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CHAPTER IV
RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section presents the references and senses found in each utterance containing taboo words and swear
words in Carlin‟s monologue Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television to answer the research question number one. The references and senses found include six themes
i.e. profanity, sexual activity, bodily effluvia, intimated part of the body, ancestral allusion, and name of animal. The second section describes how the taboo words and
swear words are used in this monologue to answer the research question number two. This section employs Pinker‟s typology of swearing i.e. descriptively, idiomatically,
abusively, emphatically, and cathartically.
4.1. The References and Senses of the Taboo Words and Swear Words
This section presents concisely the references and senses of the taboo words and swear words
found in Carlin‟s monologue Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television
. The references and senses are classified based on the theme to which they belong.
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4.1.1. Profanity
Profanity is the only theme of religious taboo in this monologue. There are two words which belong to this theme. Those two words are hell and damn. The word
hell refers to “place of eternal suffering” and the word damn refers to “the act of
condemning”. The word hell was tabooed by the effect of the power of Catholic
Church. This is when the Church was considered the law itself with its doctrine: extra ecclessia nulla salus
outside the Catholic Church there are no salvation. The reference of the word hell is “the place of eternal punishment”. The word damn has
the sense of “damnation, doom to punishment and inflict damage upon” if it is used as curse word e.g.
“damn you” Hughes 2006 says that this word was highly taboo for the two millennia p. 116. Nevertheless, as a result of the secularization of the
society, this word‟s terrifying notion was diminished.
4.1.2. Sexual Activity
The second theme is sexual activity, which belongs to secular taboo, with the word fuck, cocksucker, and motherfucker. The word fuck
refers to “copulation” and in some utterances this word evokes the sense of “claiming a person despicable”,
“showing hatred to the addressee”, and “showing anger”. Carlin also uses the word fuck
noun to refer to “ a name of a person or a position which is prestigious
”. As a verb, the word fuck
is used to refer to “to have sex” and “to damage irreparably”.
