987). However, there is a fundamental difference. Austin (1990) is a hearer-based
account of how utterances can be interpreted as offensive. She shows (1990: 285) how
apparent compliments like You have been a capable and decorative chairman could,
even if it may have been intended as a straightforward compliment, have offensive
implications for the hearer in a particular context. Whilst her paper is useful reminder
that Brown and Levinson (1987) underestimate the role of the hearer and of the con-
text, Austin steadfastly overlooks the role of the speaker. Her paper is not about the
communication of impoliteness, but the interpretation and perception of it. Thus, her
examples include cases which may simply have involved the miscommunication of
politeness (e.g. too little or too much politeness work in a particular context), in other
words, what we referred to as ‘unintended’ impoliteness in Section 3.3. A particular
weakness of Austin’s (1990) paper is that her interpretations of offence are untested.
We view it as a priority and a challenge for future research to test the offensive effects
of linguistic impoliteness. Jay’s (e.g. 1992, 2000) psycholinguistic work on taboo
words, their use, and their perceived offensiveness provides a valuable starting point.
Culpeper (1996), unlike Lachenicht, considers not just an extension to Brown and
Levinson (1987), but explores the possibility of a parallel structure. Impoliteness
superstrategies for Culpeper are ‘opposite’ in terms of orientation to face (i.e.
instead of maintaining or enhancing face, they are designed to attack face), but not
necessarily opposite in other pragmatic ways (e.g. from a Gricean point of view, the
opposite of bald on record is off-record). The superstrategies are summarised here.
1. Bald on record impoliteness. This is distinct from Brown and Levinson’s bald on
record strategy which is deployed for polite purposes in fairly specific circumstances,
namely, where there is little face at stake, an emergency situation, or no intention of
damaging the face of the hearer. In contrast, bald on record impoliteness is typically
deployed where there is much face at stake, and where there is an intention on the
part of the speaker to attack the face of the hearer.
2. Positive impoliteness. The use of strategies designed to damage the addressee’s

positive face wants (‘ignore, snub the other’, ‘exclude the other from the activity’,
‘disassociate from the other’, ‘be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic’, ‘use
inappropriate identity markers’, ‘use obscure or secretive language’, ‘seek disagree-
ment’, ‘make the other feel uncomfortable (e.g. do not avoid silence, joke, or use
small talk)’, ‘use taboo words’, ‘call the other names’, etc. ).
3. Negative impoliteness. The use of strategies designed to damage the addressee’s
negative face wants (‘frighten’, ‘condescend, scorn, or ridicule’, ‘invade the other’s
space’, ‘explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect’, ‘put the other’s indebt-
edness on record’, ‘hinder or block the other—physically or linguistically’6, etc.).
4. Sarcasm or mock politeness. The use of politeness strategies that are obviously
insincere, and thus remain surface realizations. Sarcasm (mock politeness for social
disharmony) is clearly the opposite of banter (mock impoliteness for social harmony).7
5. Withhold politeness. Keep silent or fail to act where politeness work is expected.
It needs to be stressed that, as with all politeness phenomena, impoliteness does not
simply arise from any one particular strategy, but is highly dependent on context.
Moreover, there is no claim that the impoliteness superstrategies belong to one dimen-
sion: precisely what those dimensions are is an area that needs further research. Also,
we make no claims about how the impoliteness superstrategies should be ordered for
degree of offence, or about how hard-edged the distinctions are between them. Whilst
these are also areas that need further consideration, we will adduce evidence in Section
4 that some strategies can be mixed. Note that Brown and Levinson (1987: 17–20)
resist the idea that politeness strategies can be mixed (for example, positive politeness
markers occurring in negative politeness strategies such as indirect requests), despite
claims by other researchers (e.g. Craig et al., 1986: 452–453) to the contrary.
The fact these frameworks are inspired by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model
means that weaknesses associated with their model tend to be carried over into
impoliteness frameworks. Specifically, this means that little is said about matters to
do with sequencing in discourse or prosodic aspects. It is these very areas that this
paper will address. Furthermore, as Culpeper (1996: 358) points out, Brown and
Levinson (1987) are primarily geared to handling matters relating to linguistic form,
and thus impolite implicatures can slip through their framework, as they themselves
admit (1987: 11). Leech’s (1983) politeness model, primarily concerned with lin-
guistic content, may be used to complement Brown and Levinson (1987).
3.5. Further evidence of the impoliteness strategies in Culpeper (1996)
All of the impoliteness superstrategies outlined in Culpeper (1996), which were

largely derived from a investigation of army recruit training data, were also repre-
sented in our data, as were most of the specific linguistic output strategies. First, we
6
Whilst relevant phenomena were discussed, the label for this particular strategy was not in fact given
in Culpeper (1996), but in Bousfield (1999: 25).
7
Our understanding of sarcasm here is close to Leech’s conception of irony (1983: 82, 142).
will cite examples of these strategies, starting with bald on record impoliteness, and
then we will note any other strategies which occurred.
The following interaction, which we cite to illustrate ‘bald on record impoliteness’,
involves S1, a clamper who is preparing to ticket a car in a road next to a primary
school, and parents of children who often park in order to drop their children into
the school. Prior to this interaction, a number of parents have been ticketed and one
has had her vehicle removed. The conversation between S1 and S2, S3 (Parents) and
S4 (the school’s headmistress) has been confrontational up to this point:
[5] S1: we’ll start with you madam < to S4> I work for T F M parking okay
S2: has made no attempt to respond
S3: excuse me excuse me you are
S4:
S1: I did the first time I met you okay where’s your car
S2:
S3: a parking attendant alright act like one okay shut up and act like a parking attendant
S4:
Bald on record impoliteness occurs when S3 says shut up and act like a parking
attendant. Here we see two imperative commands that are deployed baldly with the
purpose of aggravating the face of the parking attendant. It might also be noted that
S3 is in a position of relative powerlessness, and so this does not match one of the
contexts which Brown and Levinson (1987: 69) attribute to bald on record politeness.
Frequently occurring output strategies for ‘positive impoliteness’ include: ‘ignore,
snub, fail to attend to H’s needs’, ‘avoid agreement’, and ‘use taboo language, swear,
be abusive’. In the following example, S1 (a clamper) returns to remove the clamp
from S2’s van, following S2’s payment of the fine. S2 challenges S1 as to why he
clamped the van. S1 is keen to explain that there is nothing ‘personal’ in his action.
[6] S1: I can take your notes on board but there’s nothing I personally can do I simply work do my job for
S2: just do your job
S1: the council I do my job for the coun if you want me to explain then if you
S2: I don’t care what you do
S1: want be like that then I can walk away I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to if
S2:
S1: you’re going to be rude to me yeah I that’s fine then sir I

S2: I don’t really want to talk to you you’re not going to do anything
S1:
S2: about it are you
Clearly, S2 fails to attend to S1’s need to exonerate himself. In our next example, S1
(a council official) is urging S2 (an angry car owner) to reconsider his decision that,
rather than pay the towing and storage costs, he will leave the council to scrap his
impounded car.
[7] S1: oooh come on

