Tài liệu McEnery - Swearing in English pdf

[...]... theory-neutral linguistic description This difference arises because my aim here is to show that corpus linguistics as a methodology allows Swearing in English 4 one to couple corpus data with theories and supporting data from beyond linguistics Yet in coupling corpus data with sociological theory and historical data, I believe that we gain a deeper insight into a question which should be of interest... becomes apparent While corpus data allows us to describe swearing in English, for example, it does not begin to provide an explanation for anything that we see within the corpus Description in tandem with explanation is a powerful combination in linguistics The separation of one from the other is damaging An explanation of something which is not described in some credible fashion may be no explanation at... reviewed in this section, being reviewed instead in Chapter 2 as a prelude to an analysis of bad language in present-day English The Mary Whitehouse corpus (MWC) The MWC includes the major writings of Mary Whitehouse in the period 1967–1977 This corpus covers three of her books, namely Cleaning-up TV, Who Does She Think She Is? and Whatever Happened to Sex?, amounting to 216,289 words in total.19 These books,... not think simply in terms of newsprint, radio and television So, in Early Modern England the pulpit was, in effect, the mass media In extending moral panic theory across the ages, we need to consider the changing face of the mass media over time Second, interest group theory tends to focus on deep-seated concerns that society may hold, rather than on dayto-day concerns In this book, when viewing a... public what their main concern was that they would answer without hesitation swearing in public’ Day-to-day concerns and deep-seated concerns can often diverge It is much more likely that our interviewee would comment on some everyday need rather than on a lofty moral topic Yet within interest group led moral panic theory, we need to explain how the interest group elevates this deep-rooted concern to... introduced in this chapter come together in order to provide a coherent account of bad language in English The corpus is used principally to establish a series of observations related to distinctions in the use of swearing The explanation of these distinctions is then sought through historical research, as well as the application of moral panic theory and Bourdieu’s theory of distinction to texts in. .. to investigate Corpus linguistics: the corpora used in this book In this section, I will discuss the majority of the corpora used in this book Two minor corpora (a corpus of seventeenth-century news texts and a corpus of German radio propaganda broadcasts) will be discussed briefly when they are introduced One major Swearing in English 12 corpus, the Lancaster Corpus of Abuse,18 is not reviewed in. .. of distinction and moral panic theory Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, as will be shown shortly, is useful in explaining any differences in language use by different social classes Moral panic theory is the basis of the approach taken in this book to discourses about bad language Corpus linguistics Corpora are used in two distinct ways in this book In the third part of the book, corpora are mainly used... moral panic Swearing in English 6 texts in the corpora used in this book The idea of the roles, however, arose initially as a response to my reading of the literature on moral panics Given the features of a moral panic, as outlined in this chapter, whatever the theory of moral panic one subscribes to, there are a number of key features of a moral panic—something is identified as offensive, something or... conversation, is likely to cause Swearing in English 2 offence Swearing is one example of bad language, yet blasphemous, homophobic, racist and sexist language may also cause offence in modern England However, this book will not study changes in what has constituted bad language over the centuries Books such as Montagu’s (1973) Anatomy of Swearing and Hughes’ (1998) Swearing have explored these changes . book has been requested ISBN 0-2 0 3-5 014 4-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-2 0 3-5 988 2-2 (OEB Format) ISBN 0-4 1 5-2 583 7-5 (Print Edition) This book is dedicated. it may be that in trying to produce an over-arching theory, they are forcing a separation between what may be intertwined Swearing in English 4 processes,