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Collaborative Conflicts: Teens Performing Aggression and Intimacy in a French Cité
Author(s) -
Tetreault Chantal
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1395.2010.01049.x
Subject(s) - insult , aggression , ambiguity , psychology , social psychology , event (particle physics) , immigration , criminology , incitement , developmental psychology , sociology , linguistics , political science , law , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
This article shows that emergent meanings of impoliteness and insult in interaction are central to communicative exchanges among French adolescents of Algerian descent living in a cité , or low‐income housing project. In the speech event “parental name calling” nonpolite interactions are routinely interpreted as politic or appropriate by adolescents. Yet these performances of conflict are not without risk. The potential slippage between ritual and personal insult is always present in parental name calling, an ambiguity that allows adolescents to achieve two seemingly contradictory but highly valued interactional goals: the vindication of a parent's “respect” and illicit, disrespectful play. [conflict, collaboration, names, adolescence, immigration, North Africa, France]