Yiannis Gabriel
School of Management
University of Bath
Bath BA2 7AY
e-mail: Y.Gabriel@bath.ac.uk
Tel: 01225 826826 Ext. 5854; Fax 01225 826473

Different insult dynamics are noted; these include an apology, a commensurate retaliation, a disproportionate retaliation and possible escalation, a retaliation against a surrogate and weaker target than the perpetrator of the initial insult, an affected indifference with a possible delayed retaliation, or more commonly a resigned tolerance which may fuel subsequent insults. Insults as well as retaliation and resistance to them are part of an organization's political process which establishes, first, lines of domination/subordination, and second, more finer gradations of status and power, i.e. a pecking order. It is argued that insults allow for a certain mobility within a pecking order, by offering 'matches' for contestants to pitch their wit, venom and courage against each other.

Key words: INSULTS, STEREOTYPES, EXCLUSION, ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS, CONFLICT, PSYCHIC INJURIES, SURVIVAL, EMOTION, HARASSMENT, PSYCHOANALYSIS

I would like to acknowledge the contribution of several of my students who supplied narrative material used in this paper. Several colleagues, including Steve Fineman, Annie Pye, Judi Marshall and Ian Colville, have given me valuable suggestions. David Sims and Andrew Sturdy have given me very extensive and valuable feedback on the original draft. Thanks to all of them.

Biographical Note

Yiannis Gabriel is a Lecturer in Organizational Studies at Bath University. He is the author of Freud and Society, Working Lives in Catering, joint author of Organizing and Organizations, Experiencing Organizations and The Unmanageable Consumer and author of various articles on social psychology, organizational culture and symbolism. His research interests lie mainly in organizational and psychoanalytic theories in areas which include organizational storytelling and folklore, contemporary consumption and the concepts of the unmanaged and unmanageable. He is joint editor of the journal Management Learning.

"There are three forms of belittlement: contempt, spite and insult. ... Insult is belittlement. For an insult consists of doing or saying such things as involve shame for the victim, not for some advantage to oneself other than these have been done, but for the fun of it."

--Aristotle, Rhetoric

"Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what should and what should not be done. This code of principles covered only a small circle of contingencies, but in return the principles were never obscure, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about doing what he ought to do. This code categorically ordained that ... one must never pardon an insult but may insult others oneself."

--Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Emotion and language are two areas which are currently attracting considerable attention among scholars of organizations. It is no longer unusual to discuss the emotional life of organizations or the language which organizational members use in their verbal and written transactions. In fact, it has become common-place to adopt an emotion and a language angle to most management and organizational issues. Emotion is currently generating a burgeoning academic literature in connection with customer service, management learning, leader-follower relations, business ethics and the management of change. (See, e.g. Hochschild, 1983; Mangham, 1986; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987, 1989; Albrow, 1992; Fineman, 1993, 1997; Hall, 1993; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993, 1995) The use of language in organizations is currently at the centre of numerous investigations, often but not always in tandem with studies of emotions. (See, e.g. Gioia, 1986; Pool, Gray and Gioia, 1990; Martin, 1990; Boje, 1991; Drew and Heritage, 1992; Mangham, 1995; Case, 1995; Pye, 1995; Elmes and Kassouf, 1995; Grant and Oswick, 1996; Tsivakou, 1996) Not only are social constructionist and psychodynamic approaches displaying an intense interest in the use of language and its effects on perceived reality, but postmodern approaches of organizations privilege language above every other consideration (See, e.g, Cooper and Burrell, 1988; Clegg, 1990; Parker, 1992, 1995; Clegg and Jeffcutt, 1993; Hassard and Parker, 1993). The analysis of organizational narratives, like the study of emotion, is currently attracting considerable research interest.

This paper explores one particular phenomenon, which stands at the cross-roads of emotion and narrative, insults. It charts different forms of insulting behaviour and establishes its outcomes and dynamics. It explores the social psychological dimensions of insults but also places them within political discourses of organizations, displaying how they reflect, sustain and challenge underlying power relations.

Insults include behaviour or discourse, oral or written, which is perceived, experienced, constructed and at times intended as slighting, humiliating or offensive. This paper does not examine the slurring or scapegoating of third parties in absentia (see Baum, 1987; Hirschhorn, 1988; Fineman and Gabriel, 1996) concentrating instead on insults addressed directly at an individual or at a group of which an individual is a member, often in the presence of an audience. Nor does it examine insults which are traded in horseplay in what are known as joking relations (Collinson, 1988, 1994; Sims et al, 1993) where no offence is meant and none is taken. Finally, the paper draws a distinction between bullying or harassment and insult. Cumulatively or individually, insults may, of course, amount to harassment (including sexual or racist). It will be argued, however, that not all types of insulting behaviour are equivalent to harassment. For example, failure to invite someone to a function or a party can hardly be conceived of as harassment, but it can certainly be an insult. Yet, like harassment, insulting behaviour is part of the nexus of political relations in an organization and must be studied as such.

Within these narrower parameters, insults are a topic which has been neglected by research in organizations and the social sciences in general. There are very few references to insults in the academic literature, and, surprisingly, neither research on emotions nor research on narratives and discourse has addressed them. This neglect seems unjustified, as insults would appear to be an important feature of human behaviour and human experience. Insults are very common in mythology and literature, featuring in countless myths, fairy tales, novels and plays. They are also a cardinal feature of many people's personal histories, remembered long after they happened or, alternatively, repressed and denied through elaborate rationalizations and constructions.

