In Germany, the insult" (§185 StGB) can be a criminal offence; however, to define in more detail what is meant by "the insult" pragmatic analyses are needed. Forms, functions and purposes of insulting speech will therefore be described on the basis of personal narratives on insults."
Insults are ubiquitous phenomena in human language and communication, however, societies' dealings with them vary: In German Criminal Law, "the insult" (§185 StGB) can be a criminal offence and be prosecuted. The definite article refers to precise knowledge of what 'insult' means (Hoffmann 2016), yet legal experts lead an ongoing debate about its implications (Regge/Pegel 2017). In legal practice, the judge occupies the (fictional) position of an unbiased, average, reasonable third party that considers all circumstances surrounding the insult and makes an objective decision; verdicts are therefore highly dependent on knowledge structures on society's morals and values, norms and normalities, etc. – i.e. pragmatics (Hoffmann 2010, Ehlich 2007). Research on the insult's pragmatics is versatile in terms of theoretical and empirical approaches (cf. e.g. Havryliv 2009, Meier 2007, Meibauer 2018, Technau 2018). From a Functional Pragmatic p.o.v., insults are part of a conventionalized 'societal action pattern' (Ehlich/Rehbein 1979) underlying its verbal realizations. An utterance is considered an insult if its purpose is to directly or indirectly attack another person (non-)verbally in such a way that their personal integrity and identity are affected and reduced in self-perception and perception by others. The prerequisite is a constellation with potential for conflict. The sincerity must not be constellatively suspended (Hoffmann/Frank i.p.). Based on a corpus of personal narratives on insults the societal action pattern of insults is described in terms of its fundamental speech actions, i.e. the purpose-related pragmemes that account for the degradation of the insult's addressee. An analysis of verbal forms, knowledge structures and speaker-listener-interaction allows for the reproduction of societal knowledge on insults; this can then be seen as the knowledge of the law's third party. My presentation is an interdisciplinary approach considering the insult's criminal relevance and societal ubiquity in order to define a contemporary concept of the insult.
