400 Verbal Conflict

Verbal Conflict

M Jacquemet, University of San Francisco,San Francisco, CA, USA

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Verbal conflict pervades social life. All around theworld, neighbors feud, lovers quarrel, and entiresocial groups become entangled in wars of words.‘Verbal conflict’ can be defined as the open, interac-tional dispute between two or more parties causedby a clash of goals that the parties perceive to beincompatible. By deploying their verbal skills, the op-posing parties seek to gain a dominant position thatprotects or increases their prestige and secures controlover contested resources. Verbal conflict is initiated bythe airing of direct or indirect accusations for whichspeakers must take responsibility, that require oppo-nents to reply, and that cannot be withdrawn with-out complicated negotiations. Verbal conflict allowsspeakers to be heard and forces bystanders to takesides. Even as it interrupts the course of social ex-change and leads to interactional breakdown or to thedestruction of particular relationships, verbal conflictreaffirms the need of social relations and the valueof the social group. All societies have developed com-municative mechanisms to handle the social after-math of verbal conflict. From the Trobriander’syakala (a session of public insults), to Inuit songduels, to U.S. conflict–mediation sessions, people re-enact their conflicts, attempt to reach a solution, andpledge their solidarity to the values and norms oftheir society. Through communicative performances(both during the conflict and in its aftermath), socialnetworks are activated and social relationships recon-figured. Thus, verbal conflict does not represent adeviation from normal social processes, but ratherplays a broad range of functions in constitutingsocial life.

Background

Verbal conflict provides a unique opportunity tostudy the articulation of language and society. Yetuntil very recently, we had relatively little knowledgeof how people manage conflict in interaction. Moststudies of conflict suffered from an absence of detailedprimary data, instead electing to present summaries,reports by informants, or reports from meetings heldto resolve the conflict. There seem to be several rea-sons for this lack of data analysis. First, the study oflanguage tended to separate linguistic phenomenafrom social experience, treating language as part of ascientific system rather than as an activity or practicein the world. As a result, linguistic processes such

as verbal conflict were neglected. Even when lan-guage was recognized as a form of social action (asin sociolinguistics, speech act theory, or the ethnogra-phy of communication), it was analyzed for its con-versational coherence and negotiated character, notfor it disruptive potential. For instance, researchersconcerned with interethnic communication viewedcommunicative breakdowns as the result of interac-tants’ interpretative failure due to cultural misunder-standing, rather than the intentional outcome ofspeakers’ animosity. Second, as Kulick (1993: 510)pointed out, many verbal conflicts were ‘‘often con-sidered to be private, sensitive, and potentially explo-sive events,’’ thus raising ethical concerns andinhibiting or restricting the collection of material.This may account for the fact that most analyses ofverbal conflict dealt with interactions in public set-tings (such as courtrooms or media events), ritualizedperformances (such as verbal dueling), or children’sarguments. Third, as suggested by Goodwin (1990:141), researchers may have avoided ‘‘studyingconflict because it is negatively valued in the white,middle-class society from which the majority ofacademics are drawn.’’ Since researchers consideredconflict a departure from normal social processes,they tended either to ignore it or to concentrateon resolving conflict rather than understanding itslinguistic development. Finally, academics’ attitudesvis-a-vis conflict may have suffered from their cul-tural gender bias as well: most analyses have focusedon verbal competition and conflict as the domain ofmale speakers, since men are considered to be moreverbally aggressive and outspoken, while womenwere, until recently, believed to be less prone to con-flict talk (but see Eder, 1990; Goodwin, 1990; Kulick,1993, for an opposite view).

To overcome the limitations of earlier research, con-temporary work on verbal conflict looks at languageas a contested field: a battlefield where interactants(both men and women) are acutely aware of the powerof their (and others’) words. Researchers in this fieldnow combine concepts developed by interactional so-ciolinguistics, pragmatics, and conversational analysis(inparticular ‘speechcommunity,’ ‘participation frame-work,’ ‘sequential organization,’ ‘pragmatic context’)with concepts derived from European social theoryarticulated by Foucault, Bourdieu, or Williams(‘power,’ ‘ideology,’ ‘hegemony’). This new brand ofconflict research crosspollinates an analysis of lan-guage with an analysis of power. Talk is thus analyzednot only for devices that ensure coherence and cohe-sion, but also for those mechanisms by which speakers/hearers bring about conversational breakdowns and

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transform the communicative context. In this light,verbal conflict is understood to be a local technologyof power, i.e., a modality for the exercise of power,comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques,procedures, levels of application, and targets.

