Final Year Project Not So “Chee Bai” Anymore: a Look at Hokkien Swear Words in Singapore and How They Have Changed Over Time
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Final Year Project Not so “chee bai” anymore: a look at Hokkien swear words in Singapore and how they have changed over time By Samantha Catherine Bok Shi Yun Supervised by Asst Prof František Kratochvíl 2012 Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2 Acknowledgements To my supervisor Asst Prof. František Kratochvíl, whose guidance, patience and humour were invaluable in the writing of this thesis; Thank you for being the grumpy reader I hope this paper never meets. To the participants who set aside time to discuss swear words with me; thank you for being open minded and candid. Any trauma caused was purely unintentional. To the family, who had to deal with a very stressed writer, thank you for understanding. To the friends who brought encouragement in the form of cake or alcohol, the ones who were always a phone call or a text away and to those who who were always annoyingly optimistic, thank you for pushing me. Thank you too; to the ones overseas, for caring and giving me perspective. Special thanks to the ones who were there from the beginning to the end, through the highs and the lows of this insane process .The ones who have seen me at my best,my worst and my most highstrung, I don’t know how I could have done it without any of you. CRYCRYCRY guys, it’s over. We have survived. To my grandparents, this is for you. 3 Abstract Swear words can be found in the lexicon of many natural languages. They can convey meaning and like any other language component which can convey meaning, are subject to change. Semantic change will thus be the focus of this study which seeks to identify and explore the diachronic change of Hokkien swear words in Singapore through comparing the way they are perceived and used by first, second and third generation ethnic Chinese Singaporeans. This study has found that that the swear word inventory of the third generation respondents has decreased significantly compared to the inventory of the first generation respondents. Many swear words have either weakened/ ameliorated to become normal words and/or have left the Hokkien lexicon entirely within a single generation. These swear words are generally those that violate one taboo. Those that are loaded (i.e violate more than one taboo) seem to be more resistant to forces of change. Yet the study shows that they are undergoing some sort of semantic weakening as well; in that they are no longer able to express the same intensity of anger as before. Swear words which start out as innovations in the second generation have also failed to be transmitted successfully to the third generation. These changes, as I go on to argue in the paper, can be largely attributed to the occurrence of language shift in Singapore. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Defining swear words .......................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Taboos reflected in swear words ...................................................................................... 2 2.1.1 Types of taboos in swear words ................................................................................ 4 2.2 Swear words and non-literal usage ............................................................................... 6 2.3 Swear words and emotion ............................................................................................ 6 3.Swearing as a speech act ....................................................................................................... 8 3.1 Swearing and context ....................................................................................................... 9 3.2 Functions of swearing ...................................................................................................... 9 3.2.1 Swearing as a means of emotional release .............................................................. 10 3.2.2 Swearing as a means of intensifying emotion ......................................................... 10 3.2.3 Swearing as a means of establishing and maintaining social relations ................... 10 3.2.4 Swearing as a means of structuring discourse ......................................................... 11 4. Hokkien in Singapore ........................................................................................................ 11 5. Language change ................................................................................................................ 13 5.1 Semantic change ............................................................................................................. 13 6. Research hypotheses and goals ......................................................................................... 15 7.Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 16 7.1 Procedure ........................................................................................................................ 16 7.2 Instruments ..................................................................................................................... 16 7.3 Test words ...................................................................................................................... 17 8. Results ................................................................................................................................. 21 8.1 Overall change ................................................................................................................ 22 8.1.1 Taboos in Hokkien swear words ............................................................................. 23 8.1.2 The development of acronyms ................................................................................ 25 8.2 Establishing individual change over time ...................................................................... 26 8.2.1 Words that start off as swear words but have lost this status over time (weakening .............................................................................................................................................. 28 8.2.2 Words that do not start off as swear words but have gained swear word status over time (strengthening) .................................................................................................. 29 8.2.3 Addition and loss ..................................................................................................... 31 5 8.2 Swearing and anger ........................................................................................................ 32 8.4 Swearing and semantic reference ................................................................................... 37 9. Discussion........................................................................................................................... 39 9.1 The effect of language shift ........................................................................................... 39 9.2 The effect of taboo loading ............................................................................................ 40 10. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 42 11. References ......................................................................................................................... 44 12. Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 50 A. List of test words ............................................................................................................. 50 B. List of interview questions .............................................................................................. 52 C. Follow up questionnaire ................................................................................................. 55 D. Interview transcription ................................................................................................... 60 Table of Contents (Diagrams) Diagram 1: Framework for linguistic taboo analysis (Huang & Tian, 1990) ........................... 3 Diagram 2: Summary of findings for language change of taboo words .................................. 28 Diagram 3: Number of swearwords perceived by both respondents of each generation ........ 42 Table of Contents (Tables) Table 1: Taboos reflected in swear words ............................................................................... 5 Table 2: Sexual Organ taboos .................................................................................................. 18 Table 3: Sexual interocurse taboos ......................................................................................... 18 Table 4: Ancestral allusions taboos ....................................................................................... 19 Table 5: Sexual intercourse + Ancestral allusions taboos ....................................................... 19 Table 6:Sexial organs + Sexual intercourse + Ancestral allusions taboos ............................. 20 Table 7: Sexual intercourse + Animal names ........................................................................ 20 6 Table 8: Identified swear words .............................................................................................. 21 Table 9: Breakdown of responses for individual