Verbal teasing among young people in Køge and Eskişehir

Abstract

Introduction Teasing, being universal and central to human social life, is a frequent and observable behaviour in daily social interactions. Teasing has been studied quite intensively in sociolinguistics over the past twenty years. Interactional sociolinguistic studies of peer-group teasing have focused on negotiation of social identities, social alliances and teasing as socializing practices (e.g. Eder 1993; Endo 2007; Goodwin 1990; Jones and Newman 2005; Keltner, Capps, Kring, Young and Heerey 2001; Lytra 2007; Madsen 2010; Pichler 2006; Tholander 2002). Teasing is viewed as requiring some level of intimacy among the participants (Eder 1993; Eisenberg 1986; Lytra 2007; Norrick 1993), and sharing a playful activity might therefore work as an in-group marker. In addition, teasing has been demonstrated as a means of competing for group leaderships (Goodwin 1990; Lytra 2007; Tholander and Aronsson 2002). A focus of research on teasing has been how it involves social roles attributed to selves and others. Through teasing, participants reinforce and monitor social conduct and talk of their peers (Endo 2007; Lytra 2007). Finally, it has been emphasized that teasing requires skilled performances and depends on shared understandings (Boxter and Cortés-Conde 1997; Eder 1991; Kotthoff 2006). Teasing, then, can be considered a culturally situated practice and verbal teasing requires not least linguistic skills. In this chapter, we approach aspects of language and identities through a discussion of verbal teasing, identity categories and linguistic resources in two data sets covering children's interactions over a range of 8 years. We look at teasing among two groups of Turkish-competent grade school students: one in Eskişehir, Turkey, and one in Køge, Denmark. We investigate the social functions of teasing and whether these functions differ among the children in Køge and Eskişehir. Moreover, we discuss to what extent linguistic resources are significant to the teasing practices among the youth in a Turkish-speaking minority context and the children in a Turkish-speaking majority context