S2: I don’t want the car fuck it you lot can keep the car no there’s no ‘come on’ because
S1:
S2: you’ve towed the car off my own . blasted road where I’m staying right . twice . not once but
S1:
S2: twice that’s two nearly three hundred pounds
S2 explicitly block’s S1’s attempt to bring about agreement. In our final example, S1
(the court bailiff) arrives at the home of S3 and S2 (who are husband and wife), in
order to collect court issued penalties and other legal costs for non-payment of
parking fines incurred against S2’s car. S1’s assistant is loading S3 and S2’s car onto
a truck.
[8] S1: the car is going he has a

S2: what the fuck you doing . excuse me what are you fucking doing
S3:
< S2 hits S1 in mouth- S1 starts speed dialling on the phone>

S1: court order police please yeah <indistinct >
S2: really . you want some fucking money right
S3: all you have
S1: you can’t

S2: all you have to do is ask for the money you don’t have to fucking take the car
S3: to do is ask for the fucking money right
S1: get in the car madam

S2: piss off <indistinct >
S3: jackie come here
Clearly, taboo language is used repeatedly here. Of course, such language can simply
be an expression of a speaker’s emotional state. That may be part of the explanation
here, but we would argue that it is predominantly an impoliteness strategy to make
S1 feel uncomfortable: the taboo language expresses anger targeted at the hearer (see
Section 5.2.1, for further discussion of targeted anger).
Frequently occurring output strategies for ‘negative impoliteness’ include: ‘con-
descend, scorn, ridicule’, and ‘hinder linguistically (e.g. interrupt, deny turn) or
physically (e.g. block other’s passage)’. In the following example, at an appeal
hearing, S2 and S3 (husband and wife) have being arguing with S1 (the adjudicator)
over a parking ticket. They have refused to listen to his ‘polite’ explanations as to
why he will not allow their appeal (see the discussion of example [2]). S1 attempts to
close the conversation and make S2 and S3 leave his office.
[9] S1: I I’ve finished Mr Culp . will you will you will you please leave the room . I’m not
S2: say in this situation
S3:
S1: answering any further questions . do you want me to press the buzzer
S2:
S3: well that’s being
S1: will you please leave the room

S2:
S3: babyish isn’t it
Clearly, the item ‘babyish’ is used to express scorn at the adjudicator’s threat (we
return to this particular speech event in Section 5). In the next example, S1 (a traffic
warden) is ticketing cars. S2 (a mother) is currently being ‘ticketed’; S3 (another
mother) has taken umbrage at this. The discussion up to this point has been
about the right of the parents to park there. S4 (the school’s headmistress) has
been insisting that the parents have special dispensation to park at the start and
finish of the school day. In this segment, S1 has just challenged the view of special
dispensation.
[10]S1: you .. one at a time ladies one at a time who wants to speak to me first ladies I mean take
S2: the school is trying <indistinct > the council makes no
S3: < ————indistinct————— >
S4: this is my chi <indistinct >
S1: your pick cos you can queue up if you want I’ve only got one set of ears you know what
S2:
S3:
S4:
S1: I mean well I am trying to be but I’ve only got one

S2: it’s nice to see you being so responsive the council
S3:
S4:
S1: set of ears we’ll start with you madam < to S4> I work for T F M parking okay
S2: has made no attempt to respond
S3: excuse me excuse me you are
S4:
S1: I did the first time I met you okay where’s your car
S2:
S3: a parking attendant alright act like one okay shut up and act like a parking attendant
S4:
S1 interrupts S2 by allocating a turn to S4, and thus denying it to S2. Note that S3
realises the face damaging aspect of this (to S2) and herself interrupts S1, in order to
begin a criticism of his attitude. Note also that shut up, which we commented on
under the heading bald on record impoliteness, is also an aggressive means of
impeding speech.
As an illustration of ‘sarcasm’, in the following example S4 (a van driver) has
returned to his vehicle to find that S1 (a clamping official) has only just finished
clamping it. After a highly confrontational conversation in which S4 demonstrates
his anger, he snatches the penalty ticket and other details away from S1 and tells him
to ‘go away’. S1 returns to his own vehicle to leave the scene. As he does so, S4
issues the following utterance:
[11] S1: I will do

S4: .. (sarcastically) have a good day
In this context, S4 is highly unlikely to be expressing a sincere polite wish; rather, he

expresses via an implicature the opposite—the impolite wish that he has a bad day.
Finally, we present an example of ‘withhold politeness’, Here S1 (an adjudicator)
has just refused S2’s (a car owner) appeal against a parking ticket.
[12] S1: well thank you very much for coming good day
S2: I don’t thank you at all
S2 explicitly withholds politeness by not reciprocating S1’s thanks. This, of course, is

an ‘on-record’ example of withholding of politeness. Although there were not any
verifiable cases in our data, an alternative means of withholding politeness is simply
to do nothing in contexts where politeness is expected.
Whilst the impoliteness strategies mentioned in Culpeper (1996) accounted for
much of the face attack in our data, we discovered some others. One of the most
frequent strategies in our data was to ‘challenge’ (negative impoliteness) the other
speaker, usually by means of a rhetorical question. The following interaction takes
place between S1 (a clamper) and S2 (a car owner).
[13] S1: can you just answer me one question can you see the yellow line visibly
S2:
S1: under your car . . .
S2: I live here why is there a yellow line anyway why do
S1:
S2: I have to park my car three hundred yards up the raod it gets stolen
S1:
S2: broken into vandalised three times this year already why have you done
S1:
S2: it why do you make my life impossible how am I supposed to work doing
S1: can I just say you you you can clearly see the yellow line on the road
S2: this <indistinct >
S1: it’s not a new yellow line its been there for quite some time
S2: so why don’t you just
S1: you shouldn’t have parked on a yellow line
S2: stop the ticket
S2 issues no less than five challenges to S1. Some of the challenges, why is there a
yellow line anyway,why do I have to park my car three hundred yards up the road, how
am I supposed to work, have some potential for just being ‘incidentally’ face-dama-
ging utterances (i.e. the speaker is merely given vent to personal vexation). However,
two of the challenges, why have you done it, andwhy do you make my life impossible, are
more clearly directed at S1 (cf. ‘you’), and are more likely to be impolite utterances,
deployed specifically to aggravate the face of S1. Moreover, the rhetorical nature of
some of the questions, particularly the final two why do you make my life impossible and
how am I supposed to work, is part of a strategy to implicate impolite beliefs (e.g. ‘you
make my life impossible’). The ‘challenge’ strategy is, in fact, discussed by Lachenicht
(1980: 668–671), who draws upon the discussion in Labov and Fanshel (1977).
4. Impoliteness in discourse
Unlike the traditional approach of focussing on single politeness or impoliteness

strategies (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1987; Culpeper 1996), in this section we inves-
tigate how impoliteness is realised in extended discourse. Of course, it is not the case
that extended discourse has been totally neglected within politeness studies,
although only a handful of studies have investigated this area. Aronsson and
Rundström (1989), for example, examining doctor–patient discourse, show that the
on-record/off-record distinction is best understood sequentially and as a matter of
negotiation, whilst Hayashi (1996) shows how politeness strategies for dispreferred
messages are produced as sequences of acts. More recently, Harris (2001) considers
how politeness theory can be extended in order to analyse formal institutional dis-
course—specifically, British parliamentary discourse—including intentionally face
threatening acts, and focusses on the performance and perception of (im)politeness
in relatively long stretches of discourse.
First, we briefly discuss how individual impoliteness strategies co-occur in and
across a particular participant’s turns. Second, we look at patterns of impoliteness
and reactions to it across exchanges. We believe that research into such patterns
provides some of the richness of context necessary for identifying and analysing
impoliteness (cf. Section 3.3).
4.1. Multiple strategies
Discussing aggravating language, Lachenicht notes that ‘it is possible to combine

