Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Polite Abuser: Using Politeness Theory To Examine Emotional Abuse, Cimmiaron Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last few decades more and more cultural attention has been paid to intimate partner violence, especially emotional abuse. Follingstad, Rutledge, Berg, Hause, and Polek (1990) established that emotional abuse fell into six distinct categories, however, little attention had been paid to how abusers can utilize polite communication to hurt their partner. Equally, Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987) had never been applied to problematic communication (Austin, 1990). This study aimed to understand how polite communication can be used as a form of emotional abuse. In-depth, semi structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants who self-identified as having been …