Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable
Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable
Swearwords influence social evaluation of a speaker in a variety of ways depending on social context (Jay & Janschewitz (2008), The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267–288). Little attention has been paid to the role of linguistic variation in social perceptions of swearing, however. This paper presents two experiments that test the role of sociolinguistic variation in the social evaluation of swearing. Experiment 1 is a variant categorization task, in which participants categorized acoustically ambiguous swearwords and phonetically matching neutral and nonwords as ending in either “-ing” or “-in.” Results suggest that swearwords led participants to hear “-ing” on ambiguous items. Experiment 2 is a matched-guise task in which listeners heard a passage featuring a mix of swearwords and neutral “-ing” words in one of four conditions: fully velar (All-ing), fully alveolar (All-in), only swearwords as velar (Swear-ing), or only neutral words as velar (Swear-in). Participants rated speakers on Likert scales (Schleef et al. (2017), Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language Variation and Change, 29(1), 29–56). Participants again displayed a tendency towards hearing “-ing” on swearwords. As a result, responses to the Swear-in guises were similar to those for the All-ing guises. The consequences for our understanding of swearing, sociolinguistic perception and cognition, and style, are discussed.
sociolinguistic cognition, sociolinguistic perception, style, swearing, variable (ING)
Hunt, Matthew
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Cotter, Colleen
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Pearson, Hazel
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Stockall, Linnaea
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12 September 2022
Hunt, Matthew
bbe04f7d-80d0-4e89-ab04-56c4f8bab134
Cotter, Colleen
025141ff-2931-42b1-8e63-518ac8172905
Pearson, Hazel
1b87a337-8a4d-48ca-9963-ee7867727b83
Stockall, Linnaea
bcbb94ed-bad0-4e55-968c-c19c5f76aa6f
Hunt, Matthew, Cotter, Colleen, Pearson, Hazel and Stockall, Linnaea
(2022)
Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable.
Journal of Sociolinguistics.
(doi:10.1111/josl.12588).
Abstract
Swearwords influence social evaluation of a speaker in a variety of ways depending on social context (Jay & Janschewitz (2008), The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267–288). Little attention has been paid to the role of linguistic variation in social perceptions of swearing, however. This paper presents two experiments that test the role of sociolinguistic variation in the social evaluation of swearing. Experiment 1 is a variant categorization task, in which participants categorized acoustically ambiguous swearwords and phonetically matching neutral and nonwords as ending in either “-ing” or “-in.” Results suggest that swearwords led participants to hear “-ing” on ambiguous items. Experiment 2 is a matched-guise task in which listeners heard a passage featuring a mix of swearwords and neutral “-ing” words in one of four conditions: fully velar (All-ing), fully alveolar (All-in), only swearwords as velar (Swear-ing), or only neutral words as velar (Swear-in). Participants rated speakers on Likert scales (Schleef et al. (2017), Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language Variation and Change, 29(1), 29–56). Participants again displayed a tendency towards hearing “-ing” on swearwords. As a result, responses to the Swear-in guises were similar to those for the All-ing guises. The consequences for our understanding of swearing, sociolinguistic perception and cognition, and style, are discussed.
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Journal of Sociolinguistics - 2022 - Hunt - Swear ING ain t play ING The interaction of taboo language and the
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e-pub ahead of print date: 12 September 2022
Published date: 12 September 2022
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Funding Information:
We would like to thank Monica Heller, Natalie Schilling, Virginia Zavala, Marie Maegaard, the three anonymous reviewers, members of the Queen Mary Experimental Linguistics Forum and audiences at Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM) 2020 and the Manchester Forum in Linguistics 2021 for their contributions to this work. This research was conducted using funding from the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership. Further funding for the use of Gorilla was provided via Gorilla Experiment Builder courtesy of Gorilla Grants 2019. We would also like to thank the four speakers that recorded stimuli for Experiment 2.
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© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Sociolinguistics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords:
sociolinguistic cognition, sociolinguistic perception, style, swearing, variable (ING)
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Local EPrints ID: 471328
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471328
ISSN: 1467-9841
PURE UUID: a9f33d77-4ad3-487a-a1b6-4282843b13ee
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Date deposited: 03 Nov 2022 17:42
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 22:33
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Author:
Matthew Hunt
Author:
Colleen Cotter
Author:
Hazel Pearson
Author:
Linnaea Stockall
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