Ritualized Verbal Insults

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Ritualized Verbal Insult in White High School Culture Author(s): Millicent R. Ayoub and Stephen A. Barnett Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 310 (Oct. - Dec., 1965), pp. 337-344Published by: American Folklore SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/538441Accessed: 16-08-2014 02:10 UTC

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MILT ICENT R. AYOUB AND STEPHEN A. BARNETT

RITUALIZED VERBAL INSULT IN WHITE HIGH SCHOOL CULTURE'

A GAME OF ADOLESCENT VERBAL ASSAULT traditionally called Playing the Dozens has been linked with American Negro subculture. This paper reports data of extensive participation by whites in Playing the Dozens and discusses the functions of the practice for white and Negro boys in the high school situation.

Two important studies emphasize the exclusive Negro involvement in Playing the Dozens: "The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult" by John Dollard2 and "Playing the Dozens" by Roger D. Abrahams.3 The latter has been elaborated in Abrahams' Deep Down in the Jungle.4 Dollard defines The Dozens as "a pattern of interactive insult which is used by some American Negroes."5 The insults he offers in illustration of the practice refer to sexual conduct of the mother of the person being insulted. He reports that the Dozens is played by Negro adolescents of both sexes, although the examples given are only from male encounters.

Dozens may be rhymed or in prose form. Dollard and his informants classify them as two types, "clean" (or non-obscene) and "dirty." Boys beginning with the clean Dozens usually progress to the dirty variety in a single contest. Abrahams agrees with Dollard's limitation of The Dozens to Negro participants.6 He presents a succinct description of the game: "One insults a member of another's family.... The one who has been insulted feels at this point that he must reply with a slur on the protagonist's family.... This, of course, leads the other to make further jabs."7 For Dollard and Abrahams, the Dozens is a verbal duel played by Negro males, the object of which is to better one's opponent by deriding him with defamatory insults about his family. The content of the insults principally describes reputed sexual misdeeds of the opponent's mother.

Both writers stress the lower class status of the Negro players, Dollard suggesting that the Dozens is particularly resented by boys whoes parents have recently attained middle-class status. The audience is seen as vital to the exchange: It is the witnesses who egg on the participants to increasing obscenities.

Dollard and Abrahams explain the occurrence and form of the Dozens in terms of consequences of the American Negro's underprivileged minority position. Dollard sees the exchange as a convenient way for Negro boys to cope with aggression. Ag- gression is present, he says, "when frustration levels are high and when societal pressure against aggressive behavior is weak."8 And frustration is commonly high among Negroes because of their depressed economic position and lower "caste" status. This is coupled by him with the "relative lawlessness" of Negro society "where the social punishment for aggressive expressions is diminished much below our [white] standard practice."9 Consequently, both conditions prerequisite for aggression exist in Negro society and the Dozens is an outlet for the accumulation of this effect.



338 Vol. 78, No. 310 Journal of American Folklore Oct.-Dec., I965

Abrahams argues differently. He says that the key to understanding the Dozens is the matrifocal system of the lower class Negro. Within this class, women are not

only figures of love and affection but also of discipline and authority. As the matriarchate rejects men qua men, Negro boys at puberty "must eminently be re-

jected as men by the women in the matriarchy; thus a period of intense anxiety and rootlessness is created. . . . The result is generally a violent reaction against the world of women which has rejected him.""' However, the boy's Oedipal feelings will not allow him to revile his own mother, so he sublimates by insulting someone else's mother in the knowledge that this will cause the other to retaliate by insulting his own-in effect, he is arranging for a proxy. For Abrahams, Playing the Dozens is an institutionalized mechanism used by the lower class Negro "in search for his masculine identity.""1

Despite obvious differences between these two explanations Dollard and Abrahams

employ the same starting premises about race and class; both posit Negro group membership and lower class standing.

This paper will present evidence which demonstrates that Playing the Dozens is not limited to lower class Negroes by reporting its prevalence among middle and

upper class whites in a prosperous southwestern Ohio town.12 (In describing the

game Dollard uses only the term Playing the Dozens. Abrahams notes that this is outmoded and that the expression "Sounding" has become more common. Only a few boys in our sample knew the expression Playing the Dozens. Most referred to it as

sounding or burning, but other terms are ranking, dusting, icing, putting down,

cutting down, tearing down. In this paper the names Sounding and Playing the Dozens are used synonymously.)

