Profanity and Gender: a diachronic analysis of men's and women's use and perception of swear words (original) (raw)
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Swear Words among Males: The Social Functions and Pragmatic Meanings
Proceedings of the 2nd Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Conference: Establishing Identities through Language, Culture, and Education (SOSHEC 2018), 2018
Swearing at some stage is similar to cursing; a linguistic activity utilizing taboo words to express strong emotions. Traditionally, swear words contain taboo and offensive expressions. Thus, the users are negatively judged and labeled. Are swear words always negatively framed? This paper tries to prove that such expressions do not only convey negative sense but also provide diverse functions and meanings. Dual mode of communicative data was gained; spoken and written. Besides, direct and virtual interviews were conducted to reveal the males' underlying reasons for swearing. The results may indicate that the use of swear words carries social functions, namely: intraindividual and interindividual which are reflected into cathartic, abusive, emphatic, idiomatic, and dysphemistic swearing. Nonetheless, cathartic and abusive searing are mostly committed. Another finding, pragmatically, swears words are bound by context. They can reflect not only the user's anger but also happiness and even solidarity. The other finding is that males swear more frequently in the presence of a group consisting of their own gender. All these evidence might be a gentle warning on the effect of what one produces and the wise interpretation upon one produces. When these are taken into account, living in harmony is created.
Swears in Context: The Difference Between Casual and Abusive Swearing
Although swearing is taboo language, it frequently appears in daily conversations. To explain this paradox, two studies examined contextualized swearing in Indian and non-Indian participants. In Study 1, participants assessed the appropriateness of mild, moderate, and severe swears in casual and abusive contexts; in Study 2, participants completed contextual dialogues with mild, moderate, or severe swearwords. Results indicated that mild and moderate swears were more appropriate in casual settings than in abusive scenarios; severe swears were the most inappropriate, regardless of context. Mild and moderate swears were likely to be used to complete casual and abusive dialogues respectively, even though it was expected that severe swears would be compatible with abusive settings. Moreover, gender and nationality differences suggested that assessing appropriateness of swearing behaviour and likelihood of swearword usage provided independent and contrasting findings. Cultural variations in swearing behaviour, particularly contextualized swearing, and suggestions for further research are outlined.
A sociolinguistic analysis of swearword offensiveness
The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qualitative data, reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, allowing for an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community and a highly offensive one. The resulting ‘swearing paradox’ represents the question of how frequency and offensiveness can be directly related. The results of the present study explicate the swearing paradox by providing evidence of a discrepancy between the type of swearing that is most characteristic of social interaction within the university speech community and the type of swearing which is typically presented in offensiveness ratings tasks.
Selected Theories on the Use of Profanity
2018
The purpose of this study attempts to discuss selected related theories on profanity and its influence towards the daily communication. It explains and reviews theory of sociolinguistics and selfperception theory with regard to use of profanity in daily communications. Sociolinguistic theory discusses the interconnection between language and society. It also elaborates on how every person uses a language and speaks in a particular way as part of their socio-cultural act. The focus of selfperception theory is on attitude formation developed by psychologist and it emphasizes on the development of people's attitude. In addition, this theory emphasizes that people induce attitudes without accessing internal cognition as well as mood states.
Maledictive Language: Cursing and Swearing
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 2021
Cursing and swearing constitute a special genre of linguistic and cultural performance that may fall under the general heading of maledictive language. Key theoretical observations drawing from scholarly historical, cultural, and linguistic treatments of cursing and swearing are explored, including an outline of some common types and themes, the role of power and taboo, some strategies for avoidance, swearing as it relates to emotion and the brain, and swearing in multilingual contexts.
Male and Female Attitudes towards Swear Words: A Case Study at Binus International School
k@ta, 2014
Swear words are generally used to articulate anger, pain, excitement, frustration, or surprise. It is often imitated by children who may not really understand the meaning of the swear words. This survey-based study aims to identify the swear utterances of male and female teenagers, find out their commonly-used swear words, and investigate whether bilingual male or female students of Grade 12, Binus International School, Simprug, Jakarta, use more swear words. A combination of multiple choice and open-ended questionnaire was constructed and the analysis revealed that swearing is inevitable and becomes a part of the male and female language repertoire. Both groups of students are said to employ the use of Indonesian and English swear words in carrying-out conversations in order to release stress and express intense emotions. However, male students tend to use more swear words that are associated with sexuality.
Social Science learning Education Journal , 2020
Vulgarity lenience among Malaysian is increasing, although it is against the fifth principle of this country: Good Behavior and Morality. Since vulgarity has become the societal norm among Malaysian, paper aims to explore how the use of vulgar words have any differences in terms of perception between female and male to further understand the norms and reason behind it. The present study was conducted on 2 males and 2 females in Malaysia to investigate their perceptions on vulgarity. Data was collected using a semi-structured interview and validated via member checked. The study showed that female respondents use vulgarity freely compared to male respondents. The findings show that both gender use vulgarity when expressing emotions especially frustration, and also engage in humour to show intimacy among friends. The study reveals, that image of individual can be influenced by the practice and frequency of vulgarity used.
The use of profanity in conversational speech
Journal of Communication Disorders, 1972
VWihbuIitry WiIs collected from ii college student population IO test the validity of Ctimeron's (1969, 1970) criticisms 0T the relatively low proportionate occurrence ot prsl'unity in reports of previous worrf counts. Data was collected on mltgnetic tape. Profane words f'o?med 7.44 per cent of the vocilbulary compared to Cameron's 8.06 per cent. Tftcsc rr;ufts. cnnsidercd with the 0.14 per cent profrlnity obtained in our earlier study (I 970) using tflc sumc' collection procedures with n general ndult population, indicutcd th;rt C;uncron's ftigfl proptjrtion W;IS probably due to the population he sampled.
Who's Swearing Now? The Social Aspects of Conversational Swearing
"Who’s Swearing Now? represents an investigation of how people actually swear, illustrated by a collection of over 500 spontaneous swearing utterances along with their social and linguistic contexts. The book features a focus on the use of eight swear words: ass, bitch, cunt, damn, dick, fuck, hell, shit and their possible inflections or derivations, e.g., asshole or motherfucker, offering a solution to the controversial issue of defining swear words and swearing by limiting the investigation to the core set of words most common to previous swearing studies. The specific focus results in accurate depictions of contextualized swearing utterances. Precise frequency counts are thus enabled which, along with offensiveness ratings of contextualized and non-contextualized swearing, enable a clarification of The Swearing Paradox, referring to the phenomenon of frequently used swear words also being those which traditionally are judged to be the most offensive. The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who’s Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants’ individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others’ allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who’s Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety."