Cursing in America
A psycholinguistic study of dirty language in the courts, in the movies, in the schoolyards and on the streets
| Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts
Paperback – Other edition available
ISBN 9789027220936 (Eur)
ISBN 9781556194528 (USA)
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.
[Not in series, 57] 1992. viii, 272 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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1. What are Dirty Words?
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1–15
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2. When Children Use Dirty Words
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17–71
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3. Anger and Dirty Words
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73–109
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4. The Frequency of Dirty Word Usage
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111–157
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5. The Offensiveness of Words: Sex and Semantics
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159–194
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6. Free Speech and Censorship
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195–234
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7. Unfinished Business and Future Research with Dirty Words
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235–244
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Bibliography
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245–272
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Subjects
Linguistics
BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General