The population chosen for study was the sophomore class of the town high school.

Eighty-five per cent of the boys in the class (I7 whites, 6 Negroes) were interviewed. Their average age was 15 years, 3 months. Interviews were conducted outside the school grounds and each boy was seen separately. Following John Coleman's rules, a sociogram of the 23 boys revealed four distinct cliques13-one all Negro and three all white. When asked to reveal best friends, no Negro listed a white, and no white listed a Negro. Roving groups of high school students in the business district (the only street corner hang-out in the town) are usually segregated, as are Friday and

Saturday night parties in private homes. There is one important exception to this

picture of lack of communication between Negroes and whites. School team athletics involve interracial contact. Significantly, much Sounding activity occurs in an athletic

setting-the gym, locker room, a bus returning from a basketball game-and in these contexts Sounding does cross racial boundaries.

A Sounding match has a spontaneous beginning. It starts from a chance remark

innocently dropped which triggers a Sound as a comeback. This second Sound demands a rejoinder-and so on and on until one boy "wins" the exchange. Victory is reckoned when either competitor is unable to supply a fitting retort or when the excellence of one boy's response evokes loud laughter and jeers from the necessary audience. In this way the audience serves as both catalyst and judge by goading the

players on to making more daring Sounds and by tacitly recognizing a winner. At the outset of a contest, Sounds usually refer to the opponent only. It then

develops into a series of pointed, scurrilous ripostes on the mores of the opponent's family, particularly his mother's sexual behavior.



Ritualized Verbal Insult

A white informant quoted this exchange:

"Eat shit."

"What will I do with your bones?"

"Build a cage for your mother."

"Then how can she keep track of your mother and me?"

Here in a sequence having four logical links there is a progression from the in- nocuous remark of the first boy to the requisite taking of umbrage by the other to the introduction of the second's mother to the final charge of the first's mother's sexual promiscuity with the second.

At each stage in the development of a Sounding contest a number of standard

responses is often made, plus unique, innovative Sounds created on the spot. At first, when insult is directed to the opponent himself, standard Sounds refer to his

physical appearance, for example:

You look like 500 miles of bad road.

You look like my dog and I don't even have one.

Your face looks like a forest fire that's been stamped out with a shovel.

You smell like ten tons of get-back.

Later, Sounds about mothers appear (hereafter termed "Mother-Sounds"). These revile her by implying a masculine image or by indicting her for sexual promiscuity. Masculine image Mother-Sounds are the "Your mother wears combat boots" variety. These sounds are frequent among younger children (grades 5 to 8) and serve as entrance to sexual Mother-Sounds which require high school sophistication:

Your mother smokes corn silks.

Your mother uses Barbasol.

Your mother smells like garlic salt.

Mother-Sounds describing sexual misconduct run the gamut of culturally tabued sexual actions:

I heard you were in bed with your old lady last night (incest).

Your mother fucks old pigs (bestiality).

Your old lady is a fag (homosexuality).

Promiscuity of one sort or another is a standard charge of Mother-Sounds:

I saw your mother up in a bell tower with my father.

Your mother goes down for the whole school.

Your old lady gives Green Stamps.

Your mother has a hook-up with the Bell Telephone Company; rates are lower nights and Sundays.

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340 Vol. 78, No. 310 Journal of American Folklore Oct.-Dec., I965

Dollard is inconclusive on whether Playing the Dozens usually leads to physical combat. He writes: "Some informants believe it to be quite common and some quite rare."14 Our data indicate that where there is previous antagonism, a Sound may precipitate a fight but without prior ill feeling fighting is not likely. One informant said, "No Sound gets you angry-angry enough to fight. That's not in the rules."

