Proposed Title
The
pragmatