Table Of ContentToward a Rhetoric of Insult
Toward a Rhetoric of Insult
thomas conley
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
thomas conley is professor of communication at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of
Byszantine Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Poland and Rhetoric
and the European Tradition, among other publications.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2010 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2010
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-11477-4 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-11478-1 (paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-11477-5 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-11478-3 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conley, Thomas, 1941–
Toward a rhetoric of insult / Thomas Conley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-11477-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-11477-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-11478-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-11478-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Invective. 2. Rhetoric.
I. Title.
p410 .i58c66 2010
808.7—dc22
2009032306
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum re-
quirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ansi z39.48-1992.
contents
Preface vii
1
* The Range of Insult 1
Terms of Abuse: The Lexical Approach 9
Beyond the Lexicon 13
Nonverbal “Terms” 22
The Problem of the Intrinsic 25
2
* Traditional Principles of Insult 31
Sex, Lies, and Rhetorical Community 31
All Those Nauseous Epigrams of Martial 40
The Domestication of Sir John Falstaff 50
“I shall taunt you a second time-a!”: Monty Python 61
Just Add a Dash of Theology 69
Lines and Storylines 78
Doing the Dozens 87
Mind Your Manners 91
Insults as “Rhetoric” 93
3
* Beyond “Traditional” Rhetoric 97
The Paradox of Insult 97
The Economics of Shame 99
Maintaining vs. Interrogating Hierarchies 101
Enforcing “Civility” 113
The Aesthetic Angle 117
Ad bellum purifi candum? 119
A Parting Shot 126
Notes for Further Reading 127
Index 131
preface
This brief essay grew out of my frustration at having no general treat-
ment of the subject to recommend to my students in a course on the
rhetoric of insults. So I decided to do something about that and col-
lect some thoughts I have on the subject. This volume is brief because
nothing much would be gained simply by providing more, and longer,
examples of what is a universal cultural practice.
The main idea I have centers on the suggestion I want to develop
here that consideration of the practice of insult or vituperation might
benefi t from taking a rhetorical perspective on it. This has, to my
knowledge, never been done before—at least not in an organized and
relatively comprehensive way. I say “relatively comprehensive” because
the particularities of insult are almost infi nite, and so not much more
than a beginning to consideration of the subject is feasible.
But what a rhetorical perspective brings out is that insult can be
seen as at once “antisocial” and constitutive of social relations. That
is, there is a “benign” side to insults as well as a “malign” side. As we
proceed, we will fi nd ourselves poaching on territory claimed by a va-
riety of other fi elds and disciplines—lexicography, social and linguis-
tic anthropology, literary criticism, history, and art criticism, among
them—and with broader questions of interpretation of both words
and actions. There is considerable overlap, for instance, between in-
sults and irony, and problems of interpretation common to both. I will
not spend much time on such questions beyond drawing attention to
their relevance. What I am concerned to do here is not to “theorize” in-
sult, but simply to fi nd a way to organize a discussion of this subject
along the lines of a notion of rhetoric conceived, as many will quickly
recognize, with Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives in mind. And I hope
that such a discussion will both point up various aspects of insult that
viii * Preface
have not been very carefully attended to and stimulate some construc-
tive conversation about this most human of human behaviors.
Some of the examples I have provided in the body of the present
text come from presentations by students in the Rhetoric of Insults
course over the past couple of years. My main debts are to Steve Bethel,
Brian Blum, Sara Edelstein, Elizabeth Foste, Ed Laube, Michelle Lit-
teken, Bob Taliana, and Emily West. I want also to express my gratitude
to WittyWorld Books and Capp Enterprises Inc. for permission to use
copyrighted materials and, especially, to Amy Holland and my wife,
Elizabeth, for assistance with technical matters.
Urbana, Illinois, May 2009
chapter 1
The Range of Insult
In late December 2006, Ilan Greenberg reported in the New York Times
(December 24, 2006) that an article “seen as denigrating Islam” pub-
lished in an obscure Baku newspaper “prompted demonstrations across
Azerbaijan and in Iran.” The article blamed Islam for Azerbaijan’s slug-
gish economic development, and the demonstrations raised concern
over Iran’s infl uence in that country. An Iranian cleric demanded the
death of the authors of the article, Greenberg reported, “and other re-
ligious conservatives in Azerbaijan have sent tremors through the Az-
eri government.” Quoted in the article was an imam at one of the more
prestigious mosques in Baku, Haji Ilgar, who is reported to have said,
“I am for freedom of speech, but not the freedom to insult.”
This was, at the time, the most recent of several stories I saw in the
news during 2006 that featured “insult” that gave rise to indignation,
anger, civil unrest, and even deaths. There was another story in the
Times earlier in the year (July 10, 2006, in an article by Judy Dempsey).
At what is described in the article as “a low point for Poland’s rela-
tions with Europe,” Polish president Lech Kaczynski cancelled a sum-
mit meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French presi-
dent Jacques Chirac, evidently (according to “senior Polish diplomats
and opposition politicians”) because of a satirical article in the Ger-
man newspaper Taz that said of Kaczynski that the only thing he knows
about Germany “is the spittoon in the men’s toilet at Frankfurt Air-
port,” and described him and his twin brother, Jaroslav, as “the Pol-
ish new potatoes.” Poland’s foreign minister, Anna Fotyga, demanded
a formal apology by the German Foreign Ministry, but got none—a
response she described as “shocking,” since the language of the arti-
cle could be compared to language used in Der Stürmer, a propaganda
weekly during the Nazi era. The immediate result of all this was con-
Description:From high school cafeterias to the floor of Congress, insult is a truly universal and ubiquitous cultural practice with a long and earthy history. And yet, this most human of human behaviors has rarely been the subject of organized and comprehensive attention—until Toward a Rhetoric of Insult. Vie
