A theoretical approach to the relationship between impoliteness and conflict, with some examples from the Spanish-speaking cultures
Abstract
Although impoliteness implies conflict, the opposite may not necessarily be true: a conflict can be resolved in a friendly way, while impoliteness triggers conflict or makes it worse. The existing research on impoliteness in the Spanish-speaking cultures does not deal specifically with theoretical discussions about impoliteness and conflict, possibly because impoliteness usually leads to conflict as an associated concept. This relationship between impoliteness and conflict is embedded in the realms of impolite disagreements, impolite clashes and similar negative occurrences of verbal aggression. Hence, the prevailing attitude among researchers of impoliteness both within and outside the cultural context of Spanish has been to perceive conflict as something intrinsic to impoliteness, and thus the concepts of impoliteness and conflict have been approached in the same way. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the common ground between both concepts as well as their main differences, illustrated with examples taken from social interactions of Spanish-speaking cultures. This question is worth looking into, for it has received little attention in the literature to date. Besides, it is also interesting to note that despite the characteristics that impoliteness and conflict have in common, they are not the same phenomenon in terms of the effects caused in interaction by each one of them.
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References
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