2023-11-26 13:39:26
We said not the mothers, not the clothes. There is no doubt that insults appeared at the same time as man learned to communicate intelligibly. Suffice to say that we have been happily throwing around bird names for a long time, which have evolved over generations and cultures. There are nevertheless timeless ones: these universal insults which have survived the centuries without aging, while hitting the mark with each blow. So much so that society had to legislate on the issue.
Capture from the “Front page” of the Team, June 19, 2010.
– DR
According to the first transparency report on the control of content published on X, France is even the European “champion” of violent and illicit comments. Monitoring implemented by 52 moderators led to the deletion of 16,288 messages from August 28 to October 20. This is twice as many as Germany and Spain, the most active country on the network in terms of number of registered users. So, at 20 Minuteswe wondered where the insult came from, but also if we could insult without insulting, if insulting could cost us dearly and, above all, why we are so offended to see our mothers described as prostitutes from then on that they are not.
But what is the point of an insult?
Unlike swearing, which you can throw when you smash your finger with a hammer, the insult “is something that occurs in an interaction”, says the philosopher and sociologist Julienne Flory, author of the book Insult yourself!, published in 2016. And, unless it fails in its goal, “the premise of the insult is to hurt”. For this, the philosopher affirms that “the ordinary vocabulary of insults is relatively small”, essentially made up of swear words. But not only that… thus, “you can treat a colleague like a bean, or your dentist like a butcher,” explains Julienne Flory.
However, it is the “reciprocal” insults which are the most common and which have the most repercussions. Julienne Flory thus evokes “the ”sons of…”, notably ”sons of bitches” for example, of which we find traces even in songs from the Middle Ages”. And, according to Evelyne Larguèche, sociologist and doctor in clinical psychopathology, in light of the adage “it is only the truth that hurts”, the offended should not necessarily be offended here. For what ? Because the insulter is often unaware of the profession of the insulted person’s mother, who knows full well that her interlocutor is making a mistake. “If there is no truth, if the argument is a lie, there should be no injury,” explains the sociologist in her work A sort of… ! The laws of insulting effect.
It remains that “the insults are not a matter of truth, but rather of honor, of intention to hurt,” believes, for her part, Julienne Flory. The truth can only hurt if it comes from someone you know, who knows where to press to hurt. »
What do we risk by throwing around bird names?
There are perhaps as many reactions to insults as there are men. Even if it sometimes leads to a fight, beatings are not the only way out. So if the banderilla sticks in our throats, the law gives us the opportunity to make the insulter pay. “Insult is always criminally reprehensiblewhether public or private,” insists 20 Minutes Me Quentin Mycinski, lawyer at the Lille bar and specialist on the issue. On the other hand, “there are very strict rules and a rapid prescription of the facts,” continues our expert. We also know that, depending on the jurisdiction, the sentences can be very different for comparable acts. »
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However, the penalties incurred are not negligible. Even if it means insulting, you might as well do it in private towards a private person, since in France you are only exposed to a fine of 38 euros. The same thing in front of an assembly or on social networks is punishable by a fine of 12,000 euros. This last tariff is also applied if we insult a person holding public authority: “In the case of a police officer or a magistrate for example, we qualify this as contempt. It’s a bit of a catch-all term,” admits Master Mycinski. L’article 433-5 of the Penal Code describes contempt as follows: “words, gestures or threats, writings or images of any nature not made public […] addressed to a person responsible for a public service mission […] of such a nature as to undermine her dignity or the respect due to the function with which she is vested.”
Finally, cited by Evelyne Larguèche, the philosopher and anthropologist François Flahault judges, for example, the use of the childish saying “it’s the one who says it who is there” as “an effective remedy”. We “exorcise what is absolute in the insult” by integrating that it only concerns the person who formulated it. Basically, we can also take it upon ourselves.
So can we ultimately insult… without risking anything?
To slip through the cracks of the legal net, there is no recipe. “The idea is still to remain as vague, as indirect and as ironic as possible in your comments,” says the lawyer. Associate professor of literature at the Sorbonne, Marie-Antoinette Alamenciak worked on the theme of insult without insult, highlighting a “rhetoric of the oblique” in the anonymous work Les Fifteen joys of marriage. In this work, “the author establishes the woman as a mistress of language, who outrages the husband without ever clearly insulting him,” explains the researcher. Highlight the lower social class of one’s interlocutor, curse an inanimate third party like the day of his birth, ironically adorn him with an exaggerated title… The aim being to provoke “the effect of the offense, but without an offensive term », Describes Marie-Antoinette Alamenciak.
The pirouette will not necessarily work. Thus, rhetorical convolutions, provided that the target has understood their hidden meaning, are not a totem of immunity allowing them to escape the court box. For Me Quentin Mycinski, the best thing is to avoid insulting your neighbor. However, let us leave the last word to Julienne Flory who, for her part, remains convinced “that we need insults, in particular because they are part of the language”.
#angry #insult #mothers