This thesis investigates the Early Modern context of oath swearing and breaking within Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. This thesis draws on John Kerrigan's work on oaths, as well as on Jonathan...Show moreThis thesis investigates the Early Modern context of oath swearing and breaking within Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. This thesis draws on John Kerrigan's work on oaths, as well as on Jonathan Gray's work regarding oath's and the English Reformation. The context and rules of oath-theory will show that the oaths sworn by the men of the play have lost spiritual potency, rendering the oaths ineffective. However, the women of the play represent a new way of swearing in which the absent authority (i.e. God) in oaths can be replaced with intimacy and a hallowed human connection. This argument is based on Isabel Karremann's interpretation of Elizabeth Mazzola's "remains of the sacred" (Karremann 67). Subsequently, this thesis will question how Love's Labour's Lost and its oaths can be staged and have been staged in societies that have largely secularised.Show less
A number of different studies has demonstrated that animal expressions, often with metaphors as their basis, are a widespread phenomenon across the world’s languages, and that they can be used to...Show moreA number of different studies has demonstrated that animal expressions, often with metaphors as their basis, are a widespread phenomenon across the world’s languages, and that they can be used to convey a wide variety of positive and negative meanings. This study investigates the negative connotations and metaphorical associations of five animals from a comparative and cross-linguistic perspective, to see if there are noticeable patterns among different languages. The factors influencing the development of metaphors and connotations are also explored. The data was collected from previous publications on the subject and compiled in an overview showing negative animal expressions from 61 languages. The results showed that genealogical relations increase the chances of connotations being shared between languages, and that geography and religion can also be of influence. The amount of internal variation also indicates that there is a degree of arbitrariness with regard to the development of metaphors.Show less
Recently, there has been a renewed interest in understanding the linguistic behaviour of humans when profanity is used. However, much of the current literature focuses on adult participants, the...Show moreRecently, there has been a renewed interest in understanding the linguistic behaviour of humans when profanity is used. However, much of the current literature focuses on adult participants, the factual usage of swear words or the distinction between English as an L1 and L2 when using profane expressions. Thus, the perceived profane behaviour amongst Dutch adolescents still has to be understood. Hence, this research aimed to analyse the perception of frequency and severity with regard to profane behaviour amongst Dutch adolescents. As a result, four research questions were posed in order to compare the perceptions of adolescents to profanity in relation to two demographic factors, namely, socioeconomic status and urbanity. The different social contexts and the perception of severity related to such contexts were also explored. The current study employed a crosslinguistic approach using both a questionnaire and follow-up interviews as tools. The results of this research show that the lower socioeconomic status group perceived their swearing behaviour as less frequent compared to average and higher socioeconomic statuses. The degree of urbanity for the places in which the schools were situated was divided into three categories: urban, semi-urban, and rural, based on the official ranking of the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek considering the address density (CBS, 2019). When regarding the perceptual parameter for frequency and severity, the findings yield similar results, concluding that the students in rural areas perceive to use the most frequent, and severe profane words. Lastly, the different social environments in which Dutch adolescents perceive to use profane words were analysed. The findings show a general tendency of profanity being expressed in informal environments, and in particular in the presence of friends. However, it seems unacceptable to utter swear words when in the presence of a family member or an authoritative figure. This study implies that Dutch adolescents perceive to use swear words frequently, distinguishing between mild swear words such as ""kut"" ""fuck"", and ""shit"" versus more severe expressions such as ""kanker"" ""tyfus"" and ""homo"". This is in line with the existing literature 4 (see, e.g. Jay, 1992; Jay & Janschewits, 2008). In order to gain more insight into the perspective of Dutch adolescents, further research could be required.Show less
“Oh shit, [I have] said fuck! Oh fuck, [I have] said shit!” Brian Blessed spoke these words on an episode of Stephen Fry’s show Planet World (Fry, 2011b). Why might some people perceive this...Show more“Oh shit, [I have] said fuck! Oh fuck, [I have] said shit!” Brian Blessed spoke these words on an episode of Stephen Fry’s show Planet World (Fry, 2011b). Why might some people perceive this sentence as shocking, rude or offensive? For the simple reason that it contains swearwords. Swearing is not something one is supposed to do and this is told us in, amongst others, the Bible: “But I say unto you, Swear not at all ; neither by heaven ; for it is God’s throne : / Nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool : neither by Jerusalem ; for it is the city of the great King. / Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black” (The Bible, Mat. 5.34–36). Swearing has always been taboo (Montagu, 1967; Stapleton 289). In one of his comedy routines, the American comedian George Carlin talked about the number of swearwords in the English language compared to the total number of words in it: “There are 400,000 words in the English language, but there are seven of them you cannot say on television. What a ratio that is!” (2011; Pinker, 2008). These seven words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. As a reaction to this sketch, the US Supreme Court and the federal government established a law which could regulate speech on broadcast television and radio in the United States (Poetry Genius): if one uttered one of the ‘seven dirty –’ or ‘filthy words’ on television or radio, one had to pay a large fine. The ban has been established about thirty years ago and there is an ongoing debate on whether it should be lifted (Nighty News, 2012). What makes a word an effective swearword? “In order to be useful for the purposes of swearing, a word […] must have reference to an object possessing, or thought to possess, force or power of some kind” (Montagu 15). Many of these words refer to excrement and filth, like shit, or sexual intercourse, like fuck. Not all words can function as swearwords, “because they [lack] the acquired weight of tradition in the speech community” (Hughes, 1992:22). All swearwords are therefore emotionally charged terms (Hughes, 1992). Native speakers of English mainly use English words when they swear. Native speakers of Dutch, however, swear both in their native tongue and in English (van de Krol, 2013). Are people these days really offended when someone utters a “filthy word”? Is the perceived rudeness of swearing dependent on factors such as nationality and gender? Do British people perceive swearwords with a different level of harshness than Americans? How do their results compare to people who are native speakers of Dutch? These are questions which this thesis would like to answer.Show less