Strategy

In the study of verbal conflict, we must differentiatebetween ‘discourse strategy’ – the overall communi-cative framework that determines the nature and di-rection to attain one’s objective – and ‘tactics’ – thedetailed verbal and nonverbal moves set up to achieveobjectives dictated by strategy. During a verbal con-flict, opponents strategize about the best way toestablish their position as the stronger, more reliable,and authoritative one, while using specific communi-cative tactics that seek interactional, turn-by-turndominance.

The overall strategy of verbal antagonists dealswith the representation of their social relationship,as it is indexed in their communicative practices.Disputants deploy strategies that endow them withbetter opportunities to talk, establish certain regionsof knowledge as authentic and meaningful at theexpense of others (usually endorsed by the opponent),and link this authenticity to systems of power thatcan boost their claims to credibility. Moreover, theyincrease their credibility through their ability to evokeand use relevant domains of knowledge, and by clash-ing over the rules, conditions, and procedures thatestablish what is believed to be true and what isbelieved to be false (see Bourdieu, 1991). In particu-lar, speakers seek to establish themselves as havinghigher standing than their opponents as the prelimi-nary move to claim authority for their words. Forinstance, in Tanna, Vanuatu, during verbal conflictpeople routinely claim to be ‘‘big men’’ that therefore‘‘must be listened to’’ and ‘‘believed’’ (Lindstrom,1992); similarly in southern Italy, opponents seekthe status of ‘‘man of honor’’ as a position from whichto ‘‘speak the truth’’ (Jacquemet, 1996). In more gen-eral terms, people deploy their accent, technicalvocabulary, or communicative demeanor as indexesof their superior social standing – a metonymic indi-cator of the superiority of their argument over thatof the opponent.

Ruling elites and people in position of authorityseem to be better placed to take advantage of theirsuperior status to claim credibility for their words.However, authority does not translate directly intoperformance, since one’s dominant social positionmust still be enacted in talk. The more powerful andauthoritative a speaker is, the better are his or herchances of influencing the outcome of the conflict,

but this outcome cannot be taken for granted: itis ultimately decided by their communicative perfor-mance. In the give-and-take stream of talk that char-acterizes verbal conflicts, the structurally ‘weaker’ butcommunicatively better equipped participant couldshape the local development of the interaction insuch a way as to neutralize the possibility that the‘stronger’ party would resort to extra-communicativemeans to achieve his or her agenda (such as usingviolence or appealing to powerful social connections).

Verbal conflict acquires an extra dimension when itoccurs in public. The presence of a third party – anaudience – seriously impacts the development andoutcome of the verbal conflict and is considered bymost researchers as a necessary element for conflictresolution. Moreover, verbal conflicts play a crucialrole in publicizing and condemning social violations.As early as the first decades of the 20th century,Malinowski highlighted the social-control functionof public verbal conflicts. In his study of the Trobrian-ders’ laws and customs, he argued that incest andother forbidden behaviors came to be viewed ascrimes only when they became public through verbalconflict. In discussing an incest case, he observed that‘‘public opinion was neither outraged by the knowl-edge of the crime to any extent, nor did it reactdirectly – it had to be mobilized by a public statementof the crime and by insults being hurled at the culpritby an interested party’’ (1926: 79). In contrast togossip, which transmits its messages along a one-to-one line and is thus subjected to serious noise distor-tion, the yakala, or public expostulation, broadcastsits message over an open field to the entire audience.Such speech has clear originator and target andreaches everyone within earshot, and its value-heavycontent assures that it cannot be dismissed as idletalk or ignored all together. Verbal conflicts forcethe audience to act to try to restore the social orderdisrupted by the conflict.

The presence of an audience during verbal conflictforces the opponents to engage in various strategies togain the audience’s support. Even if an imbalanceexists in instituted authority or social power, success-ful performances will depend upon the participants’ability to modify the contextual frame of the exchange(i.e., the relative positions/roles/attitudes of the partici-pants in the interaction) by setting up the conditionsthat would allow one’s argument to be heard. In par-ticular, to capture the audience’s support, speakersattempt to frame their arguments as embodiments ofshared beliefs and understandings. Such framing is aprimary strategy by which individuals and groupsattempt to legitimize their perspectives. As Brenneis(1988: 227) argues, verbal conflicts create accountsof disputed incidents, where ‘‘the effectiveness of these