(speaker's emphasis). One of the Abrahams' informants makes a similar point: "It's

just passing speech. Guys don't mean no harm. They just saying it. If people walked

past and didn't know you, they'd swear there'd be blows coming. You get used to it and when somebody say something, just say something back. People that don't know you would figger you're just getting ready to fight. Just passing speech."l5 Re-

peatedly players claimed they didn't interpret Sounds seriously. One said: "If we did, everyone would wind up in a fight." It is rather the non-participants who think

Mother-Sounding leads to a fight, whereas those who do play the game invariably insist, "It's all in fun." The former see it as a way of "hurting a guy's feelings" and term the players "bullies, big-shots, and tough guys," while the latter regard the non-

players as "poor sports who can't take it." Our evidence bears out Charles S. Johnson's conclusion-"The game (the Dozens) usually ends pleasantly but occasionally it is the spark which brings unfriendly boys to blows.""'

For this population, Playing the Dozens is a verbal contest involving as Dollard puts it, "a dialectic,"17 escalating charges about an opponent and his family. Despite the inflammatory nature of the exchange, the unwritten rules discourage physical combat (Dollard reports that Negro boys with new middle class standing can be

provoked into fighting by Sounding.l8). The Dozens, as we have described it, differs fundamentally from patterns of

insult in other societies such as joking relationships,'9 La Legge20 and Relajo.21 Radcliffe-Brown's description of joking relationships is typically grounded in the

kinship system, the model of the kin group serving to justify and explain the cus- tom. In contrast, Sounding is restricted to the peer group context, and kinsmen as-

siduously avoid Sounding each other. We may conjecture that reviling a kinsman's mother strikes consciously too close to home. The Italian game, La Legge (the Law), as described by Roger Vaillant, is a drinking contest among adults where insults are

exchanged about kinsmen (most often wife, sister, or sweetheart). La Legge and The Dozens are similar in their needing an audience and being limited to male society, but La Legge is restricted to adult drinkers and adolescents do not play. Moreover, in the Italian game mothers are seldom the subject of the insult. The Puerto Rican

example, Relajo, is similarly played only by adult men and sexual reference to the mother is not made.

To return to our population, all the boys questioned admitted playing the clean Dozens (without sexual Mother-Sounds) and all said they knew about Mother-

Sounding; but 6 of the I7 white boys and 2 of the 6 Negroes disclaimed any participation in the dirty Dozens (Mother-Sounding) and offered as the reason that the game is disrespectful towards mothers. A Negro non-player explained: "Most people take it

jokingly, but I take it seriously." When accosted with a Mother-Sound, he said that he and the other non-players "Walk away, tell the guy to shut up, or hit him in the mouth." Notwithstanding this threat of violence, no non-player reported ever having been provoked enough to carry out the threat.

How may we understand the difference in values and performance of these




youths? In the attempt to do this, the boys were classified and distinguished accord-

ing to race, socio-economic class, holding an office in the school government, dating experience, athletic ability, academic excellence, degree of participation in Sounding, and reputed skill at the game, as rated by themselves and each other.

The classifications indicate, first, that playing or not playing the Dozens is not linked with race or socioeconomic class. The same proportion (67 per cent) of whites and Negroes say they Mother-Sound. No significant differences are found between the form of Sounds spoken by white and Negro informants. A white and a Negro boy tied for highest rating in skill at Sounding, in the opinions of their classmates.

Significantly, Negro and white youths who are at the top and bottom of the social class hierarchy are found to participate in proportion to the entire population. As these data are a counter example to the starting premises of Dollard and Abrahams about lower class standing, they imply that other causative factors may be operative. We suggest that these factors may be found in the social milieu of the high school and in the nature of adolescent peer group culture.

High ratings in Sounding ability were given to boys prominent in three aspects of the school life: athletics, student government, and dating experience. All members of the varsity teams admitted Mother-Sounding. So did the class president and vice

president. In contrast, the boy most often named "best scholar" was among those

denying saying Mother-Sounds. This summary indicates that for our informants, participation in Mother-Sounding is associated with athletic ability, involvement in school government, and dating experience. And in the local high school these are necessary credentials for membership in an "elite," using Coleman's term22 for des-

ignating leading cliques. On this evidence we suggest that the boy who Mother-Sounds is more concerned

with establishing his identity in his primary reference group, his peers, than with

