Usage and Origin of Expletives Usage
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MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE USAGE AND ORIGIN OF EXPLETIVES IN BRITISH ENGLISH DIPLOMA THESIS BRNO 2006 SUPERVISED BY: WRITTEN BY: ANDREW PHILIP OOOAKLANDOAKLANDAKLAND,, M.A. HANA ČECHOVÁ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I should like to thank to Mr. Andrew Philip Oakland, M.A. for his academic guidance and precious advice he provided me with and thus helped to accomplish the following thesis. I would also like to thank to Peter Martin Crossley for all his patience and kind help. BRNO, 20th APRIL 2006 DECLARATION I hereby declare that I have worked on this undergraduate diploma thesis on my own and that I have used only the sources listed in the bibliography. I also give consent to deposit this thesis at Masaryk University in the library or the Informational system of the Faculty of Education and to be made available for study purposes. ___________________________________________________ Hana ČECHOVÁ CONTENTS 4 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................6 2. WHAT ARE EXPLETIVES? ................................................................ 9 2.1 EXPLETIVES IN GRAMMAR 2.2 EXPLETIVES AS A PART OF SOCIO-LINGUISTICS 3. WHY DO PEOPLE USE EXPLETIVES? ................................................12 3.1 WHY DO WE SWEAR? 3.2 IS SWEARING A SIGN OF A WEAK MIND? 4. SWEARING IN HISTORICAL PERIODS ............................................. 20 4.1 OLD ENGLISH 4.2 MIDDLE ENGLISH 4.3 THE REFORMATION 4.4 THE RENAISSANCE 4.5 MODERN PERIOD 4.5.1 PYGMALION (1914) 4.5.2 LADY CHATTERLEY´S LOVER (1928, 1960) 4.5.3 OTHER INCIDENTS (1965-2004) 5. SEMANTIC CATEGORIES AND SPEAKERS PREFERENCES ..................56 5.1 HEAVEN AND HELL 5.2 SEX/BODY AND ITS FUNCTIONS 6. ETYMOLOGY OF SELECTED WORDS ..............................................63 6.1 THE F-WORD 6.2 THE C- WORD 7. BODY LANGUAGE ........................................................................67 8. RHYMING SLANG ...........................................................................71 9. RESEARCH .................................................................................73 10. CONCLUSION ...............................................................................75 11. SUMMARY/RESUMÉ ..................................................................77 11.1 IN ENGLISH 11.2 IN CZECH 11. BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................ 79 12. APPENDICES .................................................................................81 APPENDIX 1-2 RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS CHARTS APPENDIX 3 –7 MALE PARTICIPANTS TABLES APPENDIX 8 –12 FEMALE PARTICIPANTS TABLES APPENDIX 13 RESEARCH COMMENT APPENDIX 14 SEMANTIC CATEGORIES AND PREFERENCES APPENDIX 15 QUESTIONNAIRE 6 INTRODUCTION 1. INTRODUCTION Expletives, taboo words, bad language, swear words - we all know these expressions. Some of us use them freely, some of us do not dare say them, and others tend to faint at the slightest act of profanity while most of us pretend not to know and not to use them. This work attempts to present the reader with a general outline concerning the usage of English expletives, their etymology and preferences that native speakers of British English make while, if in fact, they use expletives. I am perfectly aware of how delicate the selected topic is, as bad language or taboo words – this is how we often refer to expletives – would, by great efforts of many, be banned from the English language corpus at once (see Chapter 4 – Swearing in historical periods). On the other hand, the actual usage of such disputable terminology by broad range of speakers proves expletives to be active and I dare say flourishing part of the language. Even though having been handled seriously as a matter of socio-linguistic study it still brings out hesitancy whether to be displayed in an open and public way. As was already mentioned, expletives are widely used by native speakers of a various background, education, faith, social status and gender. The question remains why profanity thrives in some places and is hardly heard in others. This ambivalent attitude towards the foul 7 INTRODUCTION language will be a subject matter of this thesis, based on used literature, London-Lund Corpus, BBC research Delete Expletives? (2000) and my own research carried out in London (during summers 2004 and 2005. See Chapter 9 and Appendices 3-13). In the following chapters I would like to acquaint the reader with etymologies of the most frequently used English expletives. As many of them are taboo words, I am going to list English euphemisms that are used to avoid speaking the words. Not much to our surprise many of the words originate in languages other than Old English