Corpus-Based Study of Swearing in Spoken British English
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摘要
Swearing constitutes an important part of daily language use. However, despite several previous studies with foci on the social and cultural characteristics of swearwords, a large part of it remains to be investigated. With the abundant spoken language resources from British National Corpus(BNC), this article observes the pragmatic and collocational features of swearwords. Three social variables, namely, social class, speech domain, and gender were put under investigation to see how the use of swearwords varies with different speech social contexts. Meanwhile, the noun and adjective collocates of several frequent swearwords were separately sorted out and discussed. The data observed show that the use of swearwords is highly related to different social contexts, and there exits certain level of differentiation between different swearwords used as intensifiers which can be generalized lexicographically.
Swearing constitutes an important part of daily language use. However, despite several previous studies with foci on the social and cultural characteristics of swearwords, a large part of it remains to be investigated. With the abundant spoken language resources from British National Corpus(BNC), this article observes the pragmatic and collocational features of swearwords. Three social variables, namely, social class, speech domain, and gender were put under investigation to see how the use of swearwords varies with different speech social contexts. Meanwhile, the noun and adjective collocates of several frequent swearwords were separately sorted out and discussed. The data observed show that the use of swearwords is highly related to different social contexts, and there exits certain level of differentiation between different swearwords used as intensifiers which can be generalized lexicographically.
Swearing constitutes an important part of daily language use. However, despite several previous studies with foci on the social and cultural characteristics of swearwords, a large part of it remains to be investigated. With the abundant spoken language resources from British National Corpus(BNC), this article observes the pragmatic and collocational features of swearwords. Three social variables, namely, social class, speech domain, and gender were put under investigation to see how the use of swearwords varies with different speech social contexts. Meanwhile, the noun and adjective collocates of several frequent swearwords were separately sorted out and discussed. The data observed show that the use of swearwords is highly related to different social contexts, and there exits certain level of differentiation between different swearwords used as intensifiers which can be generalized lexicographically.
引文
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[2] MOHR M. Holy shit: a brief history of swearing[M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013: 13-14.
[3] MCENERY T. Swearing in English: bad language, purity and power from 1586 to the present[M]. London: Routledge, 2006.
[4] LUTZY U, KEHOE A. “Your Blog Is(The) Shit”. A corpus linguistic approach to the identification of swearing in computer mediated communication[J]. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2017, 21(2): 165-191.
[5] JAY T, JANSCHEWITZ K. The pragmatics of swearing[J]. Journal of Politeness Research, 2008, 4: 267-288.
[6] MCENERY A, XIAO Z H. Swearing in modern British English: the case of fuck in the BNC[J]. Language and Literature, 2004, 13(3): 235-268.
[7] BEEBE L. Polite Fictions: Instrumental Rudeness as Pragmatic Competence[C]// James E. Alatis, Carolyn A. Straehle, Brent Gallenberger and Maggie Ronkin(eds). Linguistics and the Education of Language Teachers: Ethnolinguistic, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistic Aspects. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1995:154-168.
[8] ZHANG J D, XIA M R. A gender study on the stance markers in British spoken English corpus[J]. Foreign Languages Research, 2015, 6: 10-16.(in Chinese)
[9] ZHANG J D, SHAO M. A BNC-based gender study on if conditionals[J]. Journal of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, 2017, 24(1): 76- 87.(in Chinese)
[10] HOLMES J. An introduction to sociolinguistics[M]. New York: Routledge, 2013: 167.
[11] ZHAO R H. Language and gender[M]. Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003: 179.(in Chinese)
[2] MOHR M. Holy shit: a brief history of swearing[M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013: 13-14.
[3] MCENERY T. Swearing in English: bad language, purity and power from 1586 to the present[M]. London: Routledge, 2006.
[4] LUTZY U, KEHOE A. “Your Blog Is(The) Shit”. A corpus linguistic approach to the identification of swearing in computer mediated communication[J]. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2017, 21(2): 165-191.
[5] JAY T, JANSCHEWITZ K. The pragmatics of swearing[J]. Journal of Politeness Research, 2008, 4: 267-288.
[6] MCENERY A, XIAO Z H. Swearing in modern British English: the case of fuck in the BNC[J]. Language and Literature, 2004, 13(3): 235-268.
[7] BEEBE L. Polite Fictions: Instrumental Rudeness as Pragmatic Competence[C]// James E. Alatis, Carolyn A. Straehle, Brent Gallenberger and Maggie Ronkin(eds). Linguistics and the Education of Language Teachers: Ethnolinguistic, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistic Aspects. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1995:154-168.
[8] ZHANG J D, XIA M R. A gender study on the stance markers in British spoken English corpus[J]. Foreign Languages Research, 2015, 6: 10-16.(in Chinese)
[9] ZHANG J D, SHAO M. A BNC-based gender study on if conditionals[J]. Journal of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, 2017, 24(1): 76- 87.(in Chinese)
[10] HOLMES J. An introduction to sociolinguistics[M]. New York: Routledge, 2013: 167.
[11] ZHAO R H. Language and gender[M]. Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003: 179.(in Chinese)