DOCSLIB.ORG

The Discourses of Sex Crimes

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Discourses of Sex Crimes The Discourses of Sex Crimes Mary Little A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Gail Stygall, Chair Thomas Cobb Sandra Silberstein Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English © Copyright 2017 Mary Little University of Washington Abstract The Discourses of Sex Crimes Mary Little Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Gail Stygall English Department This project critically examines the language of sex crimes in order to reveal the ways that legal structures are embedded with what Susan Ehrlich describes as “androcentric and sexist assumptions that typically masquerade as ‘objective’ truths.” I use a feminist interdisciplinary approach to assess the common discourses of acquaintance rape and sex work in the United States in order to demonstrate how cultural myths of sexual behavior inform legal standards. These presumably neutral legal standards in turn influence broader discourses of sexuality and sexual crime, lending them a convincing authority. Consequently, these inherently gendered discourses have become inextricable from the legal realities of sexual crime and serve to mitigate or justify violence against women while at the same time defending perpetrators. My research supports the idea that legal reform of sex crimes and the eradication of harmful sex crime discourses requires a two-pronged approach on a legal level and a cultural level. Changing societal attitudes about sex crimes, in particular ideologies of sexuality and gender, is necessary for these harmful discourses to be discontinued. Simultaneously, more attention needs to be paid to judicial training and continuing education regarding sexual crime in order to eradicate these discourses from our legal system and achieve successful legal reform of these crimes. Acknowledgments I would like to first thank Professor Beth Britt, whose Rhetoric of Law class at Northeastern University first introduced me to legal rhetoric and inspired my love for legal discourse, and who was infinitely encouraging and supportive of my choice to attend graduate school. I would also like to thank my committee for their insightful comments and conversations about this project, without which this project would be a lot less coherent. Thank you to Sandy Silberstein, who provided much-needed editing and constructive feedback and came through for me in clutch moments when I thought this project would never get done. Thank you to Tom Cobb, who I roped into my research several years ago, and who has been invaluable in furthering my legal education and encouraging me with his enthusiasm ever since. I’m sorry for always trying to foist carbs on you. Special thanks to my Chair Gail Stygall, who has been guiding me through the abyss of legal interdisciplinary work since day one. You’ve not only been instrumental in completing this project, but you’ve also been a great gossip partner, rant-listener, and most importantly, mentor. Eternal thanks to Lilly Campbell, whose friendship was at least 40% of the reason I stayed in graduate school, and who led by such example that we all knew if you were 6-8 months behind her academic accomplishments you were still in excellent shape. You’ve been an inspiration to me, and forever be the only reason I visit Wisconsin. Last but not least I’d like to thank Josh. A guy who is thorny, but not totally inaccessible, and who has learned way more about rape than he probably ever wanted to. Thanks for making me laugh, for cooking me risotto, and for being a great partner. It’s likely I could have written this without you in my life, but I’m glad I didn’t have to. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1. Feminist Theories of Discourse and Law………………………………………….3 Chapter 2. Governmentality and the Gendered Language of US Prostitution Laws………….37 Chapter 3. The Discourses of Rape……………………………………………………………82 Chapter 4. The “Gray Rape” Discourse: When Rape Isn’t Really Rape……………………..115 Chapter 5. The Problem with Textualism: A Feminist Critique ……………………………..164 Chapter 6. Legal Reform and Cultural Change……………………………………………….218 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..228 Introduction: Outline of the Dissertation This dissertation is divided into six chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of the discourses of sex crimes. Chapter 1’s purpose is to outline the feminist theories framing my analyses, as well as to justify my approach to examine the discourses of sex crimes with an explicit feminist focus. In Chapter 2, “Governmentality and the Gendered Language of US Prostitution Laws” I draw on Foucauldian ideas of discourse and governmentality in order to examine the language of sex work in the United States. I first briefly trace the history of prostitution in the United States and summarize the current state of sex work. I then compare how the language of the law, culled from various US state penal codes, aligns with conventional beliefs regarding women’s sexuality and with traditional charges made against prostitution, in order to assess the gendered ideologies underpinning the laws. