The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences
This paper examines the thematic structure of a corpus of insults using the inference-boundary model of Theme and Rheme. It focuses on the concept of negative inference - which must be generated for an insult to be successfully delivered - and shows how it allows us to better understand and characte...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168929 |
| _version_ | 1811688711235043328 |
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| author | Leong, Alvin Ping |
| author2 | School of Humanities |
| author_facet | School of Humanities Leong, Alvin Ping |
| author_sort | Leong, Alvin Ping |
| collection | NTU |
| description | This paper examines the thematic structure of a corpus of insults using the inference-boundary model of Theme and Rheme. It focuses on the concept of negative inference - which must be generated for an insult to be successfully delivered - and shows how it allows us to better understand and characterize the form that insults generally take. The analysis suggests that insults are typically structured to generate backward-looking negative inferences from the decoder, much in line with how new information (in this case, the thrust of the insult) is generally located in final position. The paper also proposes a summary statement capturing the general configuration of insults and suggestions for further research. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:36:33Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/168929 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:36:33Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1689292023-06-24T16:54:54Z The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences Leong, Alvin Ping School of Humanities Humanities::Language Inference-Boundary Systemic-Functional Linguistics This paper examines the thematic structure of a corpus of insults using the inference-boundary model of Theme and Rheme. It focuses on the concept of negative inference - which must be generated for an insult to be successfully delivered - and shows how it allows us to better understand and characterize the form that insults generally take. The analysis suggests that insults are typically structured to generate backward-looking negative inferences from the decoder, much in line with how new information (in this case, the thrust of the insult) is generally located in final position. The paper also proposes a summary statement capturing the general configuration of insults and suggestions for further research. Published version 2023-06-22T08:14:19Z 2023-06-22T08:14:19Z 2022 Journal Article Leong, A. P. (2022). The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences. ExELL, 10(1), 1-21. https://dx.doi.org/10.2478/exell-2022-0008 2303-4858 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168929 10.2478/exell-2022-0008 2-s2.0-85145551278 1 10 1 21 en ExELL © 2022 Alvin Ping Leong et al., published by Sciendo This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Humanities::Language Inference-Boundary Systemic-Functional Linguistics Leong, Alvin Ping The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title | The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title_full | The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title_fullStr | The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title_full_unstemmed | The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title_short | The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences |
| title_sort | language of insults a look at theme rheme and negative inferences |
| topic | Humanities::Language Inference-Boundary Systemic-Functional Linguistics |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168929 |
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