Swearing in the Movies: Intratextual and Extratextual Functions of Taboo

Abstract

Audiovisual media reflect language use in the community and the context of attitudes and stereotypes regarding different language varieties. Against this backdrop, taboo language has become a frequent resource for linguistic characterisation in cinema. Studies related to taboo language in audiovisual contexts suggest some functions of these words in films, though not systematically nor layered. Based on the work of Allan and Burridge (“Swearing”) on the functions of taboo language in its authentic use and Delabastita (“Great Feast of Languages”) on the extratextual functions of multilingualism in Shakespearean work, this article offers an empirical, multidisciplinary, systematic approach to the use of taboo language in films. We propose a typology of four intratextual and three extratextual functions of taboo language in audiovisual contexts. This typology will then be tested on a corpus of films via a detailed multimodal quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Keywords

• taboo language
• films
• functions of taboo
• characterisation