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accounts depends in large part upon the degree towhich they meet audience expectations of sensible-ness, appropriateness, and good form.’’ In a similarvein, Goodwin (1990) studied telling stories about anantagonist as one of the most successful strategies forrestructuring the social organization of an ongoingconflict, transforming passive overhearers of the con-flict into active participants, and thus altering the‘participation framework’ (i.e., the ensemble of inter-active roles potentially available to participants inthe speech event). The creation of an account that isdetrimental to the opponent not only avoids unilater-al exits or direct replies from the antagonist (alwaysan option in the back-and-forth format of accusationsand counters typical of a verbal conflict), but since it isdirected to all participants, it also allows the creationof power alliances between the storyteller and otherparticipants, who are drawn into the conflict by thecompelling power of the story.

The narrative dimension of verbal conflict involvestwo levels of possible dispute: the speaker’s act ofsaying something reprehensible and/or inflammatory,and the actual report about the opponent’s reprehen-sible and/or objectionable acts. This tension betweennarrative performance and narrated event brings tothe fore the relationship between the pragmatic andthe referential dimensions of a verbal conflict. AsIrvine (1992) queried, ‘‘is the narration perceived asmore inflammatory than the narrated event, or viceversa? And if the violation is present in both, which isto be taken more seriously?’’ These questions point tothe varieties of contexts (cultural, linguistic, and situ-ational) that different communities take into accountin their handling of verbal conflicts. For instance,some communities (such as the working-class whitecommunities in the Carolina Piedmont studied byHeath, 1983) are mostly concerned with narratedevents, while others (such as the African–Americangroups studied by Abrahams, 1963; Labov, 1972)focus on the narrative performance. Discourse strate-gies in verbal conflicts are therefore tailored to aparticular community’s primary focus: in the former,the issues of representation, accountability, and re-sponsibility come to the foreground, while in thelatter, emphasis is placed on verbal skills, inventivecounters, and quick delivery.

Tactics

While verbal opponents rely on discourse strategiesfor the overall plan of their dispute, various verbaltactics are deployed throughout the sparring of thebattle. Among the many techno-political devicesemployed on this level, special attention has beenrecently given to speech moves able to elicit particular

responses or establish new conditions for the recep-tion of the conflict. In particular, from public debatesto institutional fights to private squabbles, researchershave been focusing on the disruptive but empoweringquality of direct speech (‘straight talk’) associatedwith verbal conflict. Three such devices of primaryimportance are ‘contextualization tactics,’ ‘recourseto metapragmatic statements,’ and ‘tactical use ofinsults.’

‘Contextualization tactics’ are communicative prac-tices that both produce representations of the socialworld in accord with a given ideology and seek topersuade others to comply with these representations.Such tactics are found in all societies and usuallyconsist of three parts: the decontextualization of anevent from its occurrence in a particular space andtime, its entextualization into a discourse with a morecontrollable set of truth values, and the recontextual-ization of this discourse within a communicativeframe set up to legitimize it (see Bauman and Briggs,1990; Silverstein and Urban, 1996). For instance, thespeaker may elect to embed an opponent’s statementwithin his or her own speech while inverting its refer-ential value or adding a negative comment throughintonational coloring. Most instances of reportedspeech in argumentative situations conform to thistactic: the embedded segment, which usually takesthe form of a short quotation from the opponent’sprevious talk, serves the speaker in the unflatteringrepresentation of the opponent, in its representationof the relationship between the two sparring partners,and through the cues it presents to the audience abouthow to read the conflict.

Secondly, the ‘recourse to metapragmatic state-ments’ (i.e., statements about the implicit social mean-ing conveyed by speech) is triggered by speaker’sawareness of how speech forms are used to establishthe indexical relationship between interactants: thespeaker’s stance or attitudes vis-a-vis the opponent(one-up/one-down); the social relations or relativestatus of the participants; and special attributes of par-ticular individuals (see Silverstein, 1976). In verbalconflict, participants usually are keenly aware of thespecific use of signs that refer to the conflict at hand,whether this use involves reference to specific wordsused by the opponent, or to particular instances ofspeech (the opponent’s style of delivery, intonation,or underlying logic). In these cases, metapragmaticawareness turns vicious and manifests itself in a‘‘meta-pragmatic attack’’ (Jacquemet, 1994): a strat-egy of consciously and overtly calling attention toand/or mocking the opponent’s performance for thepurpose of interactional control. A metapragmaticattack can be used to comment on nonverbal behav-ior (‘‘don’t use that tone with me’’), to draw attention