Insults, this paper will argue, are also a fairly regular phenomenon of organizational life, featuring in organizational narratives whenever expressions like "rubbing salt to the wounds" or "adding insult to injury" are invoked and leaving long-lasting marks in histories, personal and collective. They are a common theme of tragic narratives, where they generate strong feelings of resentment and anger (Gabriel, 1991 a, b, c, 1995). Indeed, as Kapuscinski (1983:97) has suggested, rebellion and resistance may more commonly spring from insulted dignity than from the routine discontents of oppression or exploitation. For these reasons, insults are a promising area of social investigation in organizations.

Insults can be verbal, consisting of mocking invective, cutting remarks, negative stereotypes, rudeness or straight swearing. They can also be performed in deed, as when valued objects are defamed, symbols desecrated, gifts returned or invitations refused. They can be subtle, residing in verbal innuendo or the facial expression of the aggressor, leaving room for a face-saving retreat or an affected disregard by the aggrieved party. Alternatively, they can be brutal, unambiguous and direct, as in cases of indecent gestures or racist and sexual harassment.

Insults involve two parties, a perpetrator and a target, and possibly an audience. There can be no insult without a perpetrator or an insulted party. A remark or action intended as an insult but not registered or experienced as one by its target, can hardly be said to constitute an insult, even if an audience recognised the intention. It may instead be regarded as ridiculing, vilification, scapegoating or oppression. The intention to insult is not a necessary ingredient of an insult. Some insults, notably in cases of blasphemy, may result without an intention on the part of the perpetrator, who finds himself/herself unwittingly to have broken a taboo or violated a deep sensitivity. If insult can occur where none was intended, it can, more paradoxically, also occur where none was properly experienced. This is evident in 'constructed' or manufactured insults, as when an offer or a gift is dismissed as derisory or offensive, even if no offence was intended and no taboo was broken. Insults can then be part of a scapegoating process, the insult but an engineered pretext or provocation for disproportionate retaliation. It is also important to recognise 'second-order' insults, i.e. insults which are built on top of an initial one. For instance, when an individual is genuinely and deeply insulted, the perpetrator may offer the excuse that no insult was intended or that the target has misinterpreted the incident. In this way, the perpetrator may actually compound the insult by insinuating that the insulted party is over-sensitive, paranoid or lacks a sense of humour. In some instances, the perpetrator may then present him/herself as the target of a constructed insult.

The Research Material

The research material on which this paper is based was provided by university undergraduates writing reports about significant moments they experienced during six-month industrial internships. Students returning from such internships were asked by the author to supply a critical incident report, analyse it and discuss the emotions it generated. Between 1990 and 1995, 374 such reports were obtained. These reports cover a range of organizational incidents and experiences, encompassing a great variety of emotions, including amusement, frustration, pride, anxiety, boredom, shame, guilt, fear, excitement, despair. The reports were analysed with the help of a special version of a computer database package, Cardbox-Plus. Each report was entered on a separate record and the following information was recorded in distinct fields on each record: the names of the trainee and the organization, the type of incident described, the emotions it generated, the moral of the incident, the theory locations addressed by the report and the overall narrative quality of the report.

The material was in the first place collected as part of the students' learning process and its use as research material must be qualified. In no way do the students or the organizations where they spent their internships represent a sample. Nor is the material untainted by the students' attempts to impress their lecturer and to show how much they learned. Yet, the material possesses several positive qualities. Students observe their organizations with fresh, sharp eyes. They can 'see' what more seasoned employees no longer notice or care about. An articulate, critical, but naive worker can offer poignant insights on the rights and wrongs of organizational life, its twists and turns. As short-term employees, trainees have access to information unavailable to other employees, many of them readily taken into the confidence of managers and peers, whose positions they could appreciate without threatening. Furthermore, as short-term employees, they have no axe to grind -- their stories are not moulded by vested organizational interests and long-standing agendas.

This kind of relatively unstructured and unmotivated material serves well the purposes of an exploratory inquiry like the present one. Clearly, no exhaustive survey of all types or the extent of insulting behaviour can be based on this data; the data does, however, contain a number of characteristic incidents in considerable detail, which allows an insight into the psychological as well as the political consequences of insulting behaviour. The research material was narrowed, in the first place, to 94 reports by selecting only those reports whose key emotional qualities included the emotions traditionally associated with insults: anger, shame, embarrassment and guilt. These were subsequently narrowed down to 21 reports, in which insults and associated emotions were the dominant feature. These reports have provided the basis of most arguments in this paper; seven of them have been quoted at length.

Insults and Jokes

Jokes are a good place to begin an investigation of insults. Like jokes, insults depend on timing and must touch a vital nerve. Like jokes, insults play on hidden desires and vulnerabilities. Like jokes, they can be highly imaginative and ingenious. Ingenuity is one of the features that distinguishes insults from mere abuse. Like jokes, insults can release a lot of emotional energy with relatively small effort. This economy of effort gives insults both a magical and an aesthetic quality. Like magical words, a few well-chosen insulting words can produce disproportionate results, such as the crumbling of a self-confident exterior or the unleashing of immense amounts of anger. (La Barre 1979) The aesthetic quality of insults resides in the appositeness of the stimulus; like an elegant mathematical proof, an inventive, well-aimed insult proves the vulnerability of the subject, cutting him/her down to size.

The main difference between insults and jokes would seem to lie in their emotional content. Jokes release mirth, whereas insults unleash anger. Yet, as several theorists of jokes since Thomas Hobbes have observed, many jokes contain an aggressive intent. Thus setbacks and misfortunes of others may afford us comic pleasure if they can be presented as 'deserved'. Observing or recounting the afflictions of a pompous person is funny, in as much as these afflictions have the quality of 'comeuppance' or just deserts. Several studies have suggested that the greater our hostility towards an individual, the more amusing his/her misfortunes appear to us. (Zillman, 1983; Benton, 1988; Collinson, 1988, 1994; Davies, 1988; Gabriel, 1991a) A joke then, just like an insult, can express aggression and hostility. Some insults indeed are jokes; ridicule is an insult under the guise of joking. We shall not be surprised then if we discover that many of the theories and concepts which have enhanced our understanding of jokes prove helpful in this discussion of insults.

