MySpaceSwearingextendedpreprint.docx

MySpaceSwearingextendedpreprint.docx

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MySpaceSwearingextendedpreprint

FkyeaIswear:

CursingandgenderinacorpusofMySpacepages

MikeThelwall

SchoolofComputingandInformationTechnology,UniversityofWolverhampton,WulfrunaStreet,WolverhamptonWV11SB,UK.E-mail:

m.thelwall@wlv.ac.uk

Tel:

+441902321470Fax:

+441902321478

Youth-orientatedsocialnetworksiteslikeMySpaceareimportantvenuesforsocialisingandidentityexpression.Analysingsuchsitescanthereforegiveatimelywindowintootherwisehiddenaspectsofcontemporaryculture.InthisarticleacorpusofMySpacememberhomepagesisusedtoanalyseswearingintheU.S.andU.K.TheresultsindicatethatmostMySpacesof16yearoldsandabout15%ofmiddle-agedMySpacescontainstrongswearing,forbothmalesandfemales.TherewasnosignificantgenderdifferenceintheU.K.forstrongswearing,especiallyforyoungerusers（16-19）.Thisisperhapsthefirstlarge-scaleevidenceofgenderequalityinstrongswearingfrequencyinanyinformalEnglishlanguageusecontext.Incontrast,U.S.maleMySpacescontainsignificantlymorestrongswearingthanthoseoffemales.TheU.K.femaleassimilationoftraditionallymaleswearingintheinformalcontextofMySpaceissuggestiveofdeeperchangesingenderrolesinsociety,possiblyrelatedtotherecentrisein‘ladetteculture’.

Keywords:

Swearing,gender,MySpace,socialnetworksites.

1.Introduction

MySpaceisahighlypopularyouthorientedsocialnetworksite,whichapparentlybecamethemostvisitedwebsitein2007forU.S.webusers（Prescott2007）.Ithasbeendescribedasreplacingthe（shopping）mallastheplacewheremodernU.S.teenshangout（boydinpress）.MySpacealsohasawideuserbaseintheU.K.（Prescott2007）althoughothersocialnetworksiteslikeFacebookandHi5arepreferredbysomepopulationsegmentsandinsomecountries.Asavirtualplacewheremanyteensspendmuchtimeandexpresstheiridentitywithrelativefreedom,itisbothanimportantaspectofyouthcultureandaplacethatshouldreflectofflinemodernyouthattitudesandbehaviour.

Inthisarticlethefocusisonswearing.Swearingisinterestinginitselfasanaspectoflanguagethatistypicallynottaughtorreceivedfromauthorityfigures（parents,schools,politicians）.Itisalsostronglytiedtogenderrolesandexpectationsinsociety,andthewordsthemselvesaretypicallyrelatedtotabooissues.Hence,ananalysisofswearingcanbeexpectedtoprovideawindowintodeepersocialissues,particularlythoserelatingtogender.

Therehasbeenwidespreadresearchintoswearingwithindisciplinessuchaslinguistics（McEnery2005）,neurolinguistics（vanLanckerandCummings1999）,psycholinguistics/developmentalpsychology（Jay1992,2000）,sexuality（Sigel2000）,education（Dewaele2004）,history（Smith1998）,sociology（StokoeandEdwards2007）,socialpsychology（Green2003）,women’sstudies（BellandReverby2005）,andnursing（Schapiro2002）.Nevertheless,itisdifficulttogatherlarge-scalenaturallanguageswearingdatabecausewrittentextsarenormallyproducedinlanguageregistersthatexcludeswearing（McEneryandXiao2004）.Henceconsiderableeffortisneededtocollectsufficientdatatoinvestigatefactorssuchassocialclass,ageandgender.Forexample,Jay’s（1992:

139）studyofnaturalswearingwasapparentlythefirstextensivefieldstudy,usingsixtravellingstudentstogatherdataonconversationsinvolvingawidevarietyofpeople.Moreover,mostpsychologicalandsociologicalswearingresearchhasusedrelativelysmallnumbersofpeoplefromarestrictedsocialgroup（oftenstudents）.Forexamplearecentstudyintroducedanewsamplingmethodwithanintermittently-activatedelectronictaperecordergathering30secondburstsofsoundfromthedailylivesof52undergraduates,includingsomeswearing（MehlandPennebaker2003）.Asaresultofthedifficultyingaininglarge-scaledata,muchlinguisticswearingresearchhasbeenqualitativeorhasusedstandardgeneralpurposecorporaofspokentexts,suchastheBritishNationalCorpus（BNC）collectionofconversationsfrom5,300speakersgatheredby73malesand75femalesfromtheyears1991-1993（Burnard1995;Rayson,Leech,andHodges1997）.Suchstandardcorpora,whichenjoylongtermuseandvalue,maynotreflectcurrentlanguagetrends（seeJay1992:

115-116foramoredetailedcritique）.

