My suggestion of random factors means that there’s no detailed explanation possible, except for history which is almost certainly based in spoken words and emotional reactions and therefore not available.
I believe that it’s the tone which makes an insult. Insult is about lowering status, and is basically a group effect—a good insult implies not just likelihood of ongoing attack from that person, but that the attacks will deservedly continue from other people.
It seems to me that cultures are probably constrained to ranges by various issues (number of people, technology, resources), but those ranges are huge compared to the particular things cultures do, and there’s little point in predicting.
American slang will probably generate new words for very good and very bad, but this doesn’t mean that which words are used for very good and very bad has an interesting or predictable pattern. The words will probably be short, but I doubt you can get much farther than that.
I wonder whether insults could be used to track patterns of obligatory kindness—if some feature is not used as grounds for insult, could it mean that it’s a area which is culturally inhibited from attack. In other words, I’m still shocked at using having cancer as a generic insult.
Thanks—the Dutch sickness insults are amazing by American standards.
If it was just about fear of infection, then all urban cultures would have that sort of insult.
Yeah, it does have the ring of a Just-So story, doesn’t it? I haven’t heard any other explanations yet, though.
My suggestion of random factors means that there’s no detailed explanation possible, except for history which is almost certainly based in spoken words and emotional reactions and therefore not available.
I believe that it’s the tone which makes an insult. Insult is about lowering status, and is basically a group effect—a good insult implies not just likelihood of ongoing attack from that person, but that the attacks will deservedly continue from other people.
It seems to me that cultures are probably constrained to ranges by various issues (number of people, technology, resources), but those ranges are huge compared to the particular things cultures do, and there’s little point in predicting.
American slang will probably generate new words for very good and very bad, but this doesn’t mean that which words are used for very good and very bad has an interesting or predictable pattern. The words will probably be short, but I doubt you can get much farther than that.
I wonder whether insults could be used to track patterns of obligatory kindness—if some feature is not used as grounds for insult, could it mean that it’s a area which is culturally inhibited from attack. In other words, I’m still shocked at using having cancer as a generic insult.