Words that Strike and Words that Comfort: Discursive Dynamics of Verbal Abuse in Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

Abstract

Linguistic violence against women comes in many guises. Feminist linguists have shown that derogatory, demeaning speech and sexist language are used in patriarchal societies to allocate to women a place marked by muteness and degradation. Among other forms of domestic violence, verbal abuse is often neglected because it hurts psychologically and emotionally rather than physically and thus remains ‘invisible’.

This paper unravels the discursive dynamics of verbal abuse in Roddy Doyle's novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by drawing upon sociolinguistic and literary analytical tools. A close investigation into the characters' verbal interactions, notably sexist language, slang, silencing, and dialogic frames, illuminates the subtle ways in which verbal abuse ties in with power games, social positioning and the construction of personal identities. Verbal abuse not only puts the novel's protagonist ‘into place’ but ironically it also empowers her to the extent that the adoption of abusive language offers a means of self-defence and retaliation. The novel thus demonstrates the inescapability of the vicious circle that verbal abuse engenders and perpetuates. Thus, the novel not only raises awareness about the complexities of verbal abuse but also contributes to and potentially helps modify contemporary discourses on the problem.

Keywords:

• Verbal abuse
• women's place
• sociolinguistics
• literature
• discourse
• power

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Women's Studies Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in March 2004.

The book is subsequently abbreviated as Woman.

In the case of Doyle's writing, scholars have hitherto mainly focused on Doyle's representation of ‘the hurt, anger, fear and confusion of someone who is powerless and vulnerable’ (Donnelly, 2000, p. 25) or on his depiction of Ireland and Irish life in general (Mahony, 1998; Smyth, 1997, 2000).

The Jocks were usually athletic and typically regarded as popular, taking up adult-like roles within the institution, while the Burnouts took pride in their relation to the streets: fights and encounters with the criminal justice system.

In terms of pragmatic (Gricean) linguistics, presupposition failures threaten the cooperative principle, which speakers normally observe in order to ensure successful communication: ‘Grice clearly finds it uncooperative to lead others to believe what the speaker believes to be false, it seems natural to claim a quality violation if a speaker deliberately utters a sentence with a presupposition that is false’ (Fasold, 1990, p. 133).

Dialogic frames are conceptual frames of reference and rules for communication that speakers adhere to in order to make conversation possible (Tannen, 1993).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

JARMILA MILDORF

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Women's Studies Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in March 2004.