Culpeper, Iganski & Sweiry – Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales

BE AWARE THAT THIS PRESENTATION CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE

The FORGE is pleased to announce our upcoming internal speakers: Prof Jonathan Culpeper (Linguistics & English Language), Prof Paul Iganski (Law), and Dr Abe Sweiry (Law). Details of their talk are below:

TITLE
Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales

ABSTRACT
Despite its centrality to religiously aggravated hate crime recorded in England and Wales, the nature of the language used has been neglected in research. This paper, based on a unique dataset, aims to rectify this. It takes its approach from the field of linguistic impoliteness, a field that has yet to consider hate crime. Therein lies our second aim: to consider whether impoliteness notions can be usefully extended to the language of hate crime. In our data, we examine, in particular, conventionalized impoliteness formulae, insults, threats, incitement and taboo words. Whilst we reveal some linguistic support for the way religiously aggravated hate crime is framed in the law and discussed in the legal literature, we highlight areas of neglect and potential ambiguity. Regarding impoliteness, we demonstrate its effectiveness as an approach to this data, but we also highlight areas of neglect in that literature too, notably, non-conditional threats and incitement.

TIME & PLACE
1200-1300, Mon 10th Oct, County South C89

All are welcome to attend.

BE AWARE THAT THIS PRESENTATION CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE