Филологические науки/9. Этно-, социо- и психолингвистика

Ph.D. Fomin A.G., Pevneva I.V., Podgornaya E.A., Yakimova N.S.

Kemerovo State University, Russia

The Verbal Aggression Motives: A Psycholinguistic Analysis

The technological progress and the process of globalization provide the people in the modern society with numerous possibilities of intracultural and intercultural communication. It is the human language that serves the means of communication, and thus development and broadening of people’s contacts lead to the development of the language as words change, lose or acquire new meanings and as new non-verbal signs are introduced in the process of people’s interaction.

The modern society is characterized by a high level of aggressiveness which is due to the high degree of tension in the current economical, political and social situation and due to the excessive media coverage that violent acts get. Consequently the phenomenon of aggression is studied and discussed by psychologists, lawyers, linguists, journalists and educators worldwide. The object of their research is finding means of controlling aggressive behaviour and dispelling aggressive thoughts.

Aggression as a common phenomenon of the contemporary society has found a reflection in the human language as well in the form of verbal aggression. Thus aggression becomes the object of studies of the linguistic science. Traditional linguistics is based on the study of vocabulary definition. English thesauri provide the following definitions of aggression:

Aggression n. 1. the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression; 2. any offensive action, attack, or procedure; an inroad or encroachment: an aggression upon one's rights; 3. the practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general; 4. Psychiatry. overt or suppressed hostility, either innate or resulting from continued frustration and directed outward or against oneself [3].

As it may be seen from the given definitions, the noun aggression originates from the Latin verb aggressio with the meaning of "to approach, attack". The original meaning of the word implies the state as the subject of the aggressive actions towards another state. It was only in 1912 that the psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" was first recorded [4]. In the present-day society it is this psychological sense that dominates, which may be proved by the following definition:

Aggression n. 1. feelings of anger and hatred that may result in threatening or violent behaviour; 2. a violent attack or threats by one country against another country [7].

This article covers some results of a psycholinguistic study examining verbal aggression. The object of psycholinguistics as a science is the language and human speech, the realization of the language in speech activity. These phenomena are studied by other linguistic sciences as well as anthropology, psychology etc. But in particular psycholinguistics as a science studies not the language system itself, but the processes of speech formation and speech perception, the ways the language is processed by the human brain. Thus, psycholinguistics applies the methods of psychology to the study of the language as the object of linguistics. It deals with the processes of coding and decoding of information by means of the language, and the object of study is not the system of the language but the human psychic and the human personality as the aspect of language. So, psycholinguistics is to find out how we associate objects and things with the sounds of speech and words of the language and vice versa and how a person acquires this skill in the self-development process.

The main psycholinguistics’ research method is the experiment. This implies a survey of speech behaviour of the participants of the experiment in some situation suggested by the researcher. The experiment serves to observe the choice a person does in a particular situation which is the case under study. It is considered to be the most valid of all the methods used in psycholinguistics.

Verbal associative experiment is one of the direct experimental methods. It provides the information about the structure of the vocabulary of the participants of the experiment. Its participants are asked to suggest all the possible reactions to the key-word they perceive in a limited period of time. Researchers measure the speed of reaction, count the number of reactions to each of the stimuli and study whether syntagmatic (giving verbs to the noun) or paradigmatic (giving adjectives to nouns) associations dominate. The results of mass associative experiments make up the associative rules of the language.

Participants of the given experiment were 122 undergraduate students of Lock-Haven University of Pennsylvania. All of them were native speakers of American English. The participants were offered a list of key-words in English. The task was to write down all the associations with the words on the list. The number of associations was not restricted, but the respondents were limited in time. We got a total number of 194 reactions to the key-word aggression:

AGGRESSION (N=194): angry, anger (54); fight, fighting (15); mad, stupid (12); violence, abuse (10); sport, games, football (9); upset, unhappy, frustrated (9); mean (8); hate, hatred, loathe (7); animal (dog, goat) (6); men, males, boys (5); war (4); conflict, confrontation (3); fear (3); hostile, hostility (3); hurt, hit (3); temper (2); impatient (2); forceful (2); taking it out on others (2); active; adrenaline; attack; blood flowing; bully; competition; dancing; dictator; direct; dominance; excitement; fists; furrowed brow; gets things done; harm; irritation; punch; resentment; scheduling problems; singing; stress; taking the lead; throwing things; yelling.

