19 “curse event” is “coherent in that it fulfills specific types of needs and intentions
of the speaker and listener” p. 2.
a. Cursing
Cursing enables someone to express strong emotions verbally in a manner that non-curse words cannot express such as emotional, sexual, and aggressive
gestures. Because they have strong emotions and speech, they learn to use cursing to express their emotions. Besides, people choose words that come from culturally
powerful categories and use them in contexts in which they are appropriate to use. As stated by Jay and Kristin 2008, people use culturally defined curse words to
represent their strongest feeling or emotions and forbidden thoughts, but they learn how to inhibit forms of cursing that are illegal or censored by employers.
These expressions act like verbal assaults where a speaker targets a specific individual, group, or thing and clearly expects harm, pain, or other evil
consiquences on him, her, or something. Generally, cursing is proscribed by the churches and most of societies for those reasons, so curses such as eat shit and
die are considered to be powerfully threatening utterances. In some cases, people choose curse words because:
1. They repeat curse words that other people commonly use.
2. They choose curse words that their culture proscribes for specific practices and
contexts. 3.
They choose curse words from a small semantic pool which is considered as taboo or disgusting, profane or obscene.
4. They choose curse words in order to affect other‟s feeling.
20 5.
They choose swear words purposefully that have the semantic features needed in the context.
6. They choose words that fit the semantic and syntactic rules of grammar.
b. Profanity
Jay 1992 describes these expressions as using “religious terminology in a profane, secular or indiffe
rent manner” p. 3. There is no intention on the speaker‟s part to denigrate God or anything associated with religion. Rather, the
speaker may be expressing his or her emotional reaction to a certain stimulus. Examples in this case would be
Jesus Christ Let‟s go; we‟re late or Good God he‟s ugly
According to Battistella 2005, p. 72, profanity can be categorized as religious cursing because it usually includes the foul-mouthed use of what is
considered to be sacred. Moreover, Jay in Doyle 2006, pp. 2-3 describes profanity as the expression involving the use of religious terms in a profane,
secular or uncaring manner. The aim of the speaker is not to denigrate God or anything connected with religion but it may be used to express emotional response
to certain motives. The words that belong to this type are Jesus Christ, hell, damn, goddamn.
c. Blasphemy
Blasphemous expressions, on the other hand, are a deliberate use of religious terminology to denigrate God, religious icons, and religious institutions.
Blasphemy can provoke strong reactions where speakers labelled as blasphemers can be ostracized or mortally threatened. It can be seen such as when Salman
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