An Example

Here is an insult described by the target, Jon, a trainee in a hospital department:

The incident occurred towards the end of my placement. I had returned from lunch and was settling into my afternoon routine when Dick, my 'boss', asked Val, the accountant, whether she was ready to go. She replied that she was and the two of them, together with Val's assistant Carol, promptly donned their coats and filed out of the room. A little later, I noticed through the window that the original three had joined four more members of my department: the totality except for me.

Not only had I been excluded from a departmental matter of some importance, I hadn't even been informed of its existence. So, I went over to a trainee from another department (our office is shared by four departments) and asked about the event. Just then, the others returned to the room as the meeting was rearranged for later that afternoon.

Then, Lyn, in an intentionally loud and sarcastic voice, said:

"Dick, you should really inform 'your boss' (meaning me) when you leave the room."

I felt I had to defend myself to the now confused crowd (everyone in the room was listening):

"It's just that it looked like I wasn't allowed to come along." (The words didn't come out right).

Dick retorted, uncharacteristically: "Well, you weren't!"

Everyone laughed.

I expressed my point of view more clearly:

"OK Dick, I take your point, but it doesn't make me feel very good, I'm supposed to be part of this department and I wasn't even told there was a meeting, let alone asked if I wanted to come along."

Later Dick apologised, and he meant it.

This incident summarized my placement experience and especially the attitudes of key employees I had to work with. What did the incident mean to me? Firstly and most importantly, the fact that I wasn't informed of the meeting demonstrated my fellow employees' view of me as short-term and unimportant. A simple "I've got to go to this meeting now Jon, OK?" would have been the minimum etiquette I deserved, and would have allowed me to ask whether I could come along. Even if there was no other reason, it would have given a more extensive look into the workings of a real organisation, and would therefore help me when I was to come back to study. It was as if they didn't realise these things were valuable to my experience and therefore I should experience them: it was all one-sided.

Dick's lack of attention towards me was constant throughout the placement. I don't believe it was intentional in my opinion; he simply didn't know how to handle a subordinate. I also don't think he realised how capable and aspiring a trainee can be. I probed him on the matter: he was a 'you should be grateful for getting any job in a recession' and 'I had to work my way up through the ranks' sort of person.

And what of Lyn's outburst? She had overheard my conversation but could not see my point of view at all. She epitomised the others' feelings but actually spoke them, saying that Dick was my boss, not the other way around, (as if being my boss gave Dick a right to not treat me decently). I was laughed at. OK, it probably always happens, people not realising someone is upset about something, but it showed that no-one felt I had a right to be at that meeting.

At the time, I felt neglected and alienated -- also ANGRY that no-one understood that I wanted to be an integral part of the team. The incident reinforced the view that I never quite fitted in. [Narrative 1]

The insult in this story comes in three instalments: first, exclusion from a seemingly important meeting; second, a sarcastic jibe ("Dick, you should really inform 'your boss'") which ironically reverses the subordinate-inferior relationship; and third, the refusal to offer a face-saving excuse ("Sorry, we didn't think the meeting would be of interest to you" or "Sorry, we forgot").

Exclusion

Refusal or failure to invite a person to an important function or party is a cause of innumerable family feuds and conflicts. It is also encountered in countless stories and myths, such as the incident that set in motion the Trojan War. Eris, the goddess of discord, who has not been invited to the nuptial reception of Thetis and Peleus, takes her revenge by sending her carte-de-visite, the apple of discord. This will precipitate the dispute among the goddesses, which in turn, will spark off the ten-year war between Greeks and Trojans. In the Grimm brothers' story Little Briar-Rose (the source text of Sleeping Beauty), one of the thirteen 'wise women' was not invited to the feast in honour of the new-born princess, because the king 'only had twelve plates'. She pronounced her curse that the princess would prick herself with a spindle and die on her fifteenth birthday.

Exclusion lies at the heart of many insulting experiences, and invitations are occasions par excellence when sharp lines between those in the guest lists and those out of them are drawn. Even if no slight is intended it is easy for a person left out to feel offended. But, as the trainee's story suggests, the offence is compounded by three factors: First, exclusion derives from status and power differences, between Jon, the temporary, casual trainee and the others. The sarcasm "Dick, you should really inform 'your boss'" serves to 'put Jon in his place', not only reminding him who is boss but further reinforcing his marginal position in the organization. Second, the humiliation is public, so that the shamed victim finds himself further isolated. None of the audience hasten to take his side or offer him a face-saving lifeline. Third, the insult, as though it were a physical blow, throws the victim off balance so that his retort is feeble and ineffectual by his own admission. This allows for a clumsy but weighty rejoinder ("Well, you weren't!") to complete the insult. Jon ends up feeling ashamed not only for the insult but, as importantly, for his own ineffectual response.

Several of the incidents in the data derive from the perceived inferior status of trainees as compared to full-time staff. In some instances student trainees feel insulted not for being trainees but for being students. The following telling example was provided by Claire, a female trainee at a provincial accountants' firm:

Mr North has worked at Porters for thirty years and this has earned him the unofficial title of "Office Manager". Our conversation moved onto what and where I was studying. Once he had grasped that I was at university, that was it! Mr North went off the rails about how being a graduate meant nothing in accountancy. He hoped I realised that even though I might have a degree one day, he would still be far superior to me and not the other way around. I stood in his office nodding my head in agreement but absolutely seething at his unprovoked attack. He seemed to think that all university graduates viewed themselves as more knowledgeable than him. Mr North certainly made sure that I would not be under the same impression.