more than one sub-strategy into an utterance’ (Lachenicht, 1980: 635). In fact,
combinations of impoliteness strategies turned out to be the norm in our data: in

any one interaction a participant never used a single strategy just once. We identified
two ways, but not mutually exclusive ways, in which impoliteness strategies pattern
in a participant’s turns.
A particular strategy (or combination of strategies) can be used repeatedly to form
a parallelism. That is to say, words, grammatical structures, intonational contours,
or indeed any feature constituting a pragmatic strategy can be used repeatedly
(usually in juxtaposition) to form a parallelism (a perceptually prominent pattern
where some features are held constant and others may vary). We have already seen a
good example of this in [13] above, where S2 (a car owner) delivers five challenges to
S1 (a clamper) as a means of attacking S1’s face. This series of challenges is issued
rapidly with minimal gaps between each of the challenges. Holmes (1984: 355), dis-
cussing the modification of illocutionary force, points out that ‘repetition itself
serves as a rhetorical device to increase the force of the repeated speech act’. Clearly,
in this case repetition serves to boost the challenge, and thereby to exacerbate the
threat to S1’s face. Repetition can also, as in [13], ‘hog’ the conversational floor,
imposing on the other participant’s negative face. The key point about the repetition
(the parallelism) of impoliteness strategies relates to interpersonal effect: it increases
the imposition upon the target and/or emphasizes the negative attitude of the
speaker towards the target. In other words, it can boost impoliteness.
A particular strategy can be used in combination with other strategies. An example
of this can be found in the example [8] above. S2 (a car owner) combines the strategy
of ‘challenge: ask a challenging question’ (negative impoliteness) with the strategy of
‘use taboo words’ (positive impoliteness) to make what the fuck you doing. In fact, S2
also uses the above tactic of parallelism in repeating this particular combination,
albeit in a slightly different form: what are you fucking doing. Whilst the taboo word
fuck(ing) plays the grammatical role of intensifier (e.g. Quirk et al., 1985: 445, 589–
591), amplifying or boosting the force of the challenge, on an interpersonal level it
marks the extremely negative attitude of the speaker towards the hearer. Holmes
(1984: 363) again makes a pertinent remark: ‘[d]evices may reinforce one another, as
when strong stress, lexical Boosters and repetition co-occur in one utterance’. The
cumulative effect of using mutually reinforcing impoliteness strategies is to boost the
impoliteness. It is worth noting that the ‘use taboo words’ strategy (Culpeper, 1996)
seems to be the one most likely to combine with other strategies, and in future
research would benefit from specific attention. As we noted in Section 3.4, Brown
and Levinson (1987) resist the idea of strategy mixing.8
8
Harris (2001) observes a mixture of negative politeness and positive impoliteness, as well as rapid
transitions from positive politeness to positive impoliteness, in British parliamentary discourse. Whilst this
is further evidence of strategy mixing, we need to be aware that the ‘negative politeness’ to which she
refers is rather different in type from the politeness or impoliteness we have been discussing here. The
distancing strategies (e.g. third person address) and deference (e.g. vocatives like ‘my Right Honourable
Friend’) in the House of Commons are a matter of convention, not strategic manipulation; they are
‘politic’ behaviour, not ‘politeness’ behaviour (Watts, 1992).
Just how frequent such multiple strategies are in other conflictive discourses;
whether certain strategies are more likely to be combined or repeated (or combined
and repeated); and what precisely the cumulative effects of such tactics are remain
areas for future consideration. For example, we need to investigate whether we can
assume that more linguistic impoliteness leads to more offence. A hint that this may
not always be the case appears in Greenberg’s (1976) study of perceived verbal
aggressiveness. He found that when an utterance reaches the higher levels of
aggression the addition of boosters (specifically, frequency qualifiers like ‘always’)
made little difference to how it was perceived. We now consider the patterning of
impoliteness across exchanges.
4.2. Impoliteness and responses to it
Research on both politeness and impoliteness has tended to overlook what the reci-
pient of face threat or attack does. This is crucial, since, as every conversation analyst
knows, the response to an utterance can reveal much about how that utterance is to be
taken. Labov’s study (1972) assumes that one can identify a personal insult, as
opposed to a ritualistic one, by the response that such insults elicit. He suggests that
personal insults are followed by a denial (cf. Labov, 1972: 333–335, 347). On the
other hand, Harris et al.’s (1986) study of verbal aggression notes the common
assumption that the best way to save face in the light of verbal attack is to counter-
attack. In this section, we will consider whether these basic pairs, OFFENSIVE–
DEFENSIVE and OFFENSIVE–OFFENSIVE, are reflected in our data. We will
argue that there is, in fact, a more complex set of strategies for managing face attack
than these pairs suggest. Also, we will note how sequences of impoliteness acts can
constitute particular ‘activities’, which in turn affect the interpretation of impoliteness.
Theoretically, when a recipient of an utterance perceives a strategic impoliteness
act—an exacerbated face threatening act (FTA)—they have two choices open to
them: they can either respond or not respond (i.e. stay silent). The option of not
responding did not occur in our data, and so we will not pursue it here. But we
briefly note that this option presents particular problems for both the other partici-
pants in the original speech event and the researcher, who must depend solely on
contextual factors in interpreting the meaning of the silence. Participants who
choose to respond to the impoliteness act have a further theoretical set of choices
open to them: they can either accept the face attack or they can counter it. In
accepting the face attack, the recipient may, for instance, assume responsibility for
the impoliteness act being issued in the first place. Thus, repeated, strong and per-
sonalized complaints (i.e. an impoliteness act) might be met with an apology. Note
that this option involves increased face damage to the responder. This option did
not occur in our data, and so we will not discuss it further. The alternative option, to
counter the face attack, involves a set of strategies which can be considered in terms
of whether they are offensive or defensive. Offensive strategies primarily counter face
attack with face attack; this is the pattern referred to by Harris et al. (1986). Such
strategies are the impoliteness strategies of researchers like Culpeper (1996). Defen-
sive strategies primarily counter face attack by defending one’s own face; this is the
Fig. 1. A summary of response options.
pattern referred to by Labov (1972). As we will illustrate below, such strategies seek
to deflect, block or otherwise manage the face attack. However, note that these
strategic groupings are not mutually exclusive. Offensive strategies have, to some
degree, the secondary goal of defending the face of the responder; defensive strategies
may have, to some degree, the secondary goal of offending the speaker of the origi-
nal impoliteness act. As a consequence, the distinction is best conceived of as a scale.
The response options we have described are represented in Fig. 1.
Now that we have mapped out a complete theoretical set of response options, we
will focus on some of the specific counter strategies used in our data, first consider-
ing more clearly offensive strategies, then more clearly defensive. There are in fact
no clear examples of counter strategies that are clearly primarily offensive, which
means that there are no clear examples of the OFFENSIVE–OFFENSIVE pair. This is
not surprising, since, whilst a clamper has the power to ticket, clamp or even tow away
an owner’s illegally parked vehicle, they do not in their particular socio-discoursal role
have the legitimate power to respond to the impoliteness of car owners with clear,
unambiguous impoliteness. Clearly, the social context constrains the response
options that are actually available to a participant in an interaction. A striking fea-
ture of army recruit training discourse is that ‘do not respond’ is often the only
option available to recruits, who are in a position of very low relative power (see
Culpeper, 1996 and Bousfield, forthcoming).
In order to illustrate the OFFENSIVE–OFFENSIVE pair, we will briefly present
an example from Beebe (1995: 154, sourced from Wendy Gavis, field notes):
A man in a compact red car was trying to maneuver into a parking spot right next
to a crosswalk at a corner in New York City. A woman was crossing the street
with her two children as the man attempted to park. She was very thin. He had a
big ‘‘beer belly’’. The two were arguing over whether she, the pedestrian, or he,
the driver, had the right of way. Finally the woman yelled:
Woman: Oh shut up you fat pig

