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Joshua Barker University of Toronto ike all affects, fear is inherently social and relational. It is social in a variety of respects. First, the original stimulus for a feeling of fear may be something that comes from one's involvement in a social field, such as hearing a story about a crime that took place close to one's home or experiencing a physical threat by a fearsome other. But even when the most immediate stimulus of fear is something internal to the psyche, such as a bad memory or an unconscious thought, the expression of fear? whether spoken or not? and the means by which people seek to address it both involve others. One of the main social means by which people seek to address fear is through discourse. As Teresa Caldeira (2000: 19-101) has shown in her analysis of" talk of crime" in Sao Paulo, Brazil, discourse provides people with a means of ordering a frightening world and making it more intelligible …