"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt
me." This schoolyard rhyme projects an invulnerability to verbal
insults that sounds good but rings false. Indeed, the need for such
a verse belies its own claims. For most of us, feeling insulted is
a distressing-and distressingly common-experience.
In Sticks and Stones, philosopher Jerome Neu probes the nature,
purpose, and effects of insults, exploring how and why they
humiliate, embarrass, infuriate, and wound us so deeply. What kind
of injury is an insult? Is it determined by the insulter or the
insulted? What does it reveal about the character of both parties
as well as the character of society and its conventions? What role
does insult play in social and legal life? When is telling the
truth an insult? Neu draws upon a wealth of examples and
anecdotes-as well as a range of views from Aristotle and Oliver
Wendell Holmes to Oscar Wilde, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, and
many others-to provide surprising answers to these questions. He
shows that what we find insulting can reveal much about our ideas
of character, honor, gender, the nature of speech acts, and social
and legal conventions. He considers how insults, both intentional
and unintentional, make themselves felt-in play, Freudian slips,
insult humor, rituals, blasphemy, libel, slander, and hate speech.
And he investigates the insult's extraordinary power, why it can so
quickly destabilize our sense of self and threaten our moral
identity, the very center of our self-respect and self-esteem.
Entertaining, humorous, and deeply insightful, Sticks and Stones
unpacks the fascinating dynamics of a phenomenon more often
painfully experienced than clearly understood.
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