An Analysis of Swear Words in “Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood” Film

  • Peggy Andriani Kakisina Department of Languages and Literature, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang 65145 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7708-0702
  • Isti Purwaningtyas Department of Languages and Literature, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang 65145
https://doi.org/10.19105/ojbs.v14i2.3394
Abstract views: 9730 , PDF downloads: 665
DATA - AN ANALYSIS OF SWEAR WORDS IN ONCE UPON A TIME (2019) FILM downloads: 0
Keywords: Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Swear Word, Semantic referent, Swearing motive

Abstract

Swear words are one of the linguistic choices which show cultural aspects. Found in both oral and written forms. Swear words represent emotions and convey powerful messages. Some people utter swear words because of specific reasons, and they occasionally ignore their literal meaning. The phenomenon of swearing also happens in films. Based on the film Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, this qualitative research addressed the semantic referents of swear words and the motives of swearing. By employing content analysis, the results show that (a) 59 swear words are classified into nine semantic referents, consisting of offensive slang (17%) as the main referent, followed by profane or blasphemous (15%), psychological-physical-social deviations (15%), scatological and disgusting objects (15%), sexual references (12%), substandard vulgar terms (10%), ethnic-racial-gender slurs (7%), animal names (5%), and ancestral allusions (4%) and (b) swearing are caused by three motives, namely psychological, social, and linguistic. The study concludes that the film contains severe and various swear words, and particular situations can lead the characters to swear. General readers are hoped to be more considerate in expressing themselves and be wiser in determining their word choices

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Andang, Kristina, and Barli Bram. “Swear Words and Their Implications for English Language Learning-Teaching.” LLT Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching 21 (2018): 43–49. https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2018.Suppl2105.

Andersson, L., and P. Trudgill. Bad Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

Ary, Donald, Lucy Cheser Jacobs, Christine K. Sorensen Irvine, and David Walker. Introduction to Research in Education. 10th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2018.

Baruch, Yehuda, Rea Prouska, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, and Jennifer Bunk. “Swearing at Work: The Mixed Outcomes of Profanity.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 32, no. 2 (2017): 149–62. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-04-2016-0102.

Battistella, Edwin L. Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others? New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172485.001.0001.

Cahyani, Putri Dwi, and Teguh Setiawan. “Swearing Words on Yowis Ben Movie by Fajar Nugros and Bayu Skak.” In International Conference on Interdisciplinary Language, Literature and Education (ICILLE 2018), 282–87. Paris: Atlantis Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2991/icille-18.2019.58.

Finn, Eileen. “Swearing: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.” ORTESOL Journal 34 (2017): 17–26.

Gao, Chunming. “A Sociolinguistic Study of English Taboo Language.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3, no. 12 (2013): 2310–14. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.3.12.2310-2314.

Goddard, Cliff. “‘Swear Words’ and ‘Curse Words’ in Australian (and American) English. at the Crossroads of Pragmatics, Semantics and Sociolinguistics.” Intercultural Pragmatics 12, no. 2 (2015): 189–218. https:/doi.org/10.1515/ip-2015-0010.

Holgate, Eric, Isabel Cachola, Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro, and Junyi Jessy Li. “Why Swear? Analyzing and Inferring the Intentions of Vulgar Expressions.” In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2018, 4405–14. Brussels, 2018. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/d18-1471.

Holmes, Janet. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2003.13.2.252.

Horan, Geraldine. “‘You Taught Me Language; and My Profit on’t/Is, I Know How to Curse’: Cursing and Swearing in Foreign Language Learning.” Language and Intercultural Communication 13, no. 3 (2013): 283–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2013.804533.

Hughes, Geoffrey. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. New York: Routledge, 2015. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315706412.

isubtitles.info. “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood - 2019 - English Subtitles.” Accessed October 21, 2020. https://isubtitles.org/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/english-subtitles/1548808.

Jay, Timothy. “The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, no. 2 (2009): 153–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01115.x.

Jay, Timothy. Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.91.

Jay, Timothy, and Kristin Janschewitz. “The Pragmatics of Swearing.” Journal of Politeness Research 4, no. 2 (2008): 267–88. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2008.013.

Karjalainen, Markus. “Where Have All the Swearwords Gone? An Analysis of the Loss of Swearwords in Two Swedish Translations of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.” Thesis, University of Helsinki, 2002.

Kreidler, Charles W. Introducing English Semantics. London: Routledge, 1998. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203265574.

Kristiano, Johan Tobias, and Priyatno Ardi. “Swear Words in Bad Boys II: A Semantic Analysis.” Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching 21, no. 2 (2018): 191–98. https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2018.210208.

Philipp, Michael C., and Laura Lombardo. “Hurt Feelings and Four Letter Words: Swearing Alleviates the Pain of Social Distress.” European Journal of Social Psychology 47, no. 4 (2017): 517–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2264.

Popuşoi, Simona A., Grigore M. Havârneanu, and Corneliu E. Havârneanu. “‘Get the F#∗k out of My Way!’ Exploring the Cathartic Effect of Swear Words in Coping with Driving Anger.” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour 56 (2018): 215–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2018.04.013.

Stapleton, Karyn. “Swearing.” In Interpersonal Pragmatics, 289–305. New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214338.2.289.

Stephens, Richard, and Amy Zile. “Does Emotional Arousal Influence Swearing Fluency?” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 46, no. 4 (2017): 983–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9473-8.

Tarantino, Quentin. Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood. Comedy-Drama. Sony Picture Releasing, 2019. https://yts.mx/movie/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-2019.

Trudgill, Peter. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. 4th ed. London: Penguin Books, 2000. https://doi.org/10.2307/326846.

Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., Lauren M. Bylsma, and Cornelis de Vlam. “Swearing: A Biopsychosocial Perspective.” Psychological Topics 22, no. 2 (2013): 287–304.

Published
2020-11-30
How to Cite
Kakisina, P. A., & Purwaningtyas, I. (2020). An Analysis of Swear Words in “Once Upon a Time. In Hollywood” Film. OKARA: Jurnal Bahasa Dan Sastra, 14(2), 224-238. https://doi.org/10.19105/ojbs.v14i2.3394
Issue
Vol. 14 No. 2 (2020): OKARA: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra
Section
Articles

The journal operates an Open Access policy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.