Cursing Profanity or Blasphemy
18 Furthermore, the fourth point of Ljung‟s criteria notes that by uttering
swear words, the speaker deliver “direct expression of the speaker‟s attitude what heshe is speaking about”. It contains emotive function which might be identified
by some features of expletive interjections, emphasizer, and expletive slot-filler for example: “I need the
bloody
hammer” p. 21. He explains that expletive interjections generally express surprise, pain, fear, anger, disappointment, and
even joy, for instance,
Shit
,
Damn
,
Fuck
, Son of
Bitch
, etc. In addition, Jay and Crystal note that expletive interjections are often considered to be basically
cathartic which means not aimed primarily at others but expresses speaker‟s reactions to different mishaps and disappointments as cited in Ljung, 2011, p.
30. Meanwhile, emphasizer is often used in the form of swearing as a following noun for example, I need a glass of water, not a
bloody
bathtub, emphasis after and interrogative WH-word for example:
What the hell are you doing?
, and forms of infixation in a word
Absobloodylutely
,
Infuckingcredible
, etc or a phrase
Shut the fuck up
p. 34. Infixation is the process of inserting an infix Nordquist, 2015. Thus, expletive slot-filler indicates that the speaker use the
swear words as adverbial or adject ival intensifier for example: It‟s
bloody
marvelous, they drove
damn
fast, etc. and adjective of dislike He‟s a
bloody
fool p. 34. Above all, swear words are used in the context which indicates what the
words mean further than their literal meaning. To gain the meaning behind a word or a sentence, semantic and pragmatic fields might be suitable to be applied.
Griffiths 2006 describes the study to analyze the context of word‟s use: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
19
“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