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to a particular word or style (‘‘don’t call me stupid,’’‘‘you sound like a broken record’’), or to address theindexical relationship between speaker and hearer(‘‘you don’t know who[m] you’re talking to’’or ‘‘you must call me ‘sir’ ’’). An explicit accusationat the metapragmatic level produces a communicativebreak that escalates the stakes of the conflict. A meta-pragmatic attack puts an opponent on the defensive,without the speaker having to level any specific accu-sations, and challenges the opponent to address theattack at the metapragmatic level. This interactionalescalation can produce verbal sequences called ‘for-mat tying,’ a subtle but significant transformationof an utterance in which the speaker repeats whatthe opponent has just said, but changes it minimallyto highlight opposition (A: ‘‘I don’t know whatyou laughin’ at’’; B: ‘‘I know what I’m laughin’ at.Your head’’ see Goodwin, 1990: 177). Metaprag-matic attacks unravel the raw fabric of communica-tive interactions, exposing the disputants’ maneuversas they struggle for control, respect, and interactionaldominance.

Finally, most verbal conflicts rely on insults toachieve their communicative effect. Leach (1964: 28)suggested that the language of abuse falls roughly intothree categories: ‘‘(1) ‘dirty words,’ usually referringto sex and excretion; (2) blasphemy and profanity;and (3) animal abuse – in which a human being isequated with an animal of another species.’’ Thesetypes, according to Leach, are found in mostcultures around the world. They are indeed wellrepresented in verbal conflicts, where they may playa crucial role in escalating the intensity of the ex-change. Kulick (1993) highlighted three functions ofinsults: they draw the opponent into open warfare;they create an awkward and embarrassing situationfor all present, thus implicating the opponent in thissocial gaffe; and they are tactically deployed at pointsin the conflict where closure or negotiations seempossible, allowing the insult-giver to maintain controlover the sequential organization of the conflict, andin particular over its resolution. However, as Irvine(1992) pointed out, how a particular expressioncounts as an insult or as verbal abuse is quite prob-lematic, requiring a great deal of contextual, cultural,and situational knowledge. Many innocuous state-ments can be turned into abusive ones, dependingon the context to which they refer and on their posi-tion within the stream of talk. As Irvine (1992: 110)stated:

Insults are not simply a set of statements, or a typeof content inherent in statements. Instead, insult is acommunicative effect constructed in interaction – con-structed out of the interplay of linguistic and social

features, where the propositional content of an utteranceis only one such feature [. . .] . Conceivably anyutter-ance, or even silence, could have the perlocutionary effectof insult if enough interactional features suggesting it arebrought into play.

Verbal abuse is grounded in specific cultural sys-tems of moral judgment, and as such, it must beinvestigated by exploring how the dominant normsand values of a given society are invoked in specificinteractional events.

Verbal Duels

A special case of verbal conflict concerns the wide-spread communicative practice of verbal dueling: thecompetitive exchange of usually obscene insults andinvectives between at least two parties. This exchangeis performed in a highly ritualized and codified space,in which participants can avoid the contest’s potentialto unleash social disruption. In this public space, twoor more duelists with narrowly circumscribed rolesand tasks are asked to match their linguistic skillsin front of an audience, which selects the winnerbased on socially shared criteria of what constitutesa winning performance.

In most cases, verbal duels are used as conflict-resolution devices, resulting in the public rebalancingof the wills and reputations of the duelists, thus en-suring their good relations in the future. For instance,in the Inuit duels studied by Hoebel (1954), conflictsin the community were reduced through two formsof regulated combats: wrestling and song duels(sometimes in association with head butting). Theduel must, however, maintain a symbolic distancefrom the real conflict and should not provide a factualrepresentation of the conflict. Through the duel, theconflict was moved to a symbolic space and separatedfrom everyday life. In this symbolic space, verbalduels created an overriding sense of solidarity amongplayers. This led to a harmonious resolution of theinitial conflict, marked by a common meal.

It is the rule-governed nature of the exchange thatmaintains the symbolic distance between the verbalduel and serious conflict. All the major elements ofa duel (the time allotted to each duelist, the shape andcontent of their lines, the conservation of formand content across participants’ turns, the audienceresponse) are strictly regulated and enforced, markingthe controlled nature of the event. Adherence to strictrules shields both performers and audience from thedangers usually associated with verbal conflict. Inparticular, participants need not worry about pro-ducing truthful statements, and in many settings,content must be obviously fictional (for instance,

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during African–American sounding games, any insulttoo close to reality is negatively received by the audi-ence and may trigger a serious confrontation; seeLabov, 1972). Likewise, performers are expectednot to take issue with the opponent’s remarks andmust not show the anger or embarrassment usuallycaused by an opponent’s accusations.

