The interplay of impoliteness and power in Serbian political debates – A case study

Abstract

The paper investigates the multidimensional interrelation between linguistic impoliteness and power in Serbian political debates. The main objective is to identify the specific face-aggravating strategies that political opponents employ in their interactional moves in order to exert power over one another. Additionally, we seek to account for the triggering, onset, sequencing, and resolution of these impolite exchanges. The case study is conducted on an hour-long four-person debate on Serbia’s energy system stability, broadcasted on national television. The analysis shows that the interlocutors engage in verbal power struggles by purposefully utilizing and combining a limited set of primarily offensive strategies, with such frequency that that this confrontational behaviour obstructs the constructive debate. Individual interlocutors show preference for particular strategies which they realise by repeating the same or similar expressions and re-contextualizing the previous interlocutor’s words, all aimed at positive self-presentation and, more often, negative other-depiction. Repetition serves to enhance impoliteness. Furthermore, these moves and counter-moves form proper negativity cycles of reciprocal face-threatening acts, which illustrate the attack–defence dynamics and all-or-nothing nature of political debates. Overall, the research confirms that power is relational, dynamic, and contestable, as well as that impoliteness, as an intentional exercise of power, breeds impoliteness in social interaction.