Man: Go fuck yourself
Woman: Go on a diet
Man: Go fuck yourself
This example has a relatively simple sequential organisation, thus:
(Woman) OFFENSIVE (bald on record impoliteness+derogatory nomination)

Oh shut up you fat pig
(Man) OFFENSIVE (implicated impolite belief+use taboo word) Go fuck
yourself
(Woman) OFFENSIVE (bald on record impoliteness+implicated impolite belief)
Go on a diet
(Man) OFFENSIVE (implicated impolite belief+use taboo word) Go fuck
yourself
Note also that the Man repeats a combination of strategies, and that the Woman’s
are parallel with respect to the fact that they both express the impolite belief that he
is fat. Thinking about the patterning of strategies across exchanges, a parallelism
begins to emerge in the final three turns—initial imperative Go and then the rest of
the sentence. Lein and Brenneis (1978; see also Brenneis and Lein, 1977) noted that
‘repetition’ was a characteristic pattern across exchanges in children’s disputes. With
OFFENSIVE–OFFENSIVE pairs, presumably the objective is to at least match the
other in kind—a ‘tit for tat’ strategy. Another possibility, again observed by Lein
and Brenneis (1978), is ‘escalation’, where each speaker uses a stronger strategy than
the previous speaker. For example (Lein and Brenneis, 1978: 301):
James: I sock you in your nose.

Art: I sock you in the mouth.
James: You gonna have a black eye you keep on.
Art: You gonna have a bloody nose, and a bloody mouth and knocks one of your
teeths out. I’m gonna knock ‘em down your throat.
Impoliteness escalations, such as the above, are referred to as ‘conflict spirals’ in the
conflict literature. Andersson and Pearson (1999), for example, studying workplace
interactions, postulate the factors that create conflict spirals (e.g. perceptions of
‘interactional injustice’, negative affect, desire for revenge) and facilitate them (e.g.
‘hot temperament’, situational informality).
Turning now to defensive counter strategies and the OFFENSIVE–DEFENSIVE
pair. One possibility is direct contradiction. Let’s take an example from Brenneis and
Lein (1977: 56–7), who refer to this pattern as ‘inversion’:
Dave: I am, you dumb-dumb.

Larry: I’m not no dumb-dumb, dodo.
Dave: Yes, you are.
Larry: No, I’m not.
Dave: Yes, you are.
Larry: No, I’m not.
No clear examples of this emerged in our data, perhaps because it is a relatively

unsophisticated strategy and one which is unlikely (as the above example illustrates)
to bring a swift end to the altercation. One specific defence strategy we did identify
in our data was ‘abrogation’: the abrogation of personal responsibility for the
action(s) or event that caused the interlocutor to issue a face damaging utterance in
the first place. In Labov’s (1972) terms, this is a type of denial. It works by
deflecting the FTA. In our data, abrogation involves attempting to switch either
social role (from being addressed as private citizen to that of a public servant) or
discoursal role (where an interactant emphasises that they are merely acting in a
representative role such as a ‘mouthpiece’). Abrogation by social role switching is
like saying ‘I’m not to blame, I’m just following orders!’, whilst abrogation by
discoursal role switching is like saying ‘Don’t shoot the messenger!’ An example of
defensive social role switching by S1 (a clamper) (and of implicit discoursal role
switching) can be seen in [14] below. This example also illustrates, on the part of
S2 (a car owner), how role triggering or role enforcing can be a more offensive
strategy.
[14] S1: =well you see I’m just doing a job but I’ve come along
S2: don’t you think this is a bit stupid= yeah
S1: here and yeah

S2: well so was Hitler all I’m asking you as a person don’t you think this is a bit stupid
S1: well <exhales loudly > yes and no

S2:
The sequential organisation of this example is thus:
(S2) OFFENSIVE (enforce role switch+implicate impolite belief) don’t you think
this is a bit stupid
(S1) DEFENSIVE (abrogation) well you see I’m just doing a job
(S2) OFFENSIVE (implicate impolite belief+reiterate enforced role switch) Yeah
well so was Hitler all I’m asking you as a person don’t you think this is a bit stupid
(S1) DEFENSIVE (compromise) well < exhales loudly > yes and no
Note that the identification of the first offensive strategy ‘enforce role switch’ is only
sustainable in the light of his second turn, when he makes the metapragmatic com-
ment I’m asking you as a person to clarify his intent. In S1’s final utterance, the
hedge well and the exhalation signal that agreement (the preferred response) is not
forthcoming, and the following yes and no attempts to negotiate a compromise. The
interaction is interrupted at this point.
The vast majority of the interactions in our data follow that basic OFFENSIVE–
DEFENSIVE pattern, and so we will not illustrate it further. However, we will draw
attention to some other specific defensive strategies that occurred in our data.
Another type is to opt out on record. This strategy attempts to ‘seal off’ the FTA. In
the following example, S2 (an adjudicator) refuses the appeal of S1 (a car owner) on
the basis that he ‘prefers the council’s evidence’, despite S1’s claims that the traffic
warden who ticketed him (this woman in the extract) has falsified her records:
[15] S1: so you’re quite happy that this woman perjured herself in writing
S2: I’m not saying
S1: so you are happy

S2: anything more Mr Langarth and that is the end of the proceeding I’m not
S1: you’re happy that she perjured herself

S2: saying anything I I’m not making any further comment
S1:
S2: thankyou .. If you’ll be kind enough to wait in the foyer
A further type of defensive strategy is insincere agreement, which manages the

impoliteness act by allowing its speaker to ‘let off steam’. A variant of this strategy is
to express surface agreement with the face attack. In this example, S1 (a car owner)
has stopped his car to heckle S2 (a traffic warden), who has just ticketed him for
illegal parking.
[16] S1: One day you’re going to get a lot of problems .. and you create the problems . we don’t
S2:
S1: create the problems . ban the bloody cars all over London and we have no worries
S2: yeah
S1: you give us authority to put them < indistinct > and then you come and give us a
S2: all right all right I agree with you
S1: ticket bar the cars take the cars off London do it

S2: all right I agree with you sir yeah too many c
S1: today not tomorrow don’t give us

S2: yup too many cars yeah too many cars on the road
S1: this bloody headache all the time

