A Linguistic Study of Offensive Language in Online Communication Chatgroups

Abstract

Since offensive language, words and expressions are widely used nowadays on the internet; the current paper is an attempt to discover and investigate offensive language that is used in one medium of electronic communication, which is “chatgroups”. The study focuses on analyzing and explaining offensive words and expressions found in chatgroups with their types and functions. The data of this study are a type of screenshots, (20) screenshots are randomly gathered from synchronous chatrooms. The analyses reveal different types of offensive language; these types are (vulgarity, insult, epithet, taboo, obscenity, and profanity). Besides, the functions of these offensive words and expressions are (body part, sexual, connotative, metaphoric, and expletive).