3 - Order in the Extraordinary: More on the Ritual Perspective

Summary

Chapter 3 discusses the ways in which the ritual perspective can help the researcher to systematically describe seemingly ad hoc interactional events. Ritual aggression can be a challenging phenomenon to study for two reasons. Firstly, in-group ritual aggression often appears to be ‘violent’ and, more importantly, ‘unreasonable’ for group outsiders. For instance, ritual cursing is normative for certain ethnic groups but may sound menacing for members of other groups, often leading to racist stereotypes and prejudices. A clear advantage of the ritual perspective is that it allows the researcher to describe exactly the pragmatic conventions of such rituals in a rigorous and replicable way, and on a par with rites of civility. Secondly, other less ‘exotic’ aggressive interaction rituals also often manifest themselves in forms that one may describe as ‘violent’ and ‘unreasonable’. The ritual perspective also helps the scholar to capture the pragmatic conventions and dynamics of these social rituals, which are the focus of Chapter 3. As a case study the chapter examines language use before, during and after a ‘grudge match’ in a Mixed Martial Arts event.