Verbal duels are widely scattered around the world;they have been reported from the Mediterranean area(Malta, Turkey, Sardinia) to the Americas (Mexico,the Caribbean, the United States), from Africa (Tiv,Yoruba, Efik) to the South Pacific (Fiji). In most cases,participation is reserved for male performers, whilewomen may be in the audience. To date the ethno-graphic evidence of women involved in ritual insultscenters on the life-transition occasion of the wedding.The most thoroughly documented case of womenperformers is Irvine’s study (1992, 1996) of xaxaar,a Wolof insult poetry event in which a bride’s pro-spective cowives hire women of lower rank, usuallygriot women, to recite poems vilifying the bride.

The basic distinction among (male) verbal duels isbetween adolescent games and adult contests. Ado-lescent games adhere to specific stylistic shapes ofchallenge and retort, in which individual perfor-mances depend on creativity and especially on themastery of a traditional repertoire of statements.These duels are typically concerned with forcingand/or depicting the opponent in a passive role, andcontent is heavily composed of references to allegedhomosexual (bottom) behavior (see, among many,Abrahams, 1962; Labov, 1972; Dundes et al., 1970;Gossen, 1976). On the other hand, adult contestsare stylistically more demanding: participants’ turnsare longer and more complex, insults are often sungrather than spoken, and sometimes a single topic isset in advance either by the first performer or by theorganizers or audience of the duel.

Both kinds of verbal duels undergo a collectiveprocess of evaluation by the audience, which inmost cases decides (either explicitly or through ap-plause and comments) the winner. In cases in whichthe verbal duel has been organized to settle a real-world dispute, the jury concerns itself more with re-establishing harmony in the community than withdetermining guilt or innocence. In a number of casesfound in the literature, the audience/jury usuallydeclares one party the winner of the contest, butadjudicates in favor of the other, thus reaching asettlement where both parties ‘win.’ In other cases,especially with adolescent duels, losers are usuallythose unable to come up with a witty counter:‘‘There is always a winner, he who says the lastword, and a loser, he who cannot answer the chal-lenge’’ (Gossen, 1976: 126).

Ritual Wailing

While verbal duels are almost exclusively a male do-main, ‘ritual wailing’ – the communicative practiceof publicly, collectively, and loudly expressing grief,sorrow, or anger for the death of a dear one – is afemale domain. Where a verbal duel may function asan attempt at reconciliation between feuding parties,ritual wailing can be functionally understood as theattempt to atone for a different kind of communalconflict: the breakdown and disruption caused by theloss of a group’s member. Many researchers havecharacterized these performances as a form of resis-tance in which women can express open criticism oftheir community and verbally abuse other members.Ritual wailing operates with the basic mechanism ofverbal conflict: a wailing woman, using her sorrow asa backdrop, can safely insult individuals or groupsshe does not like or she reputes to be in violation ofsocial obligations (Knudsen, 1988; Seremetakis, 1991;Briggs, 1992; Urban, 1988). As such, ritual wailing canbe seen as a powerful device for social defiance and,at times, can have a powerful impact in determiningthe policies and decisions of a community.

Ritual wailing shares with verbal duels many com-municative features: the presence of a public audience(at times quite large), the focus on the performativemoment, the use of formulaic speech, and the relianceon metapragmatic devices (in particular, reportedspeech; see Briggs, 1992). During ritual wailing, thevoices of many women not only express emotions butalso deliver strong public statements about the rea-sons behind the death, the ensuing imbalance causedby it, and the steps needed to recover a communalequilibrium. For instance, Knudsen (1988) reportedthat ritual wailings played a central role in thevendetta tradition in Corsica during the 18th and19th centuries, where women called out the namesof male relatives charged with the task of avengingthe death, using derogatory language to prompt theminto action.

On the other hand, women may also elect to usethe wailing performance to present other women ina particular unfavorable light or to insult them direct-ly. The accused women will then be forced to respondby entering this performative space. For instance,Seremetakis (1992) documents the clash between agrieving mother and a former friend of her dead son,in which the latter strenuously fought in her lament torepresent her relationship with the deceased as casual,thus shielding her from the strict code of mourning arelative.