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on rape myths and the discourses of acquaintance rape. In Chapter 3, I synthesize research on rape myths and rape scripts with traditional discourses of rape to establish a theoretical framework for my analysis in Chapter 4. I trace the origins of rape myths and rape scripts in order to illustrate that the logic of various rape discourses, in particular gray rape discourses, are justified by sexist ideologies. I demonstrate how rape myths and scripts have been built upon scientific and cultural understandings of sex and gender, and how these inform common discourse of rape. In Chapter 4 I analyze two prominent campus rape cases in order to show how folk ideas of language and sexual relationships intersect and are then used to both discredit rape victims and defend rapists, allowing for the continued denial of acquaintance rape as “real rape.” Chapter 5 explores how legal methods of interpretation can have a significant impact on how issues of gender are taken up in the law. In particular, I discuss the flaws of a Textualist 1 approach, from a legal theory as well as a discourse theory perspective, and argue that Textualism as an interpretive approach obscures gendered ideologies embedded within the law. Additionally, because Textualism is framed as being based in rational, logical thought, it reifies gendered stereotypes and presents them as simple truisms, allowing the law to both hide sexist ideologies and perpetuate them. Because a Textualist approach by definition ignores social context, it allows the law to ignore the realities of women’s experiences and thereby denies women equal treatment on legal terms. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes and evaluates the conclusions of my project and delves more deeply into the relationship between law reform and cultural change. Specifically, I pull from Susan Caringella’s book on rape reform to argue that legal reform of sex crimes, and the eradication of harmful sex crime discourses, requires a 2-prong approach; on a legal level and a cultural level. Changing societal attitudes about gender issues, in particular ideologies of sex and gender, is necessary for continued success in legal reform of sex crimes. In particular, I focus on how education, especially judicial training and continuing education, is they key element in eradicating these discourses. 2 Chapter 1: Feminist Theories of Discourse and Law There seems little point to our academic interests [in language and gender] if they do not at some stage articulate with real-world concerns and enable us or our readers to identify practices [that are] based more on stereotypes and prejudice than they are on people’s actual behavior in the real world. At some point, our research has to be able to travel out of the academy order to draw attention to and challenge unquestioned practices that reify certain behaviors as being morally, or aesthetically, better than others (Holmes and Meyerhoff 14). Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff make this articulate pronouncement in the introduction to the book The Handbook of Language and Gender as part of their framing of the articles within. When I first read this passage, I was impressed with the explicitness and pointedness of such a statement; rarely in my academic pursuits had I come across such a blatant dismissal of bland theoretical research expressed in such a matter-of-fact way. I also felt like I had finally found the academic idols I had been looking for; women who only saw value in research that contributed meaningfully to real-world concerns in order to challenge the stereotypes and prejudices that plague our society. I too see little point in doing research on topics in language and gender that exist only to scintillate academic interests, and find myself increasingly frustrated by abstruse scholarly research that only serves to justify an academic’s existence in the world. Therefore, I have done my best to produce scholarship that embodies what Holmes and Meyerhoff describe—every chapter attempts to draw attention to or challenge conventional views of women within the law, and illustrate when legal practice has been based on stereotypes and prejudice instead of on realities. In order to do this, I have taken an explicit feminist approach to my topics, meaning I begin this research from the position that historically, women have been unfairly discriminated against in a number of ways and my research will hopefully contribute to changing that. Kathleen Barry, distinguished sociologist and feminist, once wrote that, “the facts of women’s subordination often lie in realities that are obscured in silence or normalized in 3 acceptance but that nevertheless dehumanize and brutalize us as women even when we do not directly experience their most extreme manifestations” (84). That is, women’s continued relegation to “lesser than” is often camouflaged as “normal,” and the ramifications of this can be extreme, especially within the law.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Principles of U.S. Family Law Vivian E
    College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 2006 Principles of U.S. Family Law Vivian E. Hamilton William & Mary Law School, [email protected] Repository Citation Hamilton, Vivian E., "Principles of U.S. Family Law" (2006). Faculty Publications. 184. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/184 Copyright c 2006 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs ARTICLE PRINCIPLES OF U.S. FAMILY LAW Vivian Hamilton* What explains US. family law? What are the orzgms of the current chaos and controversy in the field, the home of some of the most vituperative debates in public policy? To answer these questions, this Article identifies and examines family law's foundational principles. It undertakes a conceptual analysis ofthe legal practices that govern families. This analysis has yet to be done, and its absence hamstrings constructive thought on our family law. The Article develops a typology that conceptualizes US. family law and exposes its underlying principles. First, it identifies the significant elements, or rules, of family law. Second, it demonstrates that these rules reflect or embody four important concepts­ conjugality, privacy (familial as well as individual), contract, and parens patriae. Third, it shows that the concepts offamily law in turn embody two distinct underlying principles-Biblical traditionalism and liberal individualism. From these powerful principles, we can derive modern U.S. family law: They explain what our family law is. With this deepened understanding offamily law's structure, the Article next evaluates these principles, and family law as the expression ofthem.