S2: yeah too many cars .. anyway you gonna shift
Note the lack of synchronisation between S1’s accusations and S2’s responses, par-
ticularly towards the end where the repeated yeah too many cars does not seem to
address S1’s immediately prior discourse. This betrays the fact that S2 is on ‘auto-
matic pilot’, simply allowing S1 to let off steam. Anyway, towards the end of the
extract, marks S2’s shift back to serious business.
Yet another defensive strategy, though one which has some similarities with the
previous strategy, is to ignore the implied face attack. This is particularly clear in
cases of sarcasm, where the surface meaning of the utterance is accepted, rather than
the implied sarcastic barb. In example [11] above, a van owner, who has just been
clamped, says have a good day, to which the clamper replies I will do. Clearly, the
clamper complies only with the surface meaning of the van owner’s sarcastic utter-
ance. This defensive counter strategy may also be offensive at the same time, given
that it is such a blatant misunderstanding of the van owner’s meaning. This is not a
rare occurrence: counter strategies which operate both offensively and defensively
with respect to face occurred elsewhere in our data, as our final example in this sec-
tion will show.
In our final example in this section, we aim to show a much more complex case
than those we have discussed hitherto. S1’s car has been towed to the car pound,
after it was clamped for being illegally parked. Previously, S1 refused to pay the
release fee, stating that he preferred to spend his money on a new vehicle. He has
returned to the pound to take his belongings out of the car. As he leaves, he strongly
threatens S2 (a clamper):
[17] S1: touch my fucking new car and I’ll bust your fucking head off yeah
S2: jackanory yeah
S1: yeah you fucking shit just cos you’ve got a fat belly anyway
S2: yeah full of it aren’t you eh
S1:
S2: eh it’d fit in your mouth quite easily wouldn’t it
On the face of it, S2’s response, jackanory, looks like a defensive strategy, which
might be formulated: ‘dismiss: make light of face damage, joke’. Jackanory is an
intertextual reference to a children’s television programme in which fictious stories
were read out. S2 implies that S1’s threat is the stuff of children and fiction—it car-
ries no weight. Whilst this strategy does dismiss the impoliteness act, it also belittles
the speaker’s attempt in producing it. ‘Belittle the other’ is in fact one of the negative
impoliteness strategies suggested in Culpeper (1996: 358). So, simultaneously S2
appears to be offensive. Clearly then, this does not fit the pairs suggested by either
Labov (1972) or Harris et al. (1986). Looking at S2’s responses full of it aren’t you eh
and it’d fit in your mouth quite easily wouldn’t it, the situation becomes even more
complex, since we begin to see a pattern characteristic of ‘mock’ impoliteness or
ritualistic banter. Labov (e.g. 1972: 340) points out that strong ritualistic insults are
outrageously bizarre and obviously untrue, and Eider (1990: 75) suggests that in
ritual insulting participants ‘continually challenge each other to come up with a
better, more clever response to an accusation or insult’. These aspects fit S2’s
responses: he engages in mock impoliteness. On the other hand, S1’s impoliteness is
not obviously untrue (the target, S2, appears to be slightly overweight) or clever: he
engages in ‘genuine’ impoliteness. Contrary to Labov (1972), who suggested it was
important that all parties considered the insults to be untrue in ritualistic banter,
Kochman (1983) (and see Eider, 1990, for further evidence) argues that the key to doing
ritualistic banter lies in taking insults—even true, personal insults—in a non-serious
way. In our example, we would argue that S2 practices a more global defensive
strategy than the others we have discussed. His utterances constitute a particular
‘activity type’ (Levinson, 1992), that of ritualistic banter, and in so doing reduce the
impact of S1’s impoliteness. At the same time, S2 shows off his considerable lin-
guistic dexterity. Finally, we should note one contextual factor that may have
facilitated the occurrence of this particular interaction, namely, that S1 is walking
away from S2. Most of the talk occurs when they are several metres apart—clearly,
a safer situation for more risky communicative strategies.
We conclude this section with two brief points. First, it should be remembered
that in other discourses other impoliteness patterns may emerge, as well as other
defensive strategies. Second, one area that we have neglected, but would obviously
benefit from research, is how these confrontational encounters are resolved (see
Vuchinich, 1990 and Hutchby, 1996: chapter 6, for some first steps).
5. Prosody and impoliteness
5.1. Prosody: its components and functions
No utterance can be spoken without prosody, and it is therefore desirable at some

point to include this dimension of speech in pragmatic analysis. So far our discus-
sions of impoliteness strategies have referred solely to the (actions and) words of
participants as recorded in the orthographic transcription of our data. In this section
we would like to consider the contribution not of what was said but of how it was
said. The importance of this aspect with respect to impoliteness had been made very
clear to us at conference presentations of many of the examples cited in this paper:
members of the audience who had not heard the examples usually thought them less
impolite than we did. However, before exploring the ways in which prosody can
convey impoliteness, it is perhaps useful to consider the resources available.
The components of prosody include pitch (intonation), loudness, speed and voice
quality. All are important, both separately and in their complex interaction, but we
will focus here mainly on features of pitch or intonation, and briefly on loudness.
Pitch operates as part of a conventionalised linguistic system (intonational phonol-
ogy), and also paralinguistically to express, for example, speaker emotions. The two
are not easy to disentangle (see Ladd, 1996), since the same channel is used for both.
In general, however, we find that local pitch changes tend to have a grammatical or
discoursal function (e.g. highlighting sentence accent or topic shift), while pitch
changes that affect a whole utterance or string of utterances are more likely to convey
paralinguistic information. The most elusive function of intonation, the ‘attitudinal’
function, is what we would expect to be looking for in the data described here— this
is clearly data with ‘attitude’. But this aspect of intonational meaning is notoriously
hard to pin down.
The meanings expressed through prosody are not propositional but very general.
Some are language specific and relate to phonological choice: Cruttenden (1997), for
example, suggests an underlying meaning of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ for rising and falling
contours respectively.9 Other meanings are more iconic and physiological in origin:
for example, overall high and low pitch are physiologically associated with small vs.
large, or child vs. adult. This may account for some contextually determined effects
of high and low pitch, such as associating high pitch with deference (behaving in a
‘small’ way), and low pitch with assertiveness (behaving in a ‘big’ way). Brown and
Levinson (1987) make a similar claim, but mistakenly ascribe local meanings to high
and low pitch directly, rather than indirectly via inferences derived from the context.
As we will see below, low pitch does not necessarily convey ‘comfort and com-
miseration’ (1987: 268). What we find is that the individual meanings or ‘attitudes’
conveyed by intonation are arrived at by a complex process of pragmatic interpreta-
tion, relating the very abstract underlying meanings of intonation to both the message
and the context in which it is uttered (see Wichmann, 2000b; Wichmann and Cauldwell,
2001). We will attempt to clarify these relationships for each of the examples below.
The examples for this section are taken for the most part from an appeals tribunal.
We chose to focus on these sections for two reasons: first, they contain a range of
different ways in which prosody can contribute to interpersonal meaning, and sec-
ond, the quality of the sound recording, unlike the noisy street encounters, allows
corroborative instrumental analysis of the pitch data. Our post hoc impressions of
the one example taken from a street scene are corroborated by participant response.
The prosodic transcription of our examples was made auditorily by the third author
and checked by the first author. Some disputed contours were subsequently analysed
instrumentally to corroborate (or not) impressionistic judgements. The illustrations
are intended to make the contours readable for non-specialists, and represent the
melody as a continuous line, much as a hearer would perceive it. The physical reality
is of course different. A fundamental frequency contour is not continuous but fre-
quently interrupted by the presence of non-sonorant segments in the speech.
5.2. Prosodic strategies for impoliteness
In our data we find a number of examples where negative impoliteness strategies

are signalled prosodically, including: ‘hinder linguistically’, ‘threaten’, and ‘invade
the other’s space’ (cf. Culpeper, 1996). We also find an example of positive impoliteness
using the strategy of ‘dissociating from the other’ (cf. Culpeper, 1996). We will consider
these examples in detail below, and also draw attention to the patterning of strategies.
5.2.1. Negative impoliteness