The most frequent reaction was anger (27,8%), thus the Americans consider emotions to be the main reason of aggressive behaviour. The other emotions mentioned are hatred, loathe (3,6%); upset, unhappy, frustrated (4,6%).

The second frequent reaction was fight, fighting (7,7%) which denotes the manifestation of aggression as an emotion. The reactions fight, fighting (7,7%) and the single reactions attack, fists, punch etc. denote the same.

The third frequent reaction is mad, stupid (6,5%). It represents the attitude of the society to aggressive behavior alongside with mean (4,1%).

Next come the associations defining one of the spheres of manifestation of aggression – sport, they are: sport, games, football (4,6%), single reactions competition, dancing, singing and road rage. The fact that sport becomes one of the main fields of manifestation of aggression has been reflected in the following dictionary definition:

Aggression n. 1. spoken or physical behaviour which is threatening or involves harm to someone or something; 2. forceful playing in sport that is intended to win points [1].

The results of the experiment also show that the subjects of aggression are animals - animal (3,1%), or male persons: men, males, boys (2,6%).

So, the American students understand aggression as fighting and violence serving as the outcome for emotions in sports or other competitions. Such behaviour is characteristic of animals and males and is not approved of by the Americans. The respondents were quite unanimous in the disapproval of aggression as a type of behaviour which is proved by the reactions of high stereotypisation degree to this key-word.

The results of the experiment show that contemporary American students do not associate aggression with an action of a state: this fact has already been reflected in the Cambridge Dictionary of American English that provides only one definition of aggression:

Aggression n. actions or behavior that is threatening or that uses force against others, often ignoring their rights or physically attacking them [2].

The associations we received refer to the physical form of aggression mostly. This fact may explain the respondents’ attributing this type of behaviour to men: psychological research shows that men and women are equally prone to aggression, but physical aggression is considered to be a more common and less inappropriate type of behaviour for men rather than for women. Thus, women are more likely express their aggression by verbal means.

As it has been defined in some research works on psychology, verbal aggression serves to express negative emotions or to attack the selfconcepts of other people in order to inflict psychological pain [6]. This form of behaviour is triggered by emotions. We chose the words defining two of the strongest negative emotions (hatred and envy) as key-words in the associative experiment reported. The results are as follows:

HATRED (N=170): (strong) dislike (24), angry, anger (17), mad, stupid, dumb (9), racism, ethnicity (7), mean (6), ignorance, the unknown (6), wrong, bad (6), enemy (5), fight, fighting (4), people you don't like (4), war (4), discrimination, segregation (3), hate, loathe (3), prejudice, stereotypes (3), violence (3), crime, criminal (2), disgust (2), evil (2), hurt (2), kill, killing (2), learned (2), liars (2), no one (2), resent, resentment (2), against, alone, animosity, battle, between sports teams, breaking up, broken heart, can't stand it, Christianity, cold, culture, demons, despise, did something bad, disdain, drama, Elvis, envy, ex-boyfriend, fear of misunderstanding, harsh, hostility, I hate you, KKK, lack of compassion, love, malice, nasty, not easy, persecution, petty, problematic, Rasim, red, revenge, strong/intense feeling, strong word, train wreck, unhealthy, upset, usually blind, vile, wicked, work, yelling, you shouldn't hate anyone, 8a.m. classes.

We got 170 reactions to this key word. The most frequent reaction was dislike accompanied by the intensifier strong (14,1%). The bigger intensification of this feeling is revealed in the answers hate, loathe (1,76%).

The second frequent association denotes the reasons of hatred: angry, anger (10%), another reaction disgust (1,2%) as well as the single association envy are less important.