The close of our conversation only added insult to injury. Having made me feel thoroughly ashamed to be in Higher Education, he added: "When are you returning to BRISTOL to resume your holiday!" Politely, I answered his question without correcting him on the location of my studies and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me. [Narrative 2]

The insult here takes the form of a tirade which the trainee finds hard to fend off. Her inability to confront her tormentor and reject his allegations leaves her feeling both angry and ashamed. Mr North's final comment illustrates two characteristics of insults that did not feature in the earlier example, stereotyping and obliteration significant details in the victim's identity (see below) -- a combination of an unsubtle stereotype (students on a permanent holiday) with what Claire evidently regards as a belittling remark about her university (Bristol supposedly being an inferior institution to her own).

Stereotyping

Stereotyping is a common characteristic of insults; it is also an area of extensive theorising. Paradoxically, however, most of the theory on stereotyping is unhelpful in elucidating the emotional experience of an insult's target. Much of the academic literature on stereotypes regards them as oversimplified views of reality or as errors of overgeneralization. Martinko (1995) for instance, approaches stereotypes as "a subcategory of perception and attribution" (1995: 533) offering an equivocal view of their advantages and shortcomings. This tradition of theorising scrutinises the cognitive and perceptual processes involved and identifies the deleterious group and organizational consequences of stereotyping, in phenomena such as 'groupthink' (Janis, 1972)) or authoritarianism (Dixon, 1976).

In contrast to this cognitive approach to stereotyping, the political and the psychodynamic approaches seem to ground stereotypes in the political and psychological realities of organizations. The former views stereotypes as forms of discrimination and oppression, and, the second, as wish fulfilments, especially as manifestations of unconscious aggressive fantasies and desires. The political approach is adopted by Kanter (1977: 230ff) and feminist theorists (See, e.g., Gutek, 1985, 1989; Sheppard, 1989; Leidner, 1991; Auster, 1993;) who regard them as instruments of sexual oppression in and out of the workplace. Far from being the result of ignorance, naivete or cognitive blind spots, these theorists view stereotypes as barriers to equality which are systematically maintained and reproduced. Enlightenment alone is not enough to overcome them, since they support material interests. The psychodynamic view, that of stereotypes as wish-fulfilments, reinforces the feminist contention that sexist stereotypes not only support material male privilege but also male psychological needs. Freud, on several occasions, argued that men find it hard to view women beyond the stereotypes of mother-figures or temptresses (Freud, 1910h, 1933a; Rieff, 1959). More recent variants of these arguments have added some further stereotypes to the original two (e.g. pet, iron-maiden etc.) but maintain the view that such images meet various male desires and fantasies. (Kanter, 1977) What these two approaches have in common is the view that stereotypes are no mere generalizations or even errors, but are mental forms supporting and supported by psychological and political structures.

Stereotypes assume the character of insult precisely when the target finds him/herself literally trapped by the perpetrator's biased perception, where his/her every action can be skewed to reinforce the stereotype. Allowing the perpetrator to get away with an insulting stereotype enhances its social acceptability and may lead to escalating insults. Challenging or contesting the stereotype may often be accommodated within the stereotype, under the guise of 'temperamental', 'obstreperous', 'lacking in sense of humour' etc. (See Sims et al, 1993) Thus, stereotypes strike at the heart of the victim's self-esteem, placing him/her in a position which exacerbates feelings of powerless and shame.

In the following narrative, Kevin found himself scapegoated when his supervisor's new computer developed a fault. His anger ("awful feelings of ... angriness") can hardly be contained not so much because of the gravity of the accusation against him as because he finds himself trapped in the stereotype of 'irresponsible student messing up other people's computers'.

As they struggled to correct the problem a mini "investigation" started, to find who had altered the configuration of the new computer. As time elapsed, I began to realise that Mandy was quietly blaming me, after she was informed that I had used her machine the previous evening. She made some sarcastic remarks, in effect accusing me of making the mistake: "This wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't messed around with my machine last night"

I protested my innocence - stating that I hadn't used Lotus, but I was subconsciously found guilty by the office, and henceforth, I didn't use Mandy's machine again as a matter of principle. This caused a great deal of friction between Mandy and myself, because it was obviously she who had made the mistake, and it riled me to be a scapegoat for someone who didn't have the strength of character to admit her own mistakes.

In my opinion I gained a great deal of knowledge from this incident. Not only was Mandy exercising her formal power but also taking advantage of our relative positions within the hierarchy of our office to influence the opinions of the other office members; and the more I protested my innocence, the further I fell into a grave which had been dug for me ...

There is a system within the company which enables dissatisfied staff to air their grievances ... I complained I had been unjustly accused. My complaint didn't succeed; it was met with quite a cold response. I left with awful feelings of frustration, angriness, uselessness and betrayal. (Narrative 3)

Obliteration of significant identity details

If stereotyping is one characteristic of insults which strikes at a person's feelings of individuality and self-esteem, so too does the related characteristic noted earlier -- failing to acknowledge or honour an important detail in a person's identity or ego. The use of the wrong form of address, such as Dr instead of Professor, though rarely intentional can be read as insulting. Several examples in the data suggest that students are insulted when a manager or an employer fails to register the prestige of their university, mistaking it for a lesser institution. Even more insulting, however, is the mispronouncing or misspelling of a person's name. Still more insulting can be the forgetting someone's name or getting it completely wrong. In the following example (for a full discussion, see Fineman and Gabriel 1996: 75-78), a long litany of maltreatment is crowned by the following observation:

"It is characteristic that, when speaking to me on the phone, Paul called me 'Geoffrey', as always, although I am known to all else as 'Geoff'. He likewise insists on calling his secretary Suzanne, although her name is Su and is printed as such on her birth certificate." (1996: 76) [Narrative 4]

Mispronouncing or misspelling a person's name may be an eccentric affectation, a sign of familiarity and affection or, as in the case above, an insult. Given the enormous power difference between Geoff, a student trainee, and Paul, a brash £200,000 per year merchant banker, it seems fair to hypothesize that mispronouncing Geoff's name is part of a ritual humiliation, as if to show that even Geoff's and other subordinates' names may be used and abused as Paul pleases.

