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“What do you think about having beauty marks on your— H ashek !”: Innovative and Impolite Uses of an A rabic Politeness Formula among F rench Teenagers
Author(s) -
Tetreault Chantal
Publication year - 2015
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/jola.12098
Subject(s) - politeness , conversation , psychology , criticism , linguistics , politeness maxims , adversarial system , face (sociological concept) , sociology , social psychology , communication , computer science , literature , art , philosophy , artificial intelligence
This article addresses how F rench teenagers of North A frican (primarily A lgerian) descent transform the A rabic speech act H ashek through their nontraditional and innovative uses. In F rench language interactions that involved adversarial teasing or public criticism of a peer, A rab F rench teenagers used the politeness formula H ashek as a self‐corrective to simultaneously facilitate and mitigate such irreverent behavior. In addition, teenagers used H ashek as an other‐corrective in order to publicly mark peers as inappropriate or rude. Thus both usages of the term (self‐ and other‐corrective) aid teenagers in achieving impolite, nondeferential speech. In using H ashek to accomplish impolite speech, F rench‐speaking teenagers of North A frican background transform this traditional A rabic linguistic practice to suit the face‐needs of their adolescent peer group in F rance, while remaining in conversation with North A frican interactional rituals and cultural norms.