    [Show full text]
  • Slurs Language Sciences
    Language Sciences xxx (2010) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci Slurs ⇑ Adam M. Croom Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, 619 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Cohen Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Walnut Street Suite 400A, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA article info abstract Article history: Slurs possess interesting linguistic properties and so have recentlyattracted the attention of Received 13 June 2010 linguists and philosophers of language. For instance the racial slur nigger is explosively Received in revised form 10 November 2010 derogatory, enough so that just hearing it mentioned can leave one feeling as if they have Accepted 11 November 2010 been made complicit in a morally atrocious act. (Jennifer Hornsby has suggested that slurs Available online xxxx might count as ‘‘hate speech’’ and so raise questions ‘‘about the compatibility of the regu- lation of [hate] speech with principles of free speech’’ (2001, p. 129). Chris Hom further sug- Keywords: gests that, ‘‘the use of an epithet may count as a literal threat, and hence no longer merit Euphemisms freedom of speech protection under the First Amendment’’ (2008, p. 440). A close analysis Philosophy of language Politeness of slurs is clearly required before we can make informed decisions about this serious issue.) Pragmatics Indeed, the very taboo nature of these words makes discussion of them typically prohibited Semantics or frowned upon. Although it is true that the utterance of slurs is illegitimate and deroga- tory in most contexts, sufficient evidence suggests that slurs are not always or exclusively used to derogate.
    [Show full text]
  • Age and Sexual Consent
    Per Se or Power? Age and Sexual Consent Joseph J. Fischel* ABSTRACT: Legal theorists, liberal philosophers, and feminist scholars have written extensively on questions surrounding consent and sexual consent, with particular attention paid to the sorts of conditions that validate or vitiate consent, and to whether or not consent is an adequate metric to determine ethical and legal conduct. So too, many have written on the historical construction of childhood, and how this concept has influenced contemporary legal culture and more broadly informed civil society and its social divisions. Far less has been written, however, on a potent point of contact between these two fields: age of consent laws governing sexual activity. Partially on account of this under-theorization, such statutes are often taken for granted as reflecting rather than creating distinctions between adults and youth, between consensual competency and incapacity, and between the time for innocence and the time for sex. In this Article, I argue for relatively modest reforms to contemporary age of consent statutes but propose a theoretic reconstruction of the principles that inform them. After briefly historicizing age of consent statutes in the United States (Part I), I assert that the concept of sexual autonomy ought to govern legal regulations concerning age, age difference, and sexual activity (Part II). A commitment to sexual autonomy portends a lowered age of sexual consent, decriminalization of sex between minors, heightened legal supervision focusing on age difference and relations of dependence, more robust standards of consent for sex between minors and between minors and adults, and greater attention to the ways concerns about age, age difference, and sex both reflect and displace more normatively apt questions around gender, gendered power and submission, and queer sexuality (Part III).
    [Show full text]
  • The Healing Ministry of Jesus As Recorded in the Synoptic Gospels
    Loma Linda University TheScholarsRepository@LLU: Digital Archive of Research, Scholarship & Creative Works Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects 6-2006 The eH aling Ministry of Jesus as Recorded in the Synoptic Gospels Alvin Lloyd Maragh Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd Part of the Medical Humanities Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Maragh, Alvin Lloyd, "The eH aling Ministry of Jesus as Recorded in the Synoptic Gospels" (2006). Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects. 457. http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/457 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TheScholarsRepository@LLU: Digital Archive of Research, Scholarship & Creative Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects by an authorized administrator of TheScholarsRepository@LLU: Digital Archive of Research, Scholarship & Creative Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LOMA LINDA, CALIFORNIA LOMA LINDA UNIVERSITY Faculty of Religion in conjunction with the Faculty of Graduate Studies The Healing Ministry of Jesus as Recorded in the Synoptic Gospels by Alvin Lloyd Maragh A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Clinical Ministry June 2006 CO 2006 Alvin Lloyd Maragh All Rights Reserved Each person whose signature appears below certifies that this thesis in his opinion is adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree Master of Arts. Chairperson Siroj Sorajjakool, Ph.D7,-PrOfessor of Religion Johnny Ramirez-Johnson, Ed.D., Professor of Religion David Taylor, D.Min., Profetr of Religion 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank God for giving me the strength to complete this thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Sex and the Law
    1 SEX AND THE LAW This factsheet summarises the legal position in relation to the age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland, and outlines the new sexual offences legislation in light of the revision of sexual offences legislation in Northern Ireland. Key facts • The age of sexual consent has been reduced from 17 to 16 years of age. • There is no longer a statutory duty to report to the police cases of sexual activity involving a young person aged 13 to 16 years old, where the other person is under 18 years of age. • There is now a new set of offences to protect persons with a mental disorder from sexual abuse. The Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 The Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008, which was approved by Parliament in June 2008 came into force on 2nd February 2009. It incorporated significant changes to the law in relation to sexual offences in Northern Ireland, better protection for young people from sexual abuse and exploitation and seeks to clarify issues surrounding consent in sexual assault cases and rape. Key elements included: • lowering the age of sexual consent from 17 years of age to 16 years of age • a set of offences to protect persons with a mental disorder • new offences of kerb crawling and soliciting for prostitution • tighter penalties for keeping a brothel • more clarity on the abuse of positions of trust offences • gender neutrality. All sexual activity with a young person of either gender under the age of 16 is now illegal, even if both parties are under 16 – this is the same as the rest of the UK.
    [Show full text]
  • Ÿþw R I T I N G F E a T U R E S T O R I
    Writing Feature Stories -pages 1/12/03 2:20 PM Page i WRITING FEATURE STORIES Writing Feature Stories -pages 1/12/03 2:20 PM Page ii Writing Feature Stories -pages 1/12/03 2:20 PM Page iii WRITING FEATURE STORIES How to research and write newspaper and magazine articles Matthew Ricketson Writing Feature Stories -pages 1/12/03 2:20 PM Page iv Every effort has been made by the author and publisher to contact copyright holders of materials quoted extensively. Unacknowledged copyright holders should contact the publisher with any queries. First published in 2004 Copyright © Matthew Ricketson 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication entry: Ricketson, Matthew, 1958– Writing feature stories: how to research and write newspaper and magazine articles. Includes index. ISBN 1 86508 732 7. 1. Authorship 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Age of Consent and the Law
    Age Of Consent And The Law Tiebold is nary and deoxidised rompishly while isodimorphic Austin aphorises and experimentalize. Conjugated now.Wylie Julio still expertising: rambling mannishly. ablated and glinting Alexander classifying quite precipitously but monograph her scofflaws At the same time, raising the age below which girls would need to obtain consent from a parent or guardian or other third party would make teenaged women and their bodies involuntary vessels for gestating babies. The table includes the age requirements for both the actor and the child, and notes if the offense is a felony or a misdemeanor. Are there certain exceptions to the law in Colorado? Marriage is a defense to certain sex crimes. It does not address state laws that empower minors to consent for substance abuse treatment, mental health care, treatment for contagious diseases or reproductive health. Someone Who Must Register as a Sex Offender? Policy debates around the age of sexual consent have focused on three main issues: child protection; the age of expected sexual activity; and the age of maturity. The information in our publications is not a substitute for legal advice. Task Force provides to the Legislature. Commissioner of Developmental Services in any public or private facility or program and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary authority over such other person. Such as it is anchored by reason for the consent and the age of consent? At the sexual activity anyway, and the law indicates the age of the authority figures declared themselves. People with learning disabilities: Sex, the law and consent. This mainly refers to a minor engaging in intercourse with adult.
    [Show full text]
  • The Semantics of Racial Slurs”
    Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations Volume 13, 2014, pp. 11–32, ISSN 1841-2394 REMARKS ON “THE SEMANTICS OF RACIAL SLURS” ADAM M. CROOM [email protected] University of Pennsylvania ABSTRACT. In “The Semantics of Racial Slurs,” an article recently published in Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, Hedger (2012) draws upon Kaplan’s (1999) distinction between descriptive and expressive content to argue that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content. Here I review the key considerations presented by Hedger (2012) in support of his purely expressive account of slurs and provide clear reasons for why it must ultimately be rejected. After reviewing the key cases Hedger (2012) offers for consideration in support of his view that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content, this article provides a critical evaluation of these cases, pointing out at least 13 ways in which his purely expressive analysis of slurs fails. In considering the 13 ways in which the purely expressive analysis of slurs remains inadequate, this article concludes with the suggestion that an adequate account of slurs will ultimately involve not only an expressive aspect but a descrip- tive aspect also. Keywords: slurs, epithets, philosophy of language, semantics, pragmatics, expressivism 1. Introduction In “The Semantics of Racial Slurs,” an article recently published in Lin- guistic and Philosophical Investigations, Hedger (2012) draws upon Kap- lan’s (1999) distinction between descriptive and expressive content to argue that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content.1 In this article I review the key considerations presented by Hedger (2012) in support of his purely expressive account of slurs and provide clear reasons for why it must ultimately be rejected.