The Importance of Detail in Insults

Narratives 2 and 3 underline the importance of small details in insults. This is further illustrated in the following narrative, where the assailant's reference to 'primroses' seems to touch a raw nerve; it is offered by Matt, a trainee with one of the Big Six accounting companies:

On my last audit, I worked for the firm's head partner. When he first turned up, I was formally introduced to him by one of my colleagues. In the first instance, he appeared to be a pleasant enough chap and I thought little of working for him. However during his review of the work papers I had produced, he proceeded to vocalise any spelling errors which he could manage to find. These work papers are simply drafts for internal use only, so making spelling errors had seemed quite acceptable. Even so, he only managed to find three errors out of several thousand words. I thought him quite UNFAIR when he finally turned around to me and asked what kind of schooling system I went through. When I told him that I went to a comprehensive school, he asked what A-level subjects I had taken. I had hardly got the word 'biology' out of my mouth when he laughed and interjected with, "Well what can one expect from a man who has spent his life dissecting primroses!"

I was justifiably annoyed by this comment and had to leave the room before my mood became obvious. A few hours later, after he had left, I overheard a conversation in which one of my colleagues told another that it appeared David had decided to spend the day insulting the 'grunt' ('grunt' being the affectionate term applied to all new starters at company). [Narrative 5]

It is interesting that Matt seems prepared to accept a degree of being put down as acceptable (the 'grunt' label), while he views the spelling corrections and the primrose barb as gratuitous and insulting. Insult are experienced as surplus to functional requirements as suggested by expressions like "rubbing salt to the wounds" or "adding insult to injury" and adjectives like ''unwarranted' or 'uncalled for' which are often used to describe them. Aristotle was aware of this in commenting that insults are "not for some advantage to oneself ... but for the fun of it."

What is even clearer, however, is that the insult, in this instance, seems to touch a sensitive spot in Matt. It is not certain whether this vulnerability derives from Matt's comprehensive education or from an unconscious guilt regarding the spelling mistakes. It is clear however, that, as with the obliteration of significant personal details, the highlighting of significant personal defects are common and successful targets for insults. This is particularly so if the target of the insult is sensitive to these defects or has been repeatedly insulted on their account. This explains why a relatively small effort targeted at the appropriate point can produce disproportionate effects. It also explains why insults hurt even if not factually true, in that they touch an area of unconscious self-doubt. Two further reasons why untrue insults may be effective must be noted here. First, as Narrative 3 suggests, an audience may seem to believe the allegation, the target's denials tend to reinforce the appearance of culpability. Second, an insult may be untrue, but the target may blame him/herself for making him/herself vulnerable, e.g. by trusting someone they should not have trusted. This may also account for the fact that many insults (including the ones reproduced here) retrospectively tend to appear quite innocuous and seem to produce emotion disproportionate to their offensiveness.

Allegations of shoddy work, such as the sarcastic pointing out of spelling mistakes, feature in several of the reports. In some cases, the trainees are candid about accepting their responsibility in 'honest mistakes'. These ranged from the production of expensive newsletters for a highly image-conscious company which included some embarrassing printing errors to an error of over £1 million in compiling trading debt statistics. When trainees are reminded of such mistakes in a sarcastic manner, they feel embarrassed rather than insulted. When, on the other hand, they are insulted on account of mistakes which they categorically deny being responsible for, then feelings are more likely to be anger and frustration.

Insulting deeply held beliefs and Revered objects

In most of the examples examined so far, insults have focussed on relatively small, though psychologically significant, facets of the victims' personality or performance. In other instances (which cannot be discussed here for reasons of space), insults are directed at a person's intelligence (See Gabriel 1997) or tastes and fashion-consciousness (Bourdieu 1984: 511; Gabriel and Lang, 1995:111). In some cases, they strike at some of an individual's most deeply held beliefs or indeed revered individuals. It is in cases like these that insults become akin to blasphemy. In one incident, Andrew, a deeply religious trainee relates his feelings when a religious poster he had displayed was removed:

I decided to use the notice board above my desk to display a yellow A4 poster advertising a Mission to Gloucester being held at that time. This poster went up on Wednesday and, while nothing was said to me about it, it was turned back to front two evenings running - I reversed it the following morning on both occasions. That Friday, the thirteenth of September, while I was out of the office the poster was torn down (it ended up in the bin) and a large Health and Safety poster was put up.

At lunchtime, Chris, my manager, had a quiet word with me in the rest room. The upshot of this was that she told me I had upset more than one person's feelings with the poster and that it was official policy for the office manager to approve posters before they were put up.

