Insults as a sentence type : A cross-linguistic perspective

This paper asks whether insults are ever encoded as a distinct sentence type in natural languages, and hence form a distinct grammaticalized Illocution in the languages concerned. To assess this, we designed three mutually independent criteria and applied these to 29 constructions from 23 languages, gathering data via native speaker consultation, corpus searches and published literature. Our results indicate that seven of these constructions are exclusively used for the communicative goal of insulting the addressee, thus providing evidence for the existence of an Insultive Illocution. Moreover, we found evidence of an underspecified Evaluative Illocution in nine languages. We therefore propose that both the Insultive and the Evaluative be added to the inventory of grammaticalized Illocution recognized in Functional Discourse Grammar.