protecting his mother from slander, since he knows he cannot play the game without exposing her to verbal attack. He welcomes the attack because it permits him to respond in kind. Family bonds must be sacrificed or at least charred a bit at the altar of the peer group to insure membership status. This ordeal demonstrates to the peer group that family bonds take second place. In effect the boy is saying to his peers, "I let you insult my mother in the worst possible way and I won't be angry. You come first." Abrahams makes a similar point: "the transition must be made by the boy from his mother-oriented to the gang-oriented values. This means a complete reversal of values, after all, and in order to achieve this anxious change- over, a violent and wildly permissive atmosphere must be established through which the boy can express the subsequent emotions involved."23 Those excluded from these cliques have no motive to reject family ties and may in fact be strengthening them by refusing to play. Earlier it was noted that non-players themselves give "disrespect" as their reason for abstention from the game.

It is also relevant to view Mother-Sounding as (at one level) simply a duel of wit. The participant most artful in using standard Sounds and in innovating new Sounds draws admiration and prestige from his listeners, the audience who is the final court. The peer-oriented adolescent craves this regard even at the cost of com- promising family honor. Furthermore, Mother-Sounding helps define the boundaries of the peer group. One informant put it in these words: "Our Sounds are directed at our group. They're not for outsiders." As we said earlier, the interracial Sounding

34I



342 Vol. 78, No. 310 lournal of American Folklore Oct.-Dec., I965

in an athletic environment does cross clique boundaries, but these Sounds are pale in comparison to the Mother-Sounds spoken within the group and such exchanges are quickly broken off. More important, since Mother-Sounding deals with topics tabued in American culture and openly discusses matters so sacrosanct as the virtue of mothers, the mere fact of being willing to trade insults of this type acts to bind the

group in a covenant of shared guilt. Only the in-group can be trusted to know that Mother-Sounds are "all in fun." When the class president was asked if he would use a very cutting Mother-Sound, he hedged and said, "Well, if I was very intimate with someone I might say it" (his emphasis). This statement indicates clearly that

Mother-Sounding is not used as a preliminary assault weapon against an enemy but rather as a symbol of strong peer bond.

We must enter a caveat here. The argument is not made that Sounding did not

originate in American Negro culture, only that at the present it has also become wide-

spread among white male adolescents. On the contrary, it is most probable that

Sounding stems from American Negro culture and only recently-that is, after World War II and especially the post-Korean War-diffused to white adolescent culture. R. F. Berdie supported this point: "I asked a hundred white prisoners if they heard the term or knew the meaning of 'Playing the Dozens' and not one admitted that... he had ever heard it before."24

A key factor in this diffusion since I945 is the emergence of a well-demarcated adolescent subculture.25 We would conjecture that this subculture with its emphasis on clique formation and primary loyalty to the group is receptive to the potentialities of Sounding for weakening family bonds and for creating shared in-group guilt.

The correlation of Mother-Sounding with peer group orientation is more difficult to establish for the six Negro informants. All Negroes had dating experience and

participated in sports regardless of whether they Mother-Sounded. No Negro held office in the school student government. The Negro student who tied for "Best Sounder" refused the interview, probably surmising that his classmates had nomi- nated him for "Best."

Although there are 24 girls who are members of the sophomore class, Playing the Dozens is not significant among them. All the girls were asked about the subject and none refused the interview. Of the total, 21 denied any personal knowledge of the game, although one girl, a Negro, jeered at this and said they certainly knew it well but were reluctant to say so. Two girls who said they didn't play tried to "buy off" the interviewer by offering information on a similar pastime which they all

enjoyed in elementary school. This unanticipated information is valuable, however. It refers to a game which may be a forerunner of the Dozens because it also makes fun of the mother. In this game one child calls another teknonymously by the latter's mother's given name, or if he can think of one, by a pun made upon her name. For

example, a child whose mother's name is Ethel is called "Gasoline"; one whose mother's name is Katherine is called "Buzz (Katherine->Katy->Katydid->Buzz).

How may one account for these apparently uniform denials by girls who are in

daily contact with classmates who do play? We suggest there are two bases for this abstention. First, the game of Sounding is not played by the girls in the class because

they do not need to play it. It does them no good. It serves no purpose such as we have observed its serving for the boys, because the girls do not have such social units, such peer groups. Admittedly, a girl has peers, special friends among her age-mates,




but she does not seem to regard herself and them as forming a group distinct from other similar groups of girls. Jules Henry draws a similar conclusion in his analysis of adolescent society in a Midwestern city.

