Notes on honor (Taís Bopp)

It seems interesting to think about honor as a construct that involves

different components (personal integrity, family concerns and gender-specific
concerns) as well is importante to notice that in some cultures honor concerns
are predominant and to other cultures individualistic values are more
significant. I think in Brazil we have these two types of culture yet the honor is
prevailing (even among young people). Considering young people it would be
possible to group them into: (1) people who defend the respect for individual's
choices and have progressive ideas (e.g. same-sex marriage, drugs regulation,
abortion liberation, etc.); (2) people who defend tradicional values (like
traditional family configuration maintenance, gender roles delimitation,
conservative view on drugs policy, etc.).
Clearly we can see in Brazil two sets of values among people who live in
a common country and who belong to the same generation. In everyday life
any divergence or conflict between people from these two groups are
minimized since they frequent different places (they have different hobbies,
they buy in different shops, even the type of faculty they attend can attract
more people from one or other group). This is because Brazilian culture is very
segmented once the society is notably stratified. So in everyday life people
interact mostly with others who they use to share beliefs and points of view.
Conflicts arise when people interact on social media like Facebook,
because it is place where social boundaries are less delimited and it is opened
to diverse kind of people. In this territory people are more likely to interact with
others who have different beliefs, opinions and concerns. In general these
interactions take place around debate on highlighted topics that everyone feel
free to give an opinion about (as same-sex marriage, gender roles, drugs
regulation, abortion liberation and so on). Naturally, it is easy to people to
disagree about these matters and it is important to notice that these topics can
be linked to honor values (like defense of family or masculinity) or individual
values (like the right to abortion or same sex marriage). So, in this context of
debate, if one feel hurt in one’s honor or in one’s right to make individual
choices, conflicts may come up.
It seems that when this kind of conflicts arises they are more triggered
by an attempt to preserve honor than individuals concerns. People who feel
hurt in their honor in general write more aggressive comments on debates on
Facebook, by using injuries, bad words and ad hominem arguments. It is
important to take into account that violence is tolerated in defense of honor in
Brazil (“lavar a honra com sangue” that means “washing the honor with blood”
is a popular saying in Brazilian Portuguese). It is also important to notice that
many Portuguese words used to outrage are related to masculine ou feminine
loss of honor (vulgar words to designate prostitute women and cheated men,
for example). On the other side, more individualistic people appeal less to this
kind of verbal outrage, yet they are too much sensitive to bad words that hurt
feminine and masculine honor. It looks like a contradiction, but we have to
keep in mind that Brazilian culture is settled on a patriarchal basis, so our
language and our vocabulary reflects its values.
In this sense, would be interesting to check the status of honor concerns
among Brazilian students, given that it could be an index to analyze aggressive
behavior on social media. It would be equally interesting to verify how Brazilian
and Dutch students differ on honor concerns, given that Brazilian society is
more conservative and socially stratified than Dutch society (which is settled
on ideals of freedom, equality and responsibility, as it seems to me).

PS:
(1) I just checked and I found a Brazilian short version for the Honor Scale
(HS-16). Maybe it could be useful.
(2) Even we do not deal with linguistic matters on my stay at Utrecht
University, it would be interesting to me to do some observations on the way
Dutch students express themselves on social media (or the words Dutch
language offers to express anger and its relation with the culture). I have a
Dutch colleague and friend (Martine Bruil) who is lecturer at Centre for
Linguistics in Leiden; maybe I can exchange some ideas with her and it also
could be insightful for us.