Staging insults and mobilizing categorizations in a multiethnic peer group

Abstract

This study explores how pre-adolescent boys of immigrant and working-class backgrounds stage insults and, as part of this process, mobilize categorizations. Data are drawn from ethnographic research combined with detailed analysis (conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis) of video records from peer interactions in an elementary school in Sweden. It was found that the boys deploy multiple resources (of syntactic and phonetic shapes) provided by the talk of the prior speaker and the turn structure of different activities (i.e. games, ridiculing, gossiping) and transform this talk (shifting emphasis, substituting insult terms and pronouns, recycling arguments, repeating striking parts, code-crossing) to collaboratively stage a counter to insults. A variety of negative characteristics (concerning linguistic, social and economic standards) are invoked and negotiated in the boys’ insult talk, which both colludes with and transgresses local norms of conduct and institutional discourses. Overall, this study demonstrates the political character of pre-adolescent children's everyday talk in terms of its orientation towards dominant language ideologies and the place that gender, ethnicity and social class occupy within it.

Disciplining Freedom : Treatment Dilemmas and Subjectivity at a Detention Home for Young Men

“…In line with previous research which has suggested that humorous teasing is an important aspect of male identity construction (Evaldsson, 2005b;Haugh & Bousfield, 2012;Schnurr & Holmes, 2009), the staff members and youths were found to orient toward teasing and the importance of being able to "take it"; responding to a tease without being overly aggressive. But the study also suggested that some instances could be conceptualized as rebellious humor in that some youths were successful in teasing or mocking the staff members.…”

“…While this study, along with many others (for example, Antaki & Kent, 2012;Aronsson & Gottzén, 2011;Evaldsson, 2005b;Cromdal & Osvaldsson, 2012;Goodwin, 1990;Hepburn & Potter, 2011), upholds the value of using video recordings as data, specifically of so-called "naturally occurring" events (those that would most likely have happened even without the researcher's presence), this does not imply that video-recorded interaction here is assumed to be more "real" or "natural" than other data, at least not in the sense that it is somehow unaffected by my presence and the video camera's. Duranti (1997) has discussed "the participant-observer paradox," that is, the fact that the researcher must observe the interaction he or she wants to study, and that through observing interaction, the researcher will inevitably affect it (unless the researcher uses covert observation, which is ethically questionable) (1997, p. 118).…”

From family language practices to family language policies : Children as socializing agents

“…Evaldsson and Cekaite (2010) examined peer interactions in monolingual Swedish educational settings and showed how minority language children engaged in corrective practices that targeted others' faulty Swedish, thereby co-constructing the prevalent societal monolingual ideology (see also Cekaite & Björk-Willén, 2013). Moreover, Evaldsson (2005) shows that children oriented to the hierarchical value of majority language by resisting others' criticism of their Swedish language skills and the categorization as not fully competent in Swedish.…”

The Handbook of Language Socialization

“…Such terms were used during character contests (Goffman 1967: 237). Evaldsson (2005) closely examines the sequential environments in which multiparty consensus (see also Evaldsson 2002;Goodwin 1990) is created to ratify particular depictions, tluough upgrades, laughter, recycles, repetitions, new linked evaluations, and so on that frame the acts of the offending party as disgusting. Evaldsson' s point is that we cannot ascribe meaning to members' categories without conducting extended fieldwork.…”

“…Children make category-bound ac transgressors. Neg girls' groups, incb behind people's be (not having Po kerr generally), having being labeled a 'G in school) were r immigrant backg (Evaldsson 2005: ;1967: 237 rhyming references with 'ambiguous sexual irmuendo' (Mendoza-Denton 2008: 188); for example, Guera, guera, LQuien te encurea? ('Blondie, Blondie, who'll disrobe you?')…”