Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Pavel Peléšek Artificial Taboo Words in Contemporary English Fiction Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CsC. 2015 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, Csc. for her advice and patience. I also owe my gratitude to my room-mate Radim for waking me up every day to start writing and to my girlfriend Nikol, who waited patiently for me to finish. Table of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................................................................................6 2. Theoretical Background...............................................................................................10 2.1 Taboo Language....................................................................................................10 2.2 Reasons for Creating New Taboo Words..............................................................12 2.2.1 Censorship.....................................................................................................13 2.2.2 Plausibility.....................................................................................................14 2.2.3 Artistic Effect................................................................................................15 2.3 Means of Creating New Taboo Words..................................................................16 2.3.1 Coinage of new words...................................................................................16 2.3.2 Semantic Change...........................................................................................16 2.3.3 Borrowing.....................................................................................................17 2.4 Selected Works......................................................................................................18 2.4.1 Television Series and Films...........................................................................19 1)Battlestar Galactica........................................................................................19 2)Farscape..........................................................................................................20 3)Red Dwarf......................................................................................................21 4)Mork & Mindy...............................................................................................22 5)Firefly.............................................................................................................22 6)Stargate Atlantis.............................................................................................23 7)Blade Runner..................................................................................................23 2.4.2. Literature......................................................................................................24 1)Harry Potter....................................................................................................24 2)Discworld.......................................................................................................25 3)The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy............................................................25 4)A Clockwork Orange......................................................................................26 2.4.3 Video and Tabletop Games............................................................................26 1)Dragon Age....................................................................................................26 2)Shadowrun......................................................................................................27 3. Analysis of the Artificial Taboo Language in Selected Works of Fiction....................28 3.1 Newly-coined Words and Semantic Change.........................................................29 1) Frak (Battlestar Galactica)............................................................................29 2) Felgercarb, feldergarb (Battlestar Galactica)................................................31 3) Frell (Farscape).............................................................................................33 4) Dren (Farscape).............................................................................................35 5) Smeg (Red Dwarf)........................................................................................36 6) Shazbot (Mork & Mindy) .............................................................................38 7) Gorram (Firefly)............................................................................................40 8) Rutting, humped (Firefly).............................................................................41 3.2 Words Alluding to the Fictional Universe.............................................................42 1) Mudblood (Harry Potter)...............................................................................42 2) Muggle-lover, Blood traitor (Harry Potter)...................................................43 3) Voldemort (Harry Potter)..............................................................................43 4) Toaster (Battlestar Galactica)........................................................................45 5) Andraste (Dragon Age).................................................................................46 6) The Stone (Dragon Age)...............................................................................48 7) Lawn Ornament (Discworld)........................................................................50 8) The Gap (Discworld) ....................................................................................51 9) Zarquon (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)..........................................52 3.3 Loanwords and Other Languages.........................................................................54 1) Chinese (Firefly)...........................................................................................54 2) Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)......................................................................55 3) Japanese (Shadowrun)...................................................................................57 4) Cityspeak (Blade Runner, Shadowrun).........................................................58 5) Czech (Stargate Atlantis)...............................................................................60 3.4 Words Merely for Artistic Effect...........................................................................61 1) Belgium (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).........................................61 2) Effing stairs (Discworld)...............................................................................63 4. Conclusion...................................................................................................................65 5. Works Cited.................................................................................................................70 6. Resumé........................................................................................................................79 7. Resumé in Czech.........................................................................................................80 1. Introduction Offensive language has formed an inseparable part of human communication for as long as there was a language for the people to speak. It is used everyday by people to express contempt, to emphasise extraordinary facts, or simply as a stress relief. Even some of the oldest written texts are known to contain profanities, many belonging among religious texts, such as the Bible (2 Kings 18:27 ). And for as long as there has been the need for stories to be recorded, curses needed to be written down too. But not all readers of such books, spectators of such plays and listeners to such stories have been comfortable with profanities spoken so freely and publicly. This is one of the main reasons for the establishment of the institution of censorship. It has had a steady amount of work on its hands ever since, including editing offensive words, omitting inappropriate passages and sometimes even prohibiting faulty books altogether. Technological innovation and the appearance of new means of recording and reproducing human speech have also failed to avoid the use of coarse vocabulary, and its broad accessibility meant that more and more people would be exposed to these words and offended by the use of expressions they deemed inappropriate. This resulted in the creation of several organisations, committees and specialised authorities that supervise the use of acceptable language and prevent potentially improper phrases being uttered on live or recorded broadcasting and, if violated, asses the appropriate punishment or compensate for it by restricting its accessibility. Notable examples of these authorities could be the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, or the Federal Communications Commission of the United States of America The fines and restrictions issued by these agencies and broadcasting at a less favourable time of day in case of audiovisual media, and complications with publishing 6 in case of writers, brought some of the creators to seek alternative ways of maintaining the mood and spirit