At the time of the incident my feelings were a mixture of pain and anger. It is one thing to have your beliefs challenged as to whether or not they are reasonable but quite another to have your beliefs opposed and not be given the chance to defend them. When Chris had a word with me it was like she was accusing me of being narrow minded and trying to force my views down other people's throats. This I felt to be particularly unfair since, at the time, my two closest friends were Muslim and Bhuddist respectively. Looking back at the incident now I feel a little embarrassed that such an incident could be the cause of so much pain and worry for both myself and the others in the office. (Narrative 6)

This narrative may be interpreted in line with earlier ones; Andrew is insulted because he feels stereotyped on the basis of little evidence, as a religious zealot who seeks to force his views on others. Yet, the tone of the incident and the use of the word 'pain' (which does not feature in any other narratives) may suggest a deeper type of insult than those of the earlier examples. Unlike the earlier examples, the insult here is perpetrated in deed (the removal and binning of the poster) as well as in word. Furthermore, unlike the previous cases, the perpetrator of the insult is anonymous, unseen and unwilling to take responsibility for his/her action. It is possible to conjecture the binning of the poster as a kind of profanation, compounded by the anonymity of the culprit and further exacerbated by Chris's condoning of his/her behaviour. Such interpretation is speculative and cannot be corroborated on the evidence of the above text alone. It does suggest, however, that different insults may strike at different parts of our mental personality. In most of the earlier examples, insults were directed at the individuals' identity, pride in their work, intelligence or institutional affiliation, in short at their ego or their social persona. This instance suggests a deeper type of injury, an injury predominantly to a person's ego-ideal, the part of the mental apparatus which contains idealized images (such as role models) and objects (such as religious or patriotic relics and family heirlooms), which we may seek to emulate or which inspire us. The sense of outrage when such idealized things are insulted may be even more acute than the anger and shame caused by insults to the ego.

Resisting Insults

In the examples thus far, insulted individuals feel upset, shamed and angry but seem mostly unable to act on these feelings. In the next and final example, Tonya describes her outrage at what she views as a sexist slur, in one of the world's largest corporate finance providers. This report, which hinges on an overlap of three negative stereotypes 'woman', 'student' and 'back office', elaborates considerably the points raised earlier and raises two further issues, resistance to insulting behaviour and the trading of insults.

I worked in the foreign exchange (FX) back-office, where deals done by our 150 dealers were checked, payment instructions were added and queries addressed. My job was to resolve problems arising from deals. Much of the time, this meant going upstairs and talking to the dealers.

Now, you never told a dealer that he or she was wrong, even when handling those dealers who, throughout the whole of my placement, were never correct. You just briefly stated what the problem was and asked them to kindly look into it.

This particular incident involves Nick, one of the men who always 'cocked up'. This time he had mixed-up the currencies on a deal. The payment was due in half an hour, so it was important to get him to amend the deal. I went up to see him, but Lee, also from the back-office, was already talking to him about something else. Because my problem was urgent, I waited for Lee to finish. When Lee left, Nick glanced at me and then, to my surprise, left his desk and went over to another dealer, John, from whom we had heard juicy comments for quite a while. A group of dealers assembled and I could hear and see from their behaviour that they were not discussing business.

I went over and discovered that the reason for their behaviour was two pages from The Sun newspaper filled with pictures of posing, naked women. Something inside me just snapped. I told Nick that my job was actually meant as a service to the dealers, to help make them aware of errors before it costs them money. I explained how much work I had to do and how much other dealers appreciated my corrections, so by ignoring me he was not only wasting my time, but his own colleagues' right to the service the back-office officers. And with his error-statistics, I would imagine he had better things to do that to stare at page-3 girls.

I turned round, left my sheet of paper on his desk and departed.

My main emotion both then and now is anger. I felt I had been patient and taken much more stick and rude behaviour than was acceptable. The way Nick ignored me to go and look at page-3 girls was the straw that broke the camel's back. I also felt helpless and vulnerable. They were discussing naked women in detail in a room with almost only men, and I knew my views were in minority. I was afraid any reaction from me would be ridiculed. Writing about it now, I also feel proud for having had the courage to tell him off.

The Foreign Exchange dealers, nearly all men, were the most arrogant group of people I have ever come across in my life. If it had not been for me gradually understanding some of the reasons for their behaviour, an outburst like the one I have just described would have come much earlier. You need to appreciate the fact that the FX department is, at the moment, one of the best departments result-wise in FinInter and this creates a feeling of invulnerability and extreme self-importance among those working there. I did not feel that this was a valid excuse for their behaviour; still, I learnt to accept it.

The back-office policy was to accept any amount of stick from the dealers, and then let it all come out afterwards when you were safely back at your desk. This policy was no good as it only helped to increase the hostility between dealers and back-office. My telling the dealer off, meant that I had broken the main taboo in the office. Over several weeks, I realized that this earned me much respect. I had done something many of my colleagues had wanted to do for years, but dared not to. The risk was smaller for me as I was only there for a short while. So, I achieved respect both from the back-office and from some of the dealers. And perhaps, even more importantly, I respected myself more for having done what I felt was right. (Narrative 7)

The essence of the insult in this report is contained in the sentence "The way Nick ignored me to go and look at page-3 girls was the straw that broke the camel's back." Being ignored is a common enough type of insult. In organizations, it takes the form of having one's requests, memos and reports disregarded, or, more commonly, being kept waiting. No fewer that nine of the 21 incidents of insult reported by trainees contain direct or indirect reference to their time being wasted. However, it is clear that what is experienced as insulting is not the actual wasting of time but the presumptuousness that their time has a low value compared to someone else's. This confirms the Aristotelian idea of insults being gratuitous, something aimed at consciously or unconsciously humiliating someone's pride rather than at exploiting them directly economically or even politically. The wasted time, however, is often but a token of deeper humiliations. In Tonya's case, it is clear that the wasted time is symptomatic of a status differential, an attitude of "She can wait; she's only back-office". Yet, what turns an every day indignity into a major insult is the dealers' ostentatious leering, which makes Tonya feel insecure and exposed. It is the dealers' sexism, no less odious for being accepted as the prerogative of financial success, which Tonya finds insulting.