5.2.1.1. Hinder linguistically. One of the ways in which speakers can be negatively
impolite is to deprive someone of their freedom to speak, for example by interrupt-
ing or denying a turn. Intonation has the resources to reinforce or mitigate such acts of
9
This analysis of rises and falls relates to Southern British English, the variety most often spoken in
this data.
impoliteness. Take the following example which is an earlier part of the conversation
presented in [9]. The tribunal officer wishes to draw the hearing to a close against the
wishes of his clients, and makes this quite explicit in the following exchange:
Client: I’m not finished yet as far as I’m concerned

Tribunal officer: well I have I’m finished and I’m running this tribunal and that’s the end of that
The tribunal officer’s turn is divided into four tone groups, and each of these carries
the ‘same’ tune, i.e. a realisation of the same underlying phonology: high onset and
falling nucleus.10
The falling nucleus (or, in Autosegmental-metrical terms, H*LL% contour11) is

typical of the end of a sentence and effectively divides the turn prosodically into four
independent utterances or ‘spoken sentences’. The meaning of ‘closure’ associated
with this contour conveys a succession of closed, or final, statements, reinforcing the
propositional content and the force of each one. This alone does not necessarily
constitute impoliteness beyond that implied in the message itself. However, each of
the falling nuclei is highly marked. The starting point of a fall (given the same low
endpoint) has been shown to convey different degrees of finality (Wichmann, 2000a);
the most marked is the fall which begins low in the speaker’s range and usually
lower than the preceding syllable. In Autosegmental-metrical terms this is known as
a downstepped fall12 (!H*L L%) and conveys a sense of extreme finality or closure.
It can be used to suppress normal turn-taking in conversation in order to make
temporary ‘conversational space’ for the speaker (Wichmann, 1998), or to bring a
whole discourse to an end. The clauses are therefore not just closed but very closed.
The prosody thus intensifies the force of the tribunal officer’s words.
An additional effect is achieved through repetition to form a parallelism—one of
the multiple strategies mentioned in Section 4.1. In the successive repetition of a
pitch contour, we have a case of intonational parallelism, which has just as much of
an intensifying function as lexical repetition or structural parallelism. The role of
10
The terms ‘onset’ and ‘nucleus’ are used in the British system of intonation. The onset is the first
accented syllable in a group and the nucleus is typically the last. In each of these tone groups the
underlying phonology is the same; the difference in realisation relates to the differing numbers of sylla-
bles onto which it is mapped.
11
In the currently preferred Autosegmental-metrical framework contours are expressed as the inter-
polation between a series of pitch targets, e.g. high (H) followed by low(L). The * symbol indicates an
accented syllable; the% symbol indicates a so-called ‘boundary tone’ - the pitch target at the end of a
tone group.
12
The exclamation mark ! indicates a ‘downstepped’ , i.e. lower than predicted, pitch accent. A falling
contour transcribed as !H* L thus begins lower than a normal H*L.
intonation here is thus twofold—it signals unmitigated finality, and it does so itera-
tively, thus intensifying further the verbal message. Since ending a conversation is
potentially an attack on negative face, we would always expect some minimal expres-
sion of politeness in this situation, either in the text or in the prosody. The strategy used
here, however, is not simply an absence of mitigation but an emphatic denial of the
client’s wishes, and cannot therefore be accounted for by politeness theory.
5.2.1.2. Threaten. The tribunal officer’s attempts to close the hearing meet only with
the client’s stubborn refusal to comply. Although the officer had begun the closure
sequence in a much more indirect and conciliatory fashion (see the discussion of [2]),
he now shifts to a more direct approach:
[18] S1: I’ve finished Mr Culp .will you will you will you please leave the room I’m
S2: in this situation
S3:
S1: not answering any further questions . do you want me to press the buzzer
S2:
S3: well
S1: will you please leave the room

S2: for what reason
S3: that’s being babyish isn’t it
S1: I’ve finished I’ve finished .. the hearing

S2: are you turning us out for what reason I’m furious
S3: give us <Indistinct >
Despite the interrogative form, will you please leave the room can only be interpreted as a
command, given the use of please and the context (e.g. the relative power of the official).
Moreover, the first time it is said the prosody reinforces its commanding force. It carries
the same contour as described earlier: high onset and a markedly low (‘downstepped’)
final fall which intensifies the sense of finality. The intonation signals that it is not
the speaker’s intention to offer an ‘out’ to the hearer, but that the matter is closed.
The client still refuses to leave and the command is repeated. This time the intona-
tion is different: it ends in a very slight rise (confirmed by instrumental analysis).
According to Aijmer (1996), a final rise on a request can operate as a mitigating

device for more direct (or conventionally indirect) requests, as in:
while if the request is very indirectly expressed, i.e. already mitigated, a falling
nucleus appears to be acceptable, as in:
This effect of contour is, of course, again related to the notion of openness and clo-
sure. A request which is prosodically ‘open’ can offer the hearer a chance to respond,
perhaps to negotiate, but if it is prosodically ‘closed’ it signals that no further dis-
cussion is expected, i.e. the ‘matter’ is closed.
On the face of it, the tribunal officer’s second will you please leave the room, is
mitigated by the final rise in intonation. However, given the fact that the officer has
made repeated attempts to close the proceedings, and even threatened to use his
‘buzzer’, presumably to have his clients forcibly removed, it would be perverse to
interpret this second request as less forceful, or more polite, than the first. The
apparent ‘politeness’ can therefore not be genuine. Knowles (1987) (later echoed by
Aijmer 1996) suggests that a final rise may have the effect of downtoning a com-
mand, but ‘if there is no possible interpretation other than as a command, the use of
the rise can be seen to be not genuine and therefore possibly patronising’ (1987:
192). There may be an element of being patronising here—suggesting that the clients
are not able to behave in an ‘adult’ way—and this in itself constitutes a specific
impoliteness strategy. However, the use of non-genuine politeness, Culpeper’s (1996)
‘mock politeness’, in this context lends an additional meaning which can be
explained by returning again to the abstract meaning of falls and rises. The ‘open’
meaning ascribed to a rise (and also fall-rise) suggests that there is something unsaid,
usually interpreted (in the case of requests) as offering the addressee an opportunity
to respond, and hence constituting a mitigation of the FTA. It can also mean,
however, that the speaker has more to say, and the ‘more to say’ could in this con-
text very well be ‘or else. . .’. The only possible interpretation of the rise in this con-
text is not as politeness but as an (insincerely veiled) threat.
5.2.1.3. Invade auditory space. In the exchanges on the street between traffic wardens
and car owners, emotions often run high, and voices are raised. The ‘raising’ of a
voice normally involves both an increase in pitch and loudness and can have both
internal and external motivation. It may be motivated externally by the need to
communicate across a distance, or internally by the presence of extreme emotions,
both positive and negative. We are very sensitive to ‘appropriate’ levels of loudness
in everyday interaction: speech that is louder than physical distance warrants is
perceived negatively and as an invasion of our auditory space. This lies behind the
common response to overheard conversations on mobile phones in public places,
where speakers tend to be much less sensitive to encroaching on the auditory space
of others than when talking to people who are physically present. These transgres-
sions are, however, for the most part unintentional. Where it is clearly intentional it
is likely to be interpreted as a deliberate attack on negative face.
We choose the following example to illustrate this, because of the independent
participant evidence (there’s no point in shouting), since the background street noise
rendered instrumental analysis of the relative pitch and amplitude impossible (the
capitals indicate loud speech):
[19] S1: I’m afraid you have to have a voucher to park in this area
S4: HOW ARE YOU
S1:
S4: SUPPOSED TO EARN A BLEEDING LIVING IN THIS FUCKING
S1: well there’s no point in shouting at me yeah I never asked

