How (not) to offend people in English

American Anthropologist, 1951

This study is aimed to investigate the difference in the perception of Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers towards taboo words. To this end, 100 Iranians EFL learners and 34 English native speakers were invited to participate in the study. Iranian EFL learners’ homogeneity was measured through Oxford Quick Placement Test. These participants- aged 22 to 62- included students, university professors and institute instructors from eight universities or English institutes. The project used a researcher-made questionnaire entitled ‘taboo words battery ‘. It consisted of 30 items in which taboo words were contextualized, italicized and printed in bold. Each item had a 5-point Likert scale. Items were designed according to their severity, say degree of offensiveness they carry. The performance of these groups was measured through independent-samples t-tests. The results suggest that there is a statistically significant difference and effect size of 0.1 between Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers in the perception of English taboo words. i.e., both groups of participants took severity of English taboo words differently. Based on the findings of this study, it can be claimed that severity of English taboo words varies among different cultures. In a word, offensiveness of English taboo words is culture specific.

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2004

This paper investigates the perception of emotional force of swearwords and taboo words (S-T words) among 1039 multilinguals. It is based on data drawn from a large database collected through a web questionnaire on bilingualism and emotions. t -Tests revealed that the perceived emotional force of S-T words is highest in the L1 and gradually lower in languages learned subsequently. Self-reported L1 attriters were found to judge S-T words in their L1 to be less powerful than those who are still dominant in their L1. Participants who learned their language(s) in a naturalistic Á / or partly naturalistic Á / context gave higher ratings on emotional force of S-T words in that language than instructed language learners. Self-rated proficiency in a language and frequency of use of language significantly predicted perception of emotional force of S-T words. Age of onset of learning was found to only predict perception of emotional force of S-T words in the L2.

Language functions to convey expression and content, either for their self or for others. Some people tend to use swear words in certain conditions and situation to show their feeling or just to express an inconvenience. In other words, swear word is closely related to anger expression. This paper examines the use of English swear words in certain simulated anger situations in order to know what kinds of swear words that the respondents use. The data were gathered through some simulated anger situations which were made by considering certain social dimensions. The respondents are the university students who were taken randomly through different classes. This study shows that certain English swear words are commonly used by the respondents and the social status of respondents governs as an important aspect.

Galicia Studies in Linguistics, Literature and Culture: The Students' Voices 5, 2017

2017

Potentially, there exists language phenomenon in every society such as taboo words or expressions. Taboo word occured in the society as a part of the culture which perhaps are different in terms of meaning and form. Cerainly, those taboo words will be disadavantage to EFL/ESL learning if they resemble to the English words. This study was intended to investigate 1) the existence of taboo words used in daily verbal communication in Thai society; 2) how the taboo words implicate to Thai learners’ EFL learning. This study was qualitative which employed the researchers themselves as the key instrument. The subjects of the study which also became the source of the data were Southern Thai EFL learners. The data were collected by using interview and documentation. The data analysis was conducted in three stages: reducing data, displaying the data, and drawing conclusion or verifying the data. The findings irevealed that there existed a lot taboo words in Thai society. Keywords: Linguistic t...

International Journal of Language Studies, 2014

2017

Historically, swearing is assumed as a form of the curse but since the sexual revolution happens in 1960, swearing not only used as a form of cursing, it can be used as a form of insult, emphasis, or even strengthen the bond between friends and co-worker. A Sociolinguistic analysis of swearing words in Celebrity read mean tweets purposes is to find out types and functions of swearing based on the meaning of the word. The data is gotten from the tweets in celebrity read mean tweets. The design of this research is qualitative research. For collecting the data, the researcher retypes all the swear words found in the celebrity read mean tweets with left the tweet without swear words, change the data from video into the word file. Then, the technique for analyzing the data was by pointing out the swear words and describing its meaning with the dictionary. The researcher has also categorized the type and function from the highest to the lowest. In the end, the result was found is sex swear words are the most frequent type of swearing and abusive swearing is the most frequent function of swearing. The conclusion is many of the cursing in religious terminology is changed with sex, and people cursing with sex swear words. Also, the genderbased swear words not only uttered based on the sex addresse, but can be also addressed by its opposite sex because the gender-based swear words can be used as the epithet for people. And the last is the swear words can be used as adjective, noun or adverb without following the grammatical rules from these three subject, because of the wide-usage of swear words.

Cursing is a universal and enduring human activity. As such it provides a window into human ethology, psychology, and culture. It is inherently related to taboo and its symbiotic other – euphemism. This chapter will begin with an overview of key scholarly insights on cursing, taboo, and euphemism, from psychology, anthropology, linguistics and related fields, to be followed by a review of research on these phenomena in Chinese, and conclude with brief suggestions of future directions.