Helplessness and vulnerability turn into anger when compounded by insult. What sets this narrative apart from previous ones is that it leads to an act of resistance, in which Tonya gives the assailant  a 'piece of her mind', expressing her moral indignation at his behaviour. When she speaks out, she crosses the boundary between acceptable behaviour ('disparage and belittle dealers behind their backs') and unacceptable behaviour ('tell them to their faces'). What Tonya told Nick is perhaps less important than the act of crossing of this boundary, which turns the incident from an instance of psychic injury into an episode of organizational politics. (See Gabriel 1991a)

Her rebuke to the dealer is not a head-on challenge of his sexism, which may have laid her open to ridicule and disparagement. Instead her rebuke is 'professional', giving him little leeway for retaliation, but its tail contains a sting. The meaning of "and with his error-statistics, I would imagine he had better things to do that to stare at page-3 girls" is unlikely to have been lost on the dealer. It is, in fact, an attempted insult, in its own right. We do not know whether the dealer read it as an insult and how he may have reacted. It is certainly the case that, like the other insults we have examined thus far, it could be painful even if not exactly true, provided that Nick had a sensitive spot about being erratic. If, on the other hand, Nick was the kind of person who, rightly or wrongly, regards the making of superficial mistakes as a prerogative of his brilliance, then the insult might have gone unnoticed.

Retaliation: From psychic injury to Political conflict

This example further highlights the political nature of insulting behaviour. While individual insults have a gratuitous character, cumulatively insults can be seen as a device for keeping subordinate parties in their place, by underlining their helplessness and vulnerability. An unanswered insult has a lowering effect on an individual's self esteem. An unanswered insult in the presence of an audience has a still more devastating effect. What can be more devastating for a young boy than to see his own father insulted, yet unable to retaliate. In Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Dimitri Karamazov insults an old army captain, whom he drags by the beard, in front of a group of children, while Ilyusha, the captain's son, in vain tries to help his father. Karamazov challenges the captain to a duel, knowing full well that such a challenge would ruin the latter. The father's humiliation (both his being dragged by the beard and his unwillingness to face his assailant in a duel) leads to vicious baiting of Ilyusha by his schoolmates. This incident drives one of the most moving subplots of the novel, which involve the younger Karamazov trying to expiate his brother's wrongdoing and culminate in the death and funeral of young Ilyusha at the very end of the novel. Freud reports in The Interpretation of Dreams, his own disillusionment on hearing the story of how his father had received uncomplainingly an anti-Semitic slur and a blow. (1900a:286)

An unanswered insult then marks a breach in justice which goes unpunished. It is highly effective at re-affirming power relations and laying bare relations of domination and subordination. The insulted party internalizes his/her anger into shame, an inability to restore justice by doing what is seen as the honourable thing, hence he/she is dishonoured in addition to being humiliated.

By contrast, an insult which is met with a counter-insult, can restore the honour of the insulted party, even if it does not transform the balance of power. It may be accepted by the perpetrator of the initial insult as acceptable retaliation, repartee or face saving gesture. As with the trading of gifts, the trading of insults follows certain rules of commensurability. A poor relative may successfully reciprocate an expensive gift from a rich relative by offering a gift which requires a lot of time, care and thought, even if it does not compare in price with the rich relative's gift. (See Gabriel and Lang, 1995) Likewise an insulted party may be allowed to save face with a token retaliation. Provided that the magnitude of a counter-insult is not incommensurable with that of the initial one, it may restore order. Football crowds supporting opposed teams routinely engage in the trading of insults, seeking to outdo each other in wit, inventiveness, and targeting of sensitivities, though they rarely exceeding the limits which would lead to physical violence.

There are times, however, where under the partial amnesty afforded by an insult, a disproportionate retaliation leads to a state of continuous and possibly escalating strife. This is akin to a vendetta where each insult or blow must compensate for and surpass its predecessor. Calasso observes precisely this sort of escalation of insults in the ancient Greek myth of the brothers Atreus and Thyestes.

The vendetta between the two brothers loses all touch of psychology, becomes pure virtuosity, traces out arabesques. Thyestes disappears again, a horrified fugitive. There's just one thing in his mind: how to invent a revenge that will outdo his brother's, who in turn had thought up his with the intention of making it unbeatable. (1993: 185)

The plot of many Greek tragedies is built on a still more unequal dynamic of insult trading. A mortal's temporary lapse of arrogance, a hubris against a god, brings about disproportionate retaliation from the god, the hero's nemesis. As Dodds observed "to speak lightly of a god, to neglect his cult, to maltreat his priest, all these understandably make him angry; in a shame-culture gods, like men, are quick to resent a slight." (1950/1968: 32) Alasdair MacIntyre has further emphasised the centrality of insults to the cultural and political life of ancient Greeks and other societies which are organized along the axis shame-honour. "To dishonour someone is to fail to acknowledge what is thus due. Hence the concept of an insult becomes a socially crucial one and in many such societies a certain kind of insult merits death." (1981: 116) Following work by Berger (1973), MacIntyre goes on to suggest that in modern societies insults are no longer political events. "Insults have been displaced to the margins of our cultural life where they are expressive of private emotion rather than public conflicts. And unsurprisingly this is the only place left for them in Goffman's writings." (ibid.)

Tonya's narrative casts a doubt on MacIntyre's hypothesis that, along with morality, insults have been restricted by contemporary societies to the cultural margins, reduced to personal chagrins and humiliations. Insults may be endured passively, generating feelings of shame, anger and guilt for the victim. Alternatively, however, they may set in motion a dynamic whose nature is undoubtedly political. This may lead to a resolution through an apology or an acceptance of a commensurable retaliatory insult. Furthermore, they may lead to a continuous state of insult-trading which may be contained within certain parameters (as with football crowds) or may escalate into ever increasing, offensive and damaging actions. The trading of insults can observe highly elaborate rules of reciprocity and equivalence. At times, the trading of insults, like the trading of gifts, may become institutionalized into a ritual, as is the case in joking relations. The trading of gifts and the trading of insults can turn into each other. Insults can take the form of insolent gifts or may result from the spurning of supposedly unworthy ones. Likewise a truce in the exchange of insults may be marked by an exchange of gifts.

