Swearing Using Body Parts in the Jordanian Setting: A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis Faculty of Educational Sciences and Arts (UNRWA)

Abstract

The study aimed to identify swearing using body parts in the Jordanian setting as a social phenomenon used by male university students. The corpus of the study included (100) male university students. A socio-pragmatic approach was adopted to analyze the data. The study employed Simak Libat Cakap technique in addition to the qualitative method to analyze the data of the study. The analysis of data showed that the face was the most frequent body part used in swearing followed by the head. The main findings revealed that swearing is dominantly used to express a socio-pragmatic function of angriness, especially when swearers feel angry with their disputers. Swearing functions as a vehicle for releasing tension and anger and proved to be powerful in exchanging insults. The study concluded that swearers usually do not mean what they say. Swearing mostly includes non-literal meanings like idioms. Therefore, it should not be interpreted literally; otherwise, it will lose its connotative meaning.