As they grow towards adolescence, girls do not need groups; as a matter of fact, for many of the things they do more than two would be an obstacle; boys flock; girls seldom get together in groups of above four whereas for boys a group of four is almost useless. Boys are dependent on masculine solidarity within a relatively large group.26

Secondly, a girl is not usually obliged to demonstrate to her friends her dissociation from family ties or her independence of any need for parental guidance for earning their respect. From early childhood her links to the home and the abstract family concept are taken for granted. She regards it as her place to know her relatives and to be conversant with the kinship ethos. Whereas a boy may not be a man in his own eyes and the eyes of his group until he can show that he is no longer a Momma's Boy, a girl may remain Daddy's Girl as long as she wishes. Schneider and Homans make a complementary point in their distinction between the use of "Daddy" and

"Mommy" by boys and girls: "the men reported changing as they grew up to "Dad" for father and "Mom" or "Ma: for mother and the women reported keeping "Daddy" for father but shifting to "Mother" for mother.

In the effort to learn whether the high incidence of Sounding which we found

among white boys in the town high school is unique or not, we made a small check of some older students at a nearby college. A random selection was made of a dormi- tory housing 23 men, and all were given the same interview. Eighteen reported that Mother-Sounding had been played by whites in their own high schools, these schools being in six states-New York, Vermont, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California.

Our data indicate that Playing the Dozens or Sounding is widespread among white male high school students in the United States. We maintain that the conclusion of Dollard and Abrahams linking the game with Negro minority status and matrifocal family orientation is not sufficient to account for the diffusion of the practice since I945. The alternative explanation supplied here is that Sounding is positively correlated with degree of peer group orientation. Sounding, especially Mother-Sound- ing, demonstrates the second place given to the mother-son bond in comparison to the primary place assigned the clique and defines the in-group's boundaries by foster- ing a shared sense of guilt.

NOTES

i. An earlier version of the paper was read before the Central States Anthropological Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 14, I964. The investigation received support from the Public Health Service Research Grant MH 02705-05 from the National Institute of Mental Health. Our thanks are due to Jerry Agate for research assistance and to Anthony Lauria, whose work first suggested the investigation.

2. John, Dollard, "The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult," American Imago, I (I939), 3-25. 3. Roger D. Abrahams, "Playing the Dozens," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, LXXV (1962),

209-220.

4. Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, (Hatboro, Pa., I964). 5. Dollard, 4. 6. Abrahams (I964), 50. 7. Abrahams (1962), 209. 8. Dollard, I6. 9. Dollard, 22.

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344 Vol. 78, No. 3Io Journal of American Folklore Oct.-Dec., I965

Io. Abrahams (1962), 214. ii. Abrahams (I962), 215. 12. The town has a population of 4000 and a median income of $7,000. The occupations of

fathers of boys in the sophomore class may be listed as follows: Type of work Number Professional, manager, proprietor 6 Craftsman, foreman 4 Clerical, saleswork, farming 4 Operative, service workers at air base 9

I3. J. S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society, (Glencoe, Illinois, I96I), Appendix, 2-3. I4. Dollard, 6. I5. Dollard, 47-8. i6. Growing Up in the Black Belt (Washington, D. C., 1941) i85, as quoted in William

Elton's "Playing the Dozens," American Speech XXV (1950), 230-33. I7. Dollard, 3. I8. Dollard, 23. I9. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, (Glencoe, Illionis,

1952). 20. Roger Vaillant, The Law, (New York, I959). 21. Anthony Lauria, Jr., "Respeto, Relajo and Inter-Personal Relations," Anthropological

Quarterly XXXVII (1964), 53-67. 22. Coleman, 120-2

23. Abrahams, (1964), 34. 24. R. F. Berdie, "Playing the Dozens," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XLII

(I947), I20-2.

25. Coleman, I-Io. 26. Jules Henry, Culture Against Man. (New York, 1963). 27. Schneider, David M. and George C. Homans, "Kinship Terminology and the American

Kinship System," American Anthropologist LVII (I955), 1194-1217.

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Ritualized Verbal Insults