The language of insults: a look at theme, rheme and negative inferences

• Main Author: Leong, Alvin Ping
• Other Authors: School of Humanities
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Language; Inference-Boundary; Systemic-Functional Linguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168929
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper examines the thematic structure of a corpus of insults using the inference-boundary model of Theme and Rheme. It focuses on the concept of negative inference - which must be generated for an insult to be successfully delivered - and shows how it allows us to better understand and characte...