Through the high voicing of the laments, womenrepresent the violence of death through language andsound – the acoustic pain of day-long singing screams

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metaphorically evoking this violence and its underly-ing conflict. Through their emotional, supposedlyout-of-control outburst, they impose decisions onthe entire community by producing statements thatappeal to collectively held moral obligations. Forinstance, in their laments, the Warao women ofVenezuela appropriate and recontextualize wordsinitially used in settings where only men are accordeda voice, and in so doing they act to restrain theauthority of male shamans and political leaders:‘‘Women (and women alone) are accorded the rightto criticize whatever and whomever they pleasethrough songs following a death’’ (Briggs, 1992: 347).

The communicative force of the laments rests onceagain on the fact that these words have been utteredin a public space: wailers acquire the power to com-mand an audience and put on record their assessmentof the community, thus forcing their discourse intothe public sphere – in most cases without the possi-bility of a rebuttal. As death becomes the last chapterin the life of an individual, death laments are the ‘lastwords’ (Seremetakis, 1992) through which womencan rewrite biographies, shuffle group histories, andpropose new sets of norms and values.

Conclusions

From the study of verbal conflict, we can draw somebroader conclusions about the relationship betweenlanguage and society.

First, we see that most linguistic techno-politicaldevices (such as reported speech or metapragmaticattacks) are always (that is, not only in verbal con-flict) intentionally staged, performative acts. Allspeakers, including those in positions of dominance,need to perform their power: they stage these acts toexpress their will to power. Most dominant classescan, however, count on some helpful aids, such as adilution of responsibility (such as the Wolof practiceof paying a griot to speak instead of a noble [Irvine,1992]) or the ‘plausible deniability’ sought by highpublic officials. In the process of this performance,the relative power of each interactant is put to thetest. Thus, the outcome of any attempt to gain controlover communicative resources is never predetermined;power in interaction (especially during verbal con-flict) must be claimed through the use of communica-tive resources – asymmetrically distributed but alwaysnegotiable in performances.

Second, verbal conflict teaches us to avoid asimplistic correlation between speech forms andpower; its techno-political devices are deployedfrom all positions, from the core as well as fromthe periphery, from the superior as well as from theinferior. Different forms of domination produce

different configurations of language use. Any particu-lar linguistic form gains different meanings and hasdifferent social and political effects as a function ofspecific institutional and ideological contexts.

Third, verbal conflict, because it calls extraordi-nary attention to the spoken word, generates frequentinstances of communication as verbal hygiene. Inthese instances, disputants produce correct, cleanforms of talk-linguistic techno-political devices that,in order to be effective, invoke particular assumptionsabout standard language, proper talk, and normativebehavior. Through verbal hygiene, disputants attemptto demonstrate their solidarity with the norms andforms of the community (actual or imagined) towhich they are appealing for support.

Finally, verbal conflict forces us to address the issueof the relationship between language and socialchange. Battles over language use (as they are evokedand transformed during a conflict) change the reper-toire of social meanings associated with power rela-tions. Through verbal conflict, social indexicalitiesare interactionally transformed, opening the way formore profound social transformations. The struggleover the sexist bias of the English language (evi-denced, for instance, in the unmarked nature of thegeneric masculine pronoun) provides an example ofthis potential for change; linguistic awareness of gen-der bias has rendered problematic the generic use ofthe masculine pronoun, and this newly produced sen-sitivity can be exploited during a verbal conflict, sincea speaker could metapragmatically point out the‘politically incorrect’ use of a gendered form. It wouldbe naive to claim that awareness of sexist languageand its recourse during verbal conflicts change genderrelations. However, by focusing speakers’ attentionon the inner workings of language, conflict opens areflection on the social meanings of particular linguis-tic repertoires, and this in turn can lead to structuralchange.

See also: Blaming and Denying: Pragmatics; Context,

Communicative; Discourse, Narrative and Pragmatic De-

velopment; Emotion: Stylistic Approaches; Expletives and

Dummies; Face; Identity in Sociocultural Anthropology

and Language; Indexicality: Philosophical Aspects;

Language Ideology; Metapragmatics; Metasemiosis

and Metapragmatics; Performance Factors in Spoken

Discourse; Power and Pragmatics; Reported Speech:

Pragmatic Aspects; Speech Genres in Cultural Prac-

tice; Taboo: Verbal Practices; Taboo Words.

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