Descriptive Analysis of the Social Functions of Swearing in American English
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A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF SWEARING IN AMERICAN ENGLISH By KRISTY ANINA BEERS FAGERSTEN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2000 Copyright 2000 by Kristy Anina Beers Fagersten Dedicated to Karl Fagersten, the source of all sunshine. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any one of the words which are the focus of this dissertation could be used to describe me during the nearly 2-year process of writing. I was often unpleasant, at times miserable and surely difficult to live with. Nevertheless, Karl Fagersten endured me in my moments of fhistration, despair and apathy, tirelessly encouraged me and even proposed to me. He inspired this work and has given me unconditional support since its inception. It is with immeasurable pride that I submit this dissertation as Kristy Beers Fagersten. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to acknowledge my sisters Kelly Guswiler, Kimb Brown and Kerry Beers in writing, as the very thought of my debt to them renders me speechless. "Those girls" are responsible for any success I have ever had, and any that awaits me. This dissertation pales in comparison to each of their achievements, but I hope they are proud of me anyway. I would like to acknowledge each of the members of the dissertation committee: Dr. Diana Boxer, Dr. Ann Wehmeyer, Dr. Jean Casagrande and Dr. Timothy Hackenberg, for their participation and expert advice. In particular, I would like to thank Diana Boxer for her faith in me, constant encouragement, tolerance and humor, and Ann Wehmeyer for her carefiil reading and for taking a genuine interest in both the dissertation and in my development as a scholar. iv talks and friendship, A final word ot thanks goes to .lodi Nelms for her empathy, pep apropos advice . and to Relh Droppietnan. Ph.D., for years of good fun and great talks, and tor showing b> example that hard work pays off V 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT viii CHAPTERS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Review of Literature 1 Goals of the Present Study 20 2 METHODOLOGY 25 Sociolinguistic Principles 25 Data Collection 28 Speech Community 29 Observation of Spontaneous Speech 30 Questionnaire 33 Ethnographic Interview 40 Weaknesses of Methodology 45 Summary 49 3 SPONTANEOUS SPEECH 5 Introduction 51 General Totals: Race and Gender 51 Social Distance and Social Status 55 Tone of Swearing Utterance 57 Swear Words 68 Reaction to Swearing Utterance 81 Race Totals: Males and Females 86 Gender Differences in Swearing Behavior 95 Gender Differences According to Race 105 Summary 1 \ 5 vi ^ 8 4 QUESTIONNAIRE AND ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW 1 1 Introduction 118 Questionnaire Participants 1 1 Ethnographic Interview Informants 120 Offensiveness Ratings 120 Word-List Ratings 121 Dialogue Ratings 134 Questions on Self and Other Behavior 142 Reactions to the Questionnaire 1 69 Summary 171 5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 1 73 Summary 173 Limitations of the study 177 Directions for Future Research 178 Conclusions 188 APPENDICES A EXAMPLE FIELD NOTE CARD FOR OBSERVATION OF SPONTANEOUS SPEECH 190 B SPONTANEOUS SWEARING UTTERANCES 191 C EXAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE 224 D QUESTIONNAIRE DATA 230 E PARTICIPANT COMMENTS (QUESTIONNAIRE) 246 F ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS 254 REFERENCES 292 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 299 vii Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosopy A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF SWEARING IN AMERICAN ENGLISH By Kristy Anina Beers Fagersten August, 2000 Chair: Dr. Diana Boxer Major Department: Program in Linguistics The present study reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, focusing on an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Swearing utterances and details of the social context in which they were made were recorded discretely and anonymously with the use of field notes within the University of Florida undergraduate student speech community. Sixty members of this speech community also participated in a six-part questionnaire which elicited information regarding use of and attitudes towards swear words. Eleven of the questionnaire participants furthermore participated in an ethnographic interview to discuss the questioimaire and the subject of swearing in greater depth. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community as well as a highly offensive one. The resulting 'swearing paradox' poses the question of how frequency and offensiveness can viii 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. The use of swear words in conversational American English is revealed in this study to be a linguistic device used to affirm in-group membership and establish boundaries and social norms for language use. Intraspeaker and interspeaker variation in the use of and attitudes towards swear words is shown to be primarily a fimction of interlocutor gender and race. The data show evidence of males imposing standards of language use on females and suggest that different races use swear words to fulfil different social functions. Finally, the data suggest that the members of the focus speech community impose restrictions and standards on the swearing behavior of out-group members. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Review of Literature First Acknowledgements In 1930, Bell System TechnicalJournal published "The words and sounds of telephone conversations," by French, Carter and Koenig. The study served as a word frequency data base and was long considered an accurate representation of conversational English. However, the data included in the study represented only 75% of the data (80,000 words) originally collected. Omissions included proper names, titles, letters, numbers, inteijections and profanity. At 40% of the omitted data, profanity accounted for a corresponding 10% of the total data base. The French et al. study, an otherwise reliable source for naturalistic data, is deplored for the omission of profanity which "compromised a true picture of dirty word usage" (Jay, 1992, p. 115). Other word frequency studies (Dewey, 1923; Fairbanks, 1944; Haggerty, 1930; Thomdike and Lorge, 1944; Uhrbrock, 1935 in Cameron, 1969) have also been criticized for being curiously void of profanity due to the fact that their "word samples were gathered in such pristine situations and/or in such a biased manner that they couldn't possibly represent typical U.S. speech patterns" (Cameron (1969) p. 101). 1 2 The motivation for the omission and/or avoidance of profanity lies presumably in the controversial nature of such language use. According to Montagu (1967): Swearing, because it is so little understood, is still an equivocal form of conduct without social sanction. Hence, it has long pursued a fugitive existence in all such dark places as are not open to the light of social intercourse. That is to say, among many people, swearing is socially not tolerated in any form. (p. 1) Johnson and Fine (1985) note that the "sparse" attention to obscenity paid by researchers is indicative of the taboo nature of obscene language extending "beyond the public and into the research community" (p. 11 ), an opinion echoed by Fine (1979) and Rieber, Wiedemann and D'Amato (1979). A possible explanation for the avoidance is found in Harris' (1987) ontological treatise on swearing, in which he claims that "swearwords become unmentionable precisely because institutionalized swearing is the unique and marginal case where locution and illocution are one: the utterance is the deed and the deed is the utterance" (p. 187). Indeed, in Berger's (1970) opening paragraph of "Swearing and Society," he apologizes for his forthcoming use of language. Some sixty years after the Bell article, however, profanity is a legitimate research area within psychology, philology and linguistics (see Jay's 1992 bibliography which contains nearly 400 entries). Nevertheless, despite an increasing amount of attention devoted to profanity, the "true picture of dirty word usage" is still compromised. To date, linguistic research on profane language has focused primarily on the following areas: historical occurrences and evolution, grammar and semantics, frequency of usage and offensiveness ratings. Typically word-centered and context independent, these studies document the superficial trends and taboo status regarding "dirty word 3 usage," but shed little light on the function and interpretation of profane language use in a social context. According to Davis (1989), Once the importance of context is realized, one is led to see that any approach of the orthodox linguistic variety has no means of coming to grips with the underlying question, 'What makes [swearing] bad?' Rather, it assumes the existence of 'bad language' as a sociological given, and endeavors to account for its use. (p. 4) The following sections represent critical reviews of previous linguistic research on profanity, delineating the status of profane language according to the dominating perspectives. The sociolinguistic perspective will then be introduced, with reviews of studies on