or are regarded to be of an uncertain origin. On the other hand many of them entered other languages mainly via media such as the Internet, literature and last but not least – via film. I will also discuss those semantic fields or categories in which expletives tend to occur. Regarded as blasphemy are those expressions found in Heaven and Hell category, such as Gosh, Cor, blimey etc., usually preferred by female speakers – according to London-Lund Corpus. Another semantic field, listed under Sex/Body functions, predominantly used by male English speakers, deals with expletives expressing functions of human body by replacing anatomic and biological terms by those, say, incendiary ones. Grammatical categories in which expletives appear are also part of this work, illustrating morphological and syntactical forms and word 8 INTRODUCTION formations. Syntactically, a word can, for example, make an appearance in a sentence as a noun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb or most commonly an interjection, and this with or without changing its morphological form. Hopefully, this thesis will not be seen as propaganda for swearing but as an academic piece of writing regarding expletives as one of many aspects comprising the English language as a whole. Words viewed as especially offensive and vulgar are not spelled in full unless they are quotations and I inclined to use the most common form of showing expletives in the text which is in the asterisk form where an initial letter is given and so is the suffix in cases of possible confusion as to which word is actually hidden behind the signs or the initial letter plus hyphen combination (F*** or F-word ). Also finding a decent and reliable linguistic source for this rather unusual topic should be taken into account. There are many articles, books and links concerning bad language but few of sufficiently scientific and academic nature. 9 WHAT ARE EXPLETIVES? 2. WHAT ARE EXPLETIVES? There are two linguistic phenomena in English language that are referred to as expletives – first of them being grammatical and the second is a term of socio-linguistics. 2.1 EXPLETIVES IN GRAMMAR The first usage of this term is the one for syntactic filler. The position of the filler may be taken up by syllables, words or phrases and by filling the sentence it adds nothing to its meaning. A typical example is a dummy subject or preparatory – it - as shown in: “It was clear, that she had made up her mind about what to do with her life.” Preparatory it - occupies the place of the subject here and does not affect the meaning of what is said in the following clause. The entry is of Latin origin, from the word explētīvus 1- to fill out. However, expletives are more common in the language of poetry where they either 1 From Late Latin explētīvus, serving to fill out, from Latin explētus, past participle of explēre , to fill out : ex-, ex- + plēre, to fill. Source: CUSS CONTROL ACADEMY, [online]<http://www.cusscontrol.com/tips1.html> 20.2.2006 10 WHAT ARE EXPLETIVES? fill the meter or the sentence for flavour as in: “ It takes a brave man to do such a thing.” 2.2 EXPLETIVES AS A PART OF SOCIO-LINGUISTICS So-called expletive attributive, the second usage of the above mentioned term, is used in linguistics, closely socio-linguistics, to describe syntactic filler with an attributive meaning and frequently carrying a negative connotation. In this area we can find words such as bloody, damn, f *** ing, etc. Within a sentence structure attributive expletive takes up a position of a noun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb and an interjection. An expletive in a place of - a noun: He is an old git, isn´ t he? - an adjective: Y ou bloody fools! - a verb: Stop f*** in ´ round, would ya?! - an adverb: It was bloody marvellous! - an interjection: Oh Lord ! Not her again! Outside linguistics this term represents any bad language or profanity used meaningfully or without any particular meaning to add into the context. Famous quote including the term expletive – Expletive 11 WHAT ARE EXPLETIVES? deleted – appeared for example in Watergate 2 tape transcripts to prevent the committee from being shocked by these terms apparently having been used by the speakers on the tapes, including the president Nixon himself. There are other, though, more common expressions generally referring to English expletives such as: bad language, profanity, swearwords, cursing, cussing, foul language, flyting, etc. Preceding entries are defined in the subsequent chapter. 2 The Watergate Scandal (1972–1974) was an American political scandal and constitutional crisis that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Wikipedia [online] < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal> 15.3.2006 12 WHY DO PEOPLE USE EXPLETIVES? 3. WHY DO PEOPLE USE EXPLETIVES?