Insults as Tests establishing organizational pecking-orders

Narrative 7 is the only one of the 21 in which the narrator actively insults, albeit in self-defence, someone else ("with his error-statistics"). It is a curious thing about insults that they far more commonly feature in narratives as suffered rather than as perpetrated, i.e. they are part of tragic narratives from the perspective of the victim, rather than of epic narratives from that of the perpetrator. Indeed, it is unlikely that most people would admit to insulting anyone without provocation. Yet, in most cases individuals who are insulted impute motive on their assailant.

We have noted that cumulatively insults are part of a trading process, itself part of an organization's political process. But what drives individual insults? Here we enter into more speculatory terrain; the research material does not warrant anything more than some tentative conjectures. Clearly some insults are unintentional, therefore motiveless. Others, like Tonya's reprimand in Narrative 7, are retaliatory. But would Nick, the page-3 admiring broker, have recognized his own behaviour as towards Tonya as insulting? This seems rather unlikely. He may have viewed the situation as an instance of over-reaction by an over-sensitive trainee who has not yet learnt the organizational ropes. Yet, was his ostentatious reading of material intended to provoke the trainee and his deliberate shunning of her, not precisely aimed at 'teaching this awkward young customer a little lesson'? The excuse that 'No insult was intended' may have been genuine, yet one suspects that, even if not conscious, Nick's behaviour was driven by a desire to deflate, if not to humiliate, Tonya. If Tonya's reference to Nick as "one of the men who always 'cocked up'" (in Narrative 7) is not a post-facto construction, could it be that Nick was himself the target of insults by other dealers or by his superiors? Unable to retaliate against them, he re-directs his aggression at a soft target, a young female, back-office trainee, whose humiliation is not only meant to keep her in her place, but also earn him the esteem of his peers. In this way some insults could be said to said re-directed retaliations, i.e. retaliations against innocent but weaker surrogates. It is, of course, not possible to test this hypothesis on the material available, but what it suggests is that insults are not merely instruments for establishing inclusion and exclusion, domination and subordination, but also finer gradations of status and power. We may hypothesize then that insults help to establish a 'pecking order' among members of a collectivity while at the same time allowing for a degree of mobility by testing the resilience and morale of people up and down the order.

In this way, some insults may be construed as tests. They can function as initiation rites, establishing inclusion and exclusion, or classification rites establishing status and power hierarchies. The assailant's motive then is to provide him/herself and his/her target with a challenge, an opportunity to prove themselves, from which they hope to improve their position in the pecking order. Under such circumstances, insults provide a continuous mechanism for maintaining some mobility within a hierarchy of power and status.

Is there a class of insults which unlike, motiveless and retaliatory ones, is driven by conscious or unconscious destructive desires pure and simple? Clearly, the research material does not permit any systematic discussion of this possibility, since no accounts are provided by the assailants. We may speculate, all the same, that some insults, notably those perpetrated by some of Dostoevsky's anti-heroes, assume an existential, life-affirming and life-denying quality, setting them apart from the ones discussed in this paper. Not content to defeat an opponent, such characters seek in an irrational Nietzschean way, to humiliate and obliterate him/her, as if their own life and vitality derives from the unpremeditated humiliations which they inflict on others. Yet, such characters also seem to suffer from profound guilt, following their action. Their insults resemble the hubris of ancient Greek tragedy, the outrageously boastful claims made by mortals in a moment of madness (ate), which invariably bring about disproportionate retaliation from the insulted god, only in the existential hero's case, the retaliation appears to stem from his own super-ego. Such insults could be said to derive from a kind of inebriation of 'getting away' with something outrageous, expressing a deep wish for self-aggrandizement and for the belittlement of an opponent. If insults like the one described in Narrative 7 represent a public challenge within a shame culture, existential insults, in spite of their public dimension, may be said to represent private challenges that individuals in certain psychological states are apt to set for themselves.

Summary and Conclusion

This introduction to the study of insults in organizations suggests that insults are quite an important social and organizational phenomenon, one which causes powerful emotions and enters people's personal histories. It was suggested that insults involve a perpetrator, a target and, often, an audience. The intention to insult is not necessary, as some insults are the result of misunderstanding or accident. However, the experience of being gratuitously offended and the corresponding feelings of shame, guilt and anger are fundamental to insults. Several types of insults were observed. Exclusion, stereotyping, obliteration of significant identity details, ingratitude, scapegoating, rudeness, broken promises, being ignored or kept waiting, were all seen as insulting by different individuals. It was further suggested that even more potent insults may result from the defamation or despoiling of idealized objects, persons or ideas.

Different insult dynamics were noted; these included an apology, a commensurate retaliation, a disproportionate retaliation and possible escalation, a retaliation against a surrogate and weaker target than the perpetrator of the initial insult, an affected indifference with a possible delayed retaliation, or more commonly a resigned tolerance which may fuel subsequent insults. Retaliation and resistance led to a discussion of the concept of trading of insults as part of an organization's political process which establish, first, lines of domination/subordination, and second, more finer gradations of status and power, i.e. a pecking order. It was argued that insults allow for a certain mobility within a pecking order, by offering 'matches' for contestants to pitch their wit, venom and courage against each other.

Students of organizational culture and symbolism may gain considerable insights by focusing on the nature of insults in particular organizations. Equally, researchers exploring organizational emotions, in particular negative emotions, like anger, shame and guilt, would do well to explore how narratives associated with such emotions incorporate insults. Finally, researchers who are exploring the political dimensions of organizations, including labour process theorists, would find the study of organizational insults valuable, in understanding why so often resistance is bred not simply by long-term exploitation or oppression but by momentary lapses in the defences against displaying arrogance and contempt