Second Language Speakers’ Perception of Swearing as a Socio-Pragmatic Device

Abstract

This study examines the perception of swearing in speakers of English as a second language (ESL) within two socio-communicative contexts: private speech and interpersonal interactions. Thirty-four ESL speakers watched fourteen short, muted videos in which subjects experienced an emotion-evoking negative incident either in private or in the presence of others. The participants took the subject’s perspective and predicted utterances in response to the emotion-evoking scenarios. The results indicated that ESL speakers judge more occurrences of English swearwords in interpersonal communications. In private speech, participants produced a significantly larger number of pejorative interjections, while pejorative epithets emerged more frequently in the context of interpersonal communications. These patterns were further modulated by the role of gender, whereby ESL speakers attributed a higher frequency of swearing to male subjects in interpersonal communications, while the perceived use of swearwords did not show a significant difference between males and females in private speech. It is argued that second language swearing in interpersonal interactions, as a socio-pragmatic device, reflects the speakers’ assessment of the second language community’s sociolinguistic norms and practices to achieve social goals. On the other hand, the patterns of second language swearing in private are rooted in the nature of unmediated emotional expression. Further, the variations of swearing in relation to the subject’s gender is discussed through the lens of stereotyped female speech.

Keywords: communication context, private speech, interpersonal communication, second language swearing, bilingual emotional expression, socio-pragmatic device