Thewebhasbeennotedasanimportantsourceforcorpuslinguistics（Meyer,Grabowski,Han,MantzouranisandMoses2003）andthecontentsofsocialnetworksiteslikeMySpacemaypotentiallyrevolutioniseswearingresearchbecausetheyarearelativelyeasilyaccessiblesourceoflargescalecurrentlinguisticdatarelevanttoswearing.Thisisbecausethelanguageofsocialnetworksitesseemstobeveryinformalandisprobablyclosertospeechthanmostwrittenforms.Moreover,asignificantproportionofthepopulationofsomecountriesnowusessocialnetworksitesandsosamplingthesesitesgivesaccesstoabroadcross-sectionofpeople,althoughprobablybiasedtowardsyoungerpeopleandthosewithregularaccesstotheInternet.Ofcourse,socialnetworklanguagehassomeuniqueaspects–suchasunusualspellingsandacronyms,probablypartlyinheritedfromotherelectronicformslikeinstantmessaging–anddiffersfromnormalconversation,forexampleduetotherarityofdisfluencieslikeerandum,andprobablyalsoduetodifferentconversationtopicsandrhythmsofdiscussion.Nevertheless,largescaleanalysesofsocialnetworksitescanbeusedtoresearchsocialnetworklanguage,whichisimportantforitsownsake,andalsotoinvestigatefactorsthoughttobesignificantincontemporaryswearingandotherlanguageuse,suchasgender,age,andsocialclass.

PreviousresearchintheU.K.andU.S.suggeststhatgenderandage（andsocialclassintheU.K.）areimportantfactorsinthepropensitytoswearandthetypeofswearingused.Inparticular,menseemtoswearmorethanwomen（BaileyandTimm1976）andmalesswearespeciallyinall-malegroups（Coates2003;BayardandKrishnayya2001）.Infact,recentU.K.researchsuggeststhatmenusestrongswearwordsmorefrequentlythanwomen,althoughwomenusemilderswearingmore（McEnery2005）.Personalobservationsuggeststhatthisisnolongertrue;youngwomenintheU.K.seemtoswearmorethanmen,evenwiththestrongestswearwords.Thisisanimportantissuenotonlyforresearchersbutalsoforparents:

iftheyglimpsetheirchildswearingonline,shouldtheybeconcernedorhasthisbecomenormal?

Parentsmaybeparticularlyconcernediftheirdaughterswears（e.g.,Jay1992:

32）.TheobjectiveofthisarticleistotestthegendergaphypothesiswithcurrentdatafromMySpace,includingageasalikelyinteractingfactor.ThedatausedconsistsofacorpusofMySpacehomepagesfromtheU.K.andU.S.:

thesite’stwobiggestnationalusergroups.

2.SwearinginEnglish

Swearingistheuseofanywordorphrasethatislikelytocauseoffencewhenusedinmiddleclasspoliteconversation（adaptedfromMcEnery2005）.Theemphasishereisonthelanguageusedratherthanthecontentandsothedefinitionexcludesdiscussionsoftabootopicswhenthelanguageitselfwouldnotberecognisedasthecauseofoffence.Perhapsincontrasttopopularperceptions,however,theoffensivenatureofawordisunrelatedtoitssoundbutissociallyconstructedandchangesovertime.Swearingoriginallymeanttakingalegalorreligiousoath.Thesubsequenttrivialisingofsuchoaths（e.g.,byGodthismealisgood）allowedthetermswearingtotakeonasecondmeaning,oneofusingoffensivelanguage.Thecloselyrelatedtermcursewasinitiallyusedtorefertoawishordemandforsomethingbadtohappen（i.e.,imprecate）butisnowsynonymouswithswear.Similarly,blasphemyhaspurelyreligiousoriginsbutnowhasonemeaningsynonymouswithswearing–inEnglandthisblurringapparentlyoccurredinthenineteenthcentury,perhapsaroundhighprofileblasphemytrials（Marsh1998:

204-215）.Othersimilartermsinclude:

bad,foul,Billingsgate,vulgarorcoarselanguage;obscenity;profanity;oath;expletive;naughtyorrudewords.Inadditiontherearemanyassociatedinformalsayingssuchaseffingandblinding,andtoswearlikeafishwife/lord/sailor/trooper.

Swearing,includingverymildwordslikepoo,seemstobesomethingthatisanaturalpartofchilddevelopmentandchildren’sswearwordsandthewaytheyusethemseemtodependupontheircognitiveandsocialdevelopmentstages,forexamplewithfocusesonpottytrainingandsexdifferencesatdifferentages（Jay1992:

35）.Initiallyatleast,swearingseemstoperformthepositivefunctionofreplacingviolentactionsasameansofexpressinganger（Goodenough,citedinJay,1992:

21）,andmanyarguethatswearingthusperformsausefulroleandshouldevenbeencouragedincontext（AnderssonandTrudgill1992）.Punishmentseemstohavelittleeffectinanycase（Jay,King,andDuncan2006）.

Historically,swearingintheU.K.hasundergonemajorchangesinthetypesofswearingemployed,thetypesofwordsused,theactualwordsused,andinthesocialconventionsaboutthecontextsinwhichswearingisacceptable.Twoextremesofacceptabilityinbehaviourarea1604exampleofanEnglishkinggiving“aturdfor”abishop’sargumentatanimportanttheologicalmeetingandbeingapplaudedforgooddebatingskills（McEnery2005:

62）;andaVictorian（latenineteenthcentury）politesocietywhenreferringtotrouserswasconsideredindelicate,eveninprivate,andtheeuphemisminexpressiblesusedinstead（Marsh1998:

215-230）.Theformerexampleillustratesatime–possiblythemajorityofhumanhistory–whenswearingdidnotparticularlystigmatisetheswearerevenif,bydefinition,itshocked.