Introduction

The present chapter examines the way in which the rites of countering the heckler and bystander intervention operate, without looking into the (im)politeness-related aspects of these ritual practices. The objective of the chapter is to demonstrate that (a) these ritual actions are on a par, following the uptake of Section 1.3 in Chapter 1 that they have some joint key characteristics and (b) that in settings that trigger these ritual actions, there is social pressure on the performer and the recipient to engage in conflict. This engagement triggers moral metareflections in terms of altruism/cruelty and (im)politeness, by means of which the performer and the recipient aim to get the ritual action (de)ratified by third-party participants (Chapter 6). As has been previously noted, politeness is situated within the moral value system (Schwartz 2007). My argument here is that in the scene of a rite of moral aggression, (im)politeness and altruism/cruelty become separated as principles (see Chapter 1); they become mental and emotional motivators of interpersonal behaviour that are primordial and offer the participants a starting point to argue in favour or against each other's behaviour. Furthermore, engaging in the performance of a rite of aggression triggers (im)polite fringing behaviour, the evaluation of which is influenced by the success or failure of the ritual action in appearing as a sound box of the public's/community's sense of order (Chapter 7).

Section 5.2 provides a brief summary of the rituals studied. It also introduces previous research to position the present study in the field and provides an overview of the data studied. Section 5.3 examines the rites of countering the heckler and bystander intervention through comparative lenses to illustrate the key similarities that exist between them. In this inquiry, I devote particular attention to the interactional dynamics of these ritual practices. In Section 5.4, I examine the notion of social pressure in the context of rites of moral aggression: I illustrate that a key motivation behind performing a rite of moral aggression is to restore the moral order, and failure to do this triggers a sense of shame. Also, there is social pressure on the heckler/'wrongdoer’ to protect his face and to justify his action that triggered the rite of moral aggression (henceforth I refer to the person who commits an action triggering an aggressive ritual reaction by using ‘wrongdoer’; Nunner-Winkler and Sodian 1988).