Cursing in America: A Psycholinguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards, and on the Streets
This is the first serious and extensive examination of American cursing from a psycholinguistic-contextual point of view. Several field studies and numerous laboratory-based experiments focus on the relationship between cursing and language acquisitions, anger expresssion, gender stereotypes, semantics, and offensiveness. Censorship, language content of motion pictures, First-Amendment fighting words, sexual harassment, obscene phone calls, and cursing at public schools are analyzed and related to sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic data. Many tables of word-by-word data provide empirical evidence of frequency of occurrence, degree of offensiveness, gender of speaker and age of speaker influences on obscene language usage in America. A "must" for language reference collections.
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Chapter 1 What Are Dirty Words?
Chapter 2 When Children Use Dirty Words
Chapter 3 Anger and Dirty Words
Chapter 4 The Frequency of Dirty Word Usage
Sex and Semantics
abuse adult American Anger Expressed angry behavior bitch blasphemy body cable television Chaplinsky child college students communication connotative and denotative context correlated cunt cursing damn denotative dirty language dirty word usage emotional episodes example Expletive explicit express anger expression of anger females males females field studies fighting words fighting words doctrine films fuck function gender differences goddamn hell humor indicate insults jokes laboratory linguistic listener males and females males females males mean motherfucker motion pictures MPAA name calling nature nontaboo words obscene obscene speech offendedness offending event offensive offensiveness ratings parents perceptual defense person physical piss profanity psycholinguistics psychological question ratings reactions recorded refer religious restrictions role sample scatological semantic setting sex acts sex organs sexual harassment shit slang SocDev speaker speech acts subjects swearing taboo language taboo speech taboo words target verbal aggression women word frequency wrongdoer