As mentioned in the previous section, the main term in this study, swear word, is an umbrella term for several categories of language that can be deemed offensive. In this section, I will provide two categorisations of swear words based on their use or semantic differences.
However, these categories will be not implemented in the actual analysis, categorisation and comparison of the swear words, as the main priority of this thesis is the strength of the words.
Thus, the purpose of this section relates more to defining the main term used in this thesis and providing insight on what features constitute swearing. It would, however, be possible to study, for instance, whether the semantic categories of the words have changed in the subtitles or which translation strategy is most often used with each category.
Jay (1992:2–9) classifies the terms with which “dirty words” can be described into ten categories in terms of their use and the needs and intentions behind it. The classification is as follows:
1. Cursing – “The intent of cursing is to invoke harm on another person through the use of certain words or phrases” (Jay 1992:2). Examples: damn you, eat shit and die
5 One must, yet again, bear in mind that in this thesis, swear words are defined in relation to their
strength/offensiveness in normal and polite conversation, and not in any particular context as this could result in some fluctuation in their offensiveness.
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2. Profanity – “To be profane means to be ignorant or intolerant of the guidelines of a particular religious order [i.e.] employing religious terminology in a profane, secular, or indifferent manner” (Jay 1992:3). Examples: For the love of Christ, get off the phone! Does the Pope shit in the woods?6
3. Blasphemy – “A blasphemy is an attack on religion or religious doctrine. While profanity is related to the secular or indifferent (to religion), blasphemy aims directly at the church” (Jay 1992:3–4). Examples: Screw the Pope! Shit on what it says in the Bible!
4. Taboo – “A taboo operates to suppress or inhibit certain behavior, thoughts, or in this case, speech. [-] The function of the taboo is to prohibit the behavior of a speaker and preserve social cohesion” (Jay 1992:4).
5. Obscenity – “To call a word obscene means that it cannot be used freely; it is subject to restriction; and to use such speech is to risk sanctioning from the courts. While taboo restricts what speakers do, obscenity functions to protect listeners from harmful language. Obscenity laws control the content of books and the content of broadcasts” (Jay 1992:5). Examples: fuck, motherfucker, cunt as universally obscene words.
6. Vulgarity – “Vulgarity means the language of the common person, “the person in the street”, or the unsophisticated, unsocialized, or under-educated. Vulgarity does not serve any particular need or function beyond the normal communication demands of the common human” (Jay 1992:6). Examples: snot, bloody, up yours, booger, slut.
7. Slang – “Slang is a vocabulary that is developed in certain sub-groups [-] for ease of communication. The slang code serves to identify members of the group, while misuse or ignorance of it identifies non-members, which may be especially important in illegal transactions” (Jay 1992:6–7). Examples: pimp, cherry, dweeb, bennies.
8. Epithets – “Epithets are brief but forceful bursts of emotional language. They are powerful in presentation (loudness or duration) and in offensiveness than other types of cursing, for example, joking. The epithet is uttered from frustration, as when you hit your hand with a hammer” (Jay 1992:7). Example: shit, damn, hell, son of a bitch.
9. Insults and slurs – “Insults and slurs are verbal attacks on other people. These words are spoken to harm the other person by the word alone” (Jay 1992:8). Examples: bitch, bastard, fag, spic, nigger.
10. Scatology – “Scatological terms refer to human waste products and processes” (Jay 1992:6).
Examples: crap, shit, piss.
Jay points out that there is overlapping between these categories, and some words or expressions can be grouped in several categories, such as son of a bitch, which could be an insult or an epithet. It is indeed evident how some of the categories, such as profanity and blasphemy, seem to be difficult to distinguish from each other. Jay’s categories are extensive, but some of the categories, such as vulgarity or slang, are, in my opinion, not automatically quite what I’d consider as particularly offensive or “dirty” as, according to the definition given by Jay, they seem to have more to do with who is speaking rather than what is said and, thus, cannot necessarily be considered offensive as such.
6 Interestingly, this exact phrase presented as an example by Jay, does the Pope shit in the woods?, is actually found in the movie studied in this study.
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Another categorisation, concentrating more on the actual use of words in a certain situation than the underlying needs in general, is based on McEnery’s (2006:30) work on the Lancaster Corpus of Abuse, which contains a large number of examples7 of “bad language” use.
McEnery (2006:30) broadly groups the bad language words found in the corpus into six different categories in terms of their subject matter. The categories are the following:
1. Swear words (e.g. fuck, piss, shit)
2. Animal terms of abuse (e.g. pig, cow, bitch) 3. Sexist terms of abuse (e.g. bitch, whore, slut)
4. Intellect-based terms of abuse (e.g. idiot, prat, imbecile) 5. Racist terms of abuse (e.g. paki, nigger, chink)
6. Homophobic terms of abuse (e.g. queer). (McEnery 2006:30)
With regard to these categories, in my opinion, the ones that definitely belong under the term
‘swear words’ as it is used in this study, are, indeed, swear words8, as well as sexist terms of abuse, as they are quite clearly offensive regardless of context. As for the rest of the categories, it would, in my opinion, be better to look at each word separately and determine whether they can be considered strong enough to cause enough offence for them to be classified as swear words. For instance, in the second category, pig and cow are, in my opinion, not strong enough to be considered swear words in a normal context per se, whereas bitch, despite, as also mentioned in the previous section, being also used to refer to a female dog, does evoke feelings of offence when heard aloud.
The categories above could roughly be divided into swear words and strong insults, although this would be a very broad division. Tammi (2003, 2007), however, does separate swear words from insults, as evidenced in the fact that he published two separate dictionaries, one for swear words and another only for insults. His thoughts on swearing and insulting will be presented in the next section, which deals with the purposes for which swear words are used.
Hjort (2007b) also suggests that in Finnish, swear words and insults are separate notions, whereas in the English language, insults are usually considered as a sub-category of swear
7 According to McEnery (2006:30), the corpus contains 8,284 separate examples of “bad language” usage where the age, sex and social class of the speaker are known.
8 As can be seen here, McEnery views the term ‘swear words’ as merely one category of all offensive language, whereas, in this study, the same term can be considered an umbrella term, encompassing a wide range of offensive language use.
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words. In this thesis, strong insults such as asshole are considered as swear words, whereas milder insults such as idiot are not.
As can thus be seen, the term swear word, as used in this study, can refer to various kinds of words that may cause offence. I will present a list of the words collected from the movie that were, according to the definition used in this thesis, considered as swear words, in the method section.