    [Show full text]
  • Does Yes Mean Yes? Exploring Sexual
    Does Yes Mean Yes? Exploring Sexual Coercion in Normative Heterosexuality HEDDA HAKVÅG Dans cet article l’auteure assure que la rhétorique du consente- inherently distinct from sex. MacKinnon argued instead ment utilisée dans l’activisme anti-viol actuel est obnubilée that violence is inherent to sexuality because sexuality par la présence de la coercition sexuelle dans les relations is constructed from the viewpoint of male supremacy hétérosexuelles La sexualité des hommes a été définie comme (480). While this has often been (mis)interpreted as an active et celle des femmes comme en manque de désir. Cette “anti-sex” argument, MacKinnon’s argument is in reality coercition est intégrée ce qui donne des pratiques sexuelles far more complex. Consent, according to MacKinnon, is non-désirées et consensuelles. Pour enrayer cette culture du not an impossibility. It is, however, contentious because viol il faut une ré-figuration radicale de l’hétérosexualité et it occurs in a context of women’s inequality and limited de la place du sexe dans les relations personnelles. possibilities (484-85). Our cultural understanding of sex and heterosexuality has been shaped around the erotici- Current feminist anti-rape activism centres around a zation of dominance and submission, and this cultural rhetoric of consent versus non-consent. With slogans like discourse is likely to affect our desires (480-82). From this “No Means No” and “Only Yes Means Yes!,” anti-rape perspective, consent becomes a contentious issue, because activists emphasize the importance of consent and foster false consciousness or internalization of submission is awareness of sexual assault in the public consciousness.
    [Show full text]
  • SEX and the LAW, by Morris Ploscowe, with an Introduction by Roscoe Pound, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1951, Pp
    194 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS CITY LAW REVIEW SEX AND THE LAW, by Morris Ploscowe, with an introduction by Roscoe Pound, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1951, pp. ix, 310, $3.95. Reviewed by Quintin Johnstone, Associate Professor of Law, University of Kansas. One way of judging the value of a book is to determine who will read it and what service it will be to its readers. By this standard Sex and the Law has very limited value. It considers best seller, Sunday supplement topics, sex and crime; but is an objective, non-sensational treatment of these subjects. This means that it will not be widely read by the popular reading public. Nor will it be read by many lawyers because, as a dissertation on formal law, its coverage is sketchy with meager citations of cases and statutes. The treatment of sex crimes is a good, brief introduction to the subject, and merits attention by law students and novitiate prosecutors. Sex and the Law also is good background reading for the non-lawyers who work with problems of family discord and sex crime. These include clergymen, physicians, social workers, marriage coun­ selors, sociologists, and criminologists. Morris Proscowe, the author of Sex and the Law, is a New York judge with some years of judicial experience in the fields about which he writes. Unfortunately he gives little attention to that which he is most qualified to discuss, namely, a first hand account of how family and sex crime laws are administered. His comments about how such laws work are summaries of observations made previously by respectable authorities.
    [Show full text]
  • Babbmakingmeaningsot2013.Pdf (856.7Kb)
    MAKING MEANING OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN ANCIENT CHRISTIAN SACRED LITERATURE JEANNIE K. BABB Project under the direction of Doctor Paul Holloway Sexual violence against women appears in many genres of literature sacred to ancient Christianity, from foundational myths in Genesis through apocalyptic symbolism in the Revelation, and on into the martyr stories used liturgically by the church. These passages have damaged women, men, church, and society when taken as normative or prescriptive passages about human behavior. Recontextualizing sexual violence against women as a literary trope allows us to consider its symbolic meaning in the text, while resisting that presumption that male domination and sexual violence are part of God’s plan for the church. This project involved analyzing selected passages featuring sexual violence against women, classifying the stories by genre, and considering the purpose of sexual violence in each text. Modern scholarship was considered along with analysis of the stories and comparison within and among the genres. Although each genre uses sexual violence against women differently, its meaning remains fairly consistent for a given genre. In the foundational myths of Genesis, rape serves an etiological or ethnological purpose, establishing relationships between tribes. Rape stories in Judges and 2 Samuel play off earlier use of sexual violence, but deploy it to advance political messages. In prophetic and apocalyptic literature, political entities are represented as women and threatened with sexual violence. In one variation (known as the marriage metaphor), Israel is depicted as the wayward wife of God whose downfall is the result of being unfaithful. In another version, a foreign city is feminized and raped.
    [Show full text]
  • Jelt : Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol.1 No.1 Tahun 2017
    Jelt : Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol.1 No.1 Tahun 2017 Swearing Words in “Celebrity Read Mean Tweets” in Jimmy Kimmel Late Night Show : A Sociolinguistic Study Rezky Surya Darma; Wennyta; Nurul Fitri English Education Study Program, Faculty of Teachers Training and Education, Batanghari University Abstract 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.
    [Show full text]