A Pragmatic Analysis of Defamation and Slanderous Remarks
Sungbom Lee · Korean Journal of Linguistics · 2012
This study is an attempt to explore defamation in the framework of linguistic pragmatics. The focus is laid on various types of defamatory utterances. The recipients perception of such statements and the speakers liability on the basis of directness of imputation are investigated from the viewpoints of speech act theory and forensic pragmatics. To this end, two experiments are conducted: an off-line experiment testing the recipients perception of defamatory statements in varying degrees of directness and an on-line experiment measuring the response time for each type of defamatory statements as well as the recipients judgment of the speakers illocutionary intent. The results of the experiments and their correlation are discussed.