S4: COUNTRY EH
S1: you to park here yeah I’m simply trying to help you if you don’t want me
S4:
S1: to help you then I don’t need to help you

S4:
There is ample evidence here that the invasion of space is motivated by anger and not
distance. The prosody (raised pitch and loudness) combines with the expressions of
impoliteness already present in the utterance (the challenge, how are you supposed to
[. . .], and the use of taboo words, bleeding, fucking) to intensify the impoliteness. Jay
(e.g. 1992: 97, 108) claims, rightly in our view, that a person who shouts in anger is not
only invading the space of the hearer, but making sure that the hearer is aware of his
or her anger. It is not just self-expression but a strategy to make someone else feel
responsible for the speaker’s extreme state. The invasion of auditory space alone—if it
is intentional—constitutes an example of negative impoliteness. If it occurs in com-
bination with insults and other strategies, the effect is compounded.
5.2.2. Positive impoliteness

5.2.2.1. Deny common ground or disassociate from the other. One of the impoliteness
strategies we have posited is to deny common ground or to dissociate from the other
speaker, and in so doing attack positive face (cf. Culpeper, 1996). This can be
expressed prosodically by modifying overall pitch range (and covarying loudness).
Accommodation of pitch range between participants has already been shown to be a
feature of ‘compliant’ interaction. Brazil (1985), for example, claims that in com-
pliant behaviour speakers use relative pitch concord across turns. This means that
the current speaker adopts the same ‘key’ (high, mid or low relative to his or her
own voice) as that used at the end of the last speaker’s turn. This is illustrated in the
(invented) examples (a) and (b) below:
A similar claim is made by Couper-Kuhlen (1996) who shows, in a study of repeti-

tions, that when speakers repeat another speaker’s words at the same relative pitch it
is perceived as supportive. Absolute pitch matching, on the other hand, i.e. imitating
the pitch of the other exactly and not just relative to one’s own voice, is perceived as
mimicry and an attempt to distance oneself from the other.
We would like to suggest that not only mimicry (hyper-accommodation), but also a
simple failure to accommodate can be a feature of non-compliant behaviour. Pitch
concord is a signal of prosodic ‘common ground’, and by denying that concord a
speaker is denying common ground or disassociating from the interlocutor. Thus pitch
range can be exploited strategically by speakers to signal both closeness and distance.
We find several examples of prosodic disassociation in the data. Here is an example
from the appeals tribunal where the client does not accept the officer’s ruling; the offi-
cial begins his response at the same (relative) pitch as the client, but he checks himself
after only one syllable—the word I—and immediately shifts back to the low register he
has used throughout the hearing (the arrow indicates a sudden shift in pitch level):
In these confrontational interactions it is presumably important that the arbitrator

