The present paper discusses issues of language aggression, conflict and identity, and of emotional communication and conflict. In particular, it explores different positionings of deviant identity as projected by a number of juvenile delinquents through the display of moral indignation (Ochs et al. 1989; Günthner 1995), at moments of crisis and conflictual relationships between them. Moral indignation is expressed through the co-occurrence of a number of linguistic and discursive devices, such as hypothetical examples and personal analogies (Günthner 1995; Kakavá 2002), prosodic features, implicit or explicit moral judgments (Günthner 1995), or non-literal threats. These devices are employed in interaction in order to construct opposing moral versions of identities. The paper argues for a tight interweaving between moral indignation, affect, identity indexing, and moral positioning. It further argues that displays of indignation are powerful interactional devices of conflict management and control of the moral and social order and of social relationships.
The present paper examines data which has been drawn from the official proceedings of a murder trial in a Greek court, concerning the killing of an adolescent by a police officer (see alsoGeorgalidou 2012,2016), and addresses the issues of aggressive discursive strategies and the moral order in the trial process. It analyses the explicit and implicit strategies involved in morally discrediting the opponent, a rather frequent defence strategy (Atkinson and Drew 1979;Coulthard and Johnson 2007;Levinson 1979). The paper examines agency deflection towards the victim (Georgalidou 2016), attribution of a socio-spatial identity to the victim and witnesses in an essentialist and reductionist way, and other linguistic and discursive means, the majority of which mobilize moral panic and have implications for the moral order in court. I argue that these aggressive discursive means primarily contribute to the construction of a normative moral order by both adversarial parties.
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