The third frequent reaction is a number of evaluating adjectives denoting the attitude of the society to hatred: mad, stupid, dumb (5,3%), mean (3,5%) wrong, bad (3,5%), evil (1,2%) along with single reactions usually blind, unhealthy.

Hatred is usually caused by some social phenomena, as proved by the associations racism, ethnicity (4,1%) discrimination, segregation (1,76%) prejudice, stereotypes (1,76%) as well as KKK. Among the other notable associations is ignorance, the unknown (3,5%).

We can also single out such animated objects of hatred mentioned as enemy (2,9%), people you don’t like (2,35%),liars (1,2%). There were a few proper names given as well, e.g. Elvis, Rasim. Hatred can also lead to fight, fighting (2,35%), war (2,35%), violence (1,76%).

Thus, according to the idea of the American students, hatred is a strong, intense feeling towards people or some social phenomena which is manifested in aggressive behaviour. This feeling is not approved of by the society.

Another key-word to be analyzed is envy. The American respondents gave 157 reactions to this stimulus:

ENVY (N=157): jealous, jealousy (58), want (what others have) (14), greed (7), green (with envy) (7), money (5), (some) hate, hatred (5), desire (4), look up to (4), rich people, wealth (4), to like sb/sth (4), insecurity (2), weakness (2), admire, age, beauty, cell phone, covet, desire to be like someone, do anything for things other people have, empty, evil, fear, follow, friends, Ghandi, infatuation, inner-self, idol, jewelry, love, lust, mad, Martin Luther King, natural, negative, not good, nothing, obsession, people who don't have to work, possession, power, prom queen, relationship, selfish, serious, sin, stupid, Third World Countries, turmoil, want to be like, waste of time, what the world market thrives on, you shouldn't do it.

T he results demonstrate that the most frequent reaction is jealousy (36,9%). The other nominations of feelings and emotions among the reactions are greed (4,5%) hatred (3,2%), obsession (0,64%).

The idiomatic expression mentioned by the respondents is green with envy (4,5%). The other consequences of envy are insecurity (1,27%), weakness (1,27%).

Envy usually implies some object, this is supported by the reactions want (8,9%), desire (2,5%), look up to (2,5%). The most frequent object of envy is money (3,2%), wealth, rich people (2,5%).

So, envy is a strong feeling caused by the desire to have something that another person possesses, usually money or richness. This emotion makes people feel insecure.

The results of the experiment help rank the emotions lying in the root of aggression, namely: anger, animostity, excitement, hatred, irritation, jealousy, being upset, unhappy and frustrated.

Understanding the root of the emotions that trigger people’s aggressive behaviour will help psychologists and sociologists find the means of controlling people’s aggressive motives and actions. The scientists working in the field of linguistics and psycholinguistics make a significant contribution to this research by studying, analyzing and interpreting the motives of aggressive verbal behaviour. A. Goldstein suggested verbal aggression to be the “low-level” aggression which may evolve into the “high-level” physical aggression. Thus verbal aggression examining is the key to subduing aggressive motives on the low-level stage. A most effective means of such study is the verbal associations experiment that helps understand the motives of a verbal action by analyzing the choice of the vocabulary used in the given situation: in the given case it is the choice of a word associating with the name of a negative emotion.

References:

1. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary [Hypertext] // Cambridge University Press // URL: http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=1637&dict=CALD&topic =competing-in-sport

2. Cambridge Dictionary of American English [Hypertext] // Cambridge University Press //URL: http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=aggression*1+0&dict=A

3. Dictionary.com Unabridged [Hypertext] // Random House, Inc. // URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aggression

4. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary [Hypertext] / D. Harper // URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aggression

5. Goldstein, A. (2000). Catch it low to prevent it high: Countering low-level verbal abuse. Reaching Today's Youth, (4) 2, pp.10-16.

6. Infante, D. A., Wigley, C. J. (1986). Verbal aggressiveness: An interpersonal model and measure. Communication Monographs. - 53, pp. 61-69.

7. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary [Text] // Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. – 1540 pp.