Language of Harassment

Victoria Guillén-Nieto is associate professor of applied linguistics at the University of Alicante.

“This volume is a welcome contribution to harassment studies. As stated from the very beginning, the scope of the term is slippery, overlapping with other terms such as mobbing, abuse or aggression, which adds to the need for a book that pins down all the issues that, one way or another, pertain to the delimitation and linguistic analysis of harassment. The complexity of the object of study (highly necessary given its pervasiveness in today’s world) inevitably demands complex theoretical underpinnings, which in this book are mainly interactional pragmatics but also related frameworks such as speech act theory and relevance theory, among others. The book’s chapters also signal the necessity of a publication on this topic and how slippery it is. Still, the author convincingly lays out all the issues and provides a detailed account of definitions, types and elements of harassment, and most importantly, an innovative proposal of how pragmatics can be applied to this controversial issue. A necessary and welcome book.”

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Approaches to HarassmentChapter 1: Harassment as a Legal ProblemChapter 2: The Defining Elements of HarassmentChapter 3: Repeated Acts of Hostile and Unethical CommunicationChapter 4: Ill IntentionsChapter 5: Power Imbalance and Harm Inflicted upon the TargetConclusionsReferencesIndexAbout the Author