Verbal Violence and Stress in the Context of Migration: Towards an integrative Model from the Perspective of Linguistics and Biopsychology

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The aim of the project is to contribute to a better understanding of the origins and effects of verbal violence in the context of migration, thanks to a combination of approaches within Psychological Stress Research and Linguistics. It takes the constructs of face (i.e., the social self-image) and perlocution (a concept from Speech Act Theory which refers to the effects of verbal acts) as a starting points, in order to operationalize them in the context of psychological theories of stress. These concepts still lack empirical support in Linguistics, while research into stress has largely excluded the subjective self-image from analysis. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the project combines approaches from both disciplines by operationalizing perlocution (in the case of verbal violence: face threat) in terms of a physiological stress reaction. In experimental formats in which subjects with (family) origins in Latin America and Turkey are exposed (or not) to potentially violent speech acts, we will examine the effects of verbal utterances as stressors. These formats are variations of the TSST (Trier social stress task), which will be developed based on a survey of experiences of linguistic violence among members of the groups mentioned above. The experimental data will be correlated with narratives regarding the subjective experience of the experimental situation, which will be collected in interviews following the experiments. Through the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we will explore how verbal violence emerges from language use, in combination with situational, biographical, physiological and other factors. This should result in an integrative model of stress and verbal violence.