does not enter into an argument with the clients, but merely hears their account and
then passes judgement. We see this ‘refusal to argue’ reflected in the refusal to
accommodate prosodically to the client. If clients are annoyed or angry, as happens
in these clips when their appeal is turned down, they raise their voices. It is striking
that even when the interaction becomes affectively charged, the official responds
almost consistently with a quiet, low pitched voice. One might say that the gauntlet
of battle has been thrown down by the client, but the tribunal officer refuses to pick
it up. The brief raising of the voice in the example above is a momentary lapse. In
the next example, the raised voice is the result of having to speak over an interrup-
tion (which co-occurs with the text in square brackets) and the voice shifts down
again at the end of the clause, when he has regained the floor.
Since the last clause (do you want me to press the buzzer) constitutes a threat, this
shift down in pitch is highly marked. One normally associates a threat with
increased emotional involvement, and that in turn usually involves a widening of
pitch range. A narrowing of range in this situation may suggest to the listener a
degree of restraint, which is often more threatening than uncontrolled anger. In
addition to the positive impoliteness of prosodically denying common ground, we
also have a verbal threat intensified by low pitch, constituting negative impoliteness.
Brown and Levinson’s claim, therefore, referred to earlier, that low pitch conveys
‘comfort and commiseration’ is clearly not valid here.
5.3. The contribution of prosody to the expression of impoliteness
There appear to be three main ways in which speakers exploit the ‘attitudinal’ role of
intonation in this interaction to express impoliteness. First, the force of a speech act is
related to the choice of pitch contour. We have given as an example two ways of uttering
a command, one reinforcing its commanding force, the other turning it into a (insin-
cerely veiled) threat. Second, there are related discoursal issues; for example, signalling
whether something is ‘open’ (non final), or ‘closed’ (final)—exploited here to bring a
conversation to an end and thereby block the hearers’ wishes. We can account for
these meanings largely in phonological terms—in terms of choice of intonational
category, such as rising vs. falling tone. Third, there are global prosodic para-
meters—matters of phonetic realisation rather than phonological choice—such as
high pitch and extreme loudness over an utterance or series of utterances, which can be
seen as an invasion of auditory space, or the strategic denial of pitch concord, which
can be seen as a prosodic means of increasing the distance between interlocutors.
6. Conclusion and further directions
Thomas (1995: 179) concludes that the claim for politeness theories is that ‘people
employ certain strategies [. . .] for reasons of expediency—experience has taught us
that particular strategies are likely to succeed in given circumstances, so we use
them’. This, in our view, is also true of impoliteness. In some circumstances, such as
the car parking disputes discussed here, people choose to use impoliteness to expe-
dite their goals. In so doing, they orientate to the hearer’s face in a fundamentally
different way from politeness: rather than supporting it, they attack it. Our starting
point for this paper has been that politeness theory (even bald on record politeness)
does not adequately describe communicative strategies designed to attack face. We
have argued that most of the impoliteness strategies identified in Culpeper (1996)
also occur in car parking disputes: there are regular ways in which people attack
face. Of course, this is not to say that even a frequent impoliteness strategy will be
impolite in all contexts.
What the underlying dimensions of these impoliteness strategies are is little
understood. What is clear is that an impoliteness framework is not simply a mirror-
image of a politeness framework, such as Brown and Levinson’s (1987). How one
orders strategies for degree of impoliteness is not known. As with politeness, there
appears to be no simple correlation with directness. Tabooness, for example, relies
on conventionalisation, which may short-circuit indirectness. A particular problem
we inherited from Brown and Levinson (1987), and one that is becoming increas-
ingly well-known, is the distinction between positive and negative face. For example,
it is clear that a negative impoliteness strategy (e.g. blocking their conversational
path) might work primarily by impeding the hearer’s freedom (an issue of negative
face), but also has secondary implications for positive face (e.g. the speaker is not
interested in the hearer’s views). And it is possible that those ‘secondary’ positive
face implications may, in some contexts, cause more face damage than that done to
negative face. Clearly, much research remains to be done. As for developing a theory
which can encompass both politeness and impoliteness, we would suggest that the
recent work by Spencer-Oatey (2000) on ‘rapport management’ offers the most
promising way forward, since it has sufficient sophistication to accommodate both,
yet is also supported by solid empirical work (e.g. Spencer-Oatey, 1993, 2002).
A major objective of this paper has been to broaden the scope of previous impo-
liteness studies, which, like most politeness studies, have tended to focus narrowly
on single lexically or grammatically-based strategies. If intention is a factor that
distinguishes impoliteness from politeness, as we argue, then we need a richer
understanding of an interactant’s behaviour, including their prosody, and of the
discoursal context, in order to infer intentions. Hence, we examined patterns of
impoliteness in and across exchanges. Interactants regularly employ the global stra-
tegies of repeating and/or combining impoliteness strategies within a participant’s
turn or turns. We considered response options to impoliteness, and, in particular,
the enactment of two pairs: OFFENSIVE–DEFENSIVE and OFFENSIVE–
OFFENSIVE. It is the response to an utterance, and indeed the construction of the
whole speech activity, that may determine how that utterance is to be taken,
including whether it be polite, impolite or something in between. Note here that our
approach, by analysing the reactions of interactants to impoliteness, begins to shift
away from the sole emphasis on speaker production that characterizes so much of
politeness theory and move towards incorporating the hearer’s perception.
Grimshaw (1990) points out that ‘participants in conflict talk have the same
resources available for that interaction as do all conversationalists’ (1990: 10). We
have shown here that this extends to prosodic resources, and we have been able to
show some of the ways these resources are used to express impoliteness. It is some-
times the prosody that makes an utterance impolite—giving truth to the common view
that the offence lay in how something was said rather than what was said. Specifically,
we have discussed the role of prosody in relation to illocutionary force and to dis-
coursal issues, and we have commented on the (lack of) prosodic concord between
participants. Of course, both the prosodic resources and the abstract meanings they
convey are relatively limited. Ladd (1996) observes that intonational meanings are
‘very general, but they are part of a system with a rich interpretative pragmatics, which
gives rise to very specific and often quite vivid nuances in specific contexts’ (1996: 39–
40). If we are to find a way of identifying the contextual factors which give rise to such
specific meanings, there is still much to done in the study of intonation and discourse.
This is true whether we are concerned with politeness or impoliteness. Both are delib-
erate strategies on the part of the speaker to exploit the shared conventions of talk.
In the course of our work, we have noted numerous areas in need of further
research. We conclude by briefly listing some of these: (1) The perceived offensive-
ness of impoliteness strategies needs to be investigated. (2) Clearly, our findings in
this paper relate to car parking disputes. Different phenomena and patterns remain
to be found in other discourse types. (3) We have largely ignored what occurs prior
to an impoliteness act, and how confrontational episodes are resolved. (4) There is
much more to be said about turn-taking and about non-verbal aspects.
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Derek Bousfield is a PhD student and part-time teaching assistant in the Department of Linguistics and
Modern English Language at Lancaster University, UK. His research topic is centrally concerned with
politeness theory, the title of which is Impoliteness in Interaction. His other interests include the pragmatic-
stylistic interface, with special focus on how this operates in dramatic texts. He is also co-convenor of the
Pragmatics and Stylistics Research Group at Lancaster University.
Jonathan Culpeper is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at
Lancaster University, UK. Much of his research focuses on ‘spoken’ interaction as it appears in writing.
His particular interests are within politeness theory, historical pragmatics, and stylistics. His most recent
major publication is Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and other Texts (2001).
Anne Wichmann is a Reader in Speech and Language at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston,
UK. Her research is concerned with the prosody of discourse and conversation. This is reflected in her
major publication Intonation in Text and Discourse (2000). She works chiefly on intonation, and currently
focusses on the analysis of ‘attitudinal’ intonation within a pragmatic framework.

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Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1545–1579

Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to

Received 11 November 2001; accepted 5 July 2002

Although, as Leech points out, ‘conﬂictive illocutions tend, thankfully, to be

example, army training discourse (Culpeper, 1996), courtroom discourse (Lakoﬀ,

3. The relationship with politeness theory

One particular criticism of Culpeper (1996), personally communicated by a num-

3.2. Politeness, impoliteness and directness

whether it is the speaker’s intention to support face (politeness) or to attack it

3.3. Notions of politeness and notions of impoliteness

[1] S1: I’m afraid I have sir=

S1: I’d . what do you mean I did do it before

S1: yes sir I never really

S1: I’m not I’m not always down here sir

Our understanding of impoliteness falls within this category.

S1: correctly issued not incorrectly issued

S1: well in my opinion it has

[3] S1: < sincerely >when is it due?

Whilst Goﬀman’s categorisation is helpful, it does not capture the indeterminate

[The] attribution of purposiveness to participant behaviours, will be sharply

Section 4 and prosody in Section 5 is precisely to provide that adequate evidence,

3.4. Impoliteness work inspired by Brown and Levinson (1987)

2. Positive impoliteness. The use of strategies designed to damage the addressee’s

3.5. Further evidence of the impoliteness strategies in Culpeper (1996)

All of the impoliteness superstrategies outlined in Culpeper (1996), which were

S1: you’re going to be rude to me yeah I that’s ﬁne then sir I

[7] S1: oooh come on

[8] S1: the car is going he has a

< S2 hits S1 in mouth- S1 starts speed dialling on the phone>

S1: you can’t

S1: get in the car madam

S1: will you please leave the room

S1: I mean well I am trying to be but I’ve only got one

[11] S1: I will do

In this context, S4 is highly unlikely to be expressing a sincere polite wish; rather, he

S2 explicitly withholds politeness by not reciprocating S1’s thanks. This, of course, is

Unlike the traditional approach of focussing on single politeness or impoliteness

4.1. Multiple strategies

Discussing aggravating language, Lachenicht notes that ‘it is possible to combine

combinations of impoliteness strategies turned out to be the norm in our data: in

4.2. Impoliteness and responses to it

Fig. 1. A summary of response options.

Woman: Oh shut up you fat pig

This example has a relatively simple sequential organisation, thus:

(Woman) OFFENSIVE (bald on record impoliteness+derogatory nomination)

James: I sock you in your nose.

Dave: I am, you dumb-dumb.

No clear examples of this emerged in our data, perhaps because it is a relatively

S1: here and yeah

S1: well <exhales loudly > yes and no

The sequential organisation of this example is thus:

S1: so you are happy

S1: you’re happy that she perjured herself

A further type of defensive strategy is insincere agreement, which manages the

S1: ticket bar the cars take the cars oﬀ London do it

S1: today not tomorrow don’t give us

S1: this bloody headache all the time

5. Prosody and impoliteness

5.1. Prosody: its components and functions

No utterance can be spoken without prosody, and it is therefore desirable at some

5.2. Prosodic strategies for impoliteness

In our data we ﬁnd a number of examples where negative impoliteness strategies

5.2.1. Negative impoliteness