Vulgarity Epithet Theoretical Description
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“Semantics is the study of the “toolkit” for meaning: knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language and in its patterns for building more
elaborate meanings, up to the level of sentence meanings. Pragmatics is concerned with the use of these tools in meaningful communication.
Pragmatics is about the interaction of semantic knowledge with our
knowledge of the world, taking into account contexts of use”. p. 1
Based on Griffiths‟ explanation, pragmatic has deeper work in defining the meanings or sentences because it considers the context of communication
occurred. Adjusting the context of swear words‟ use, Jay 2006 classifies some functional pragmatic categories which contains of emotive reason behind the user
of swear words. The first function is to express anger andor frustration. They are combined due to the difficulty in distinguishing these emotions by language alone.
An example of anger-frustration is when a boy who had his basketball field goal attempt blocked responded, what the fuck. It will be difficult to determine if he
was angry at the blocker or himself by that phrase alone. The second is to show descriptive-evaluative function. It is used to indicate
how speakers describes connotatively or denotatively the objects and events around the camp. This game sucks is an evaluation of the baseball game; while
“my sneakers are shitty” is a denotative description after stepping in feces. Taboo words
also intensify descriptions, for example, “he beat the hell out of him” indicates the level of physical energy used in the fight.
The third is to deliver joke. This category is used for formal joke frames and humor usage with taboo words. At this camp, non-dirty jokes are often
regarded as “corny” and the teller is laughed at rather than his or her joke. At PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
20 times obscenities are added to jokes and stories to make them appear as funny as
possible. The function number four is to show surprising reactions to unexpected
achievement, loss or other behaviour. These usages are typical of expletives and commonly involve religious terms, for example, “Jesus” or “oh god”. The last is
to deliver sarcastic irony or insults. These episodes involved derogatory words and descriptions, you fag or scum face are good examples. Here the speaker
attempted to mock or criticize the target of abuse in front of peers. Rather than only expressing anger on the part of the speaker, insults serve the function of
denoting undesirable qualities of the target, whether these are real or imaginative for the speaker.
Therefore, the references of swear words can be identified only by considering the context and the way the words are used. According to Pinker
2007, there are five different ways in which people use swear words: 1 descriptively, 2 idiomatically, 3 abusively, 4 emphatically, and 5 cathartically
p.19. The typology is called the typology of swearing. Pinker formulates it as a concise tool to analyze how people use swear words.
According to Giora 1997, descriptive swearing notes that the use of taboo words refers directly to their literal meanings which means the meaning is
computed from the lexical meanings automatically associated any entries before any extra interference considering the contextual assumption which have been
derived p. 185. The utterance “let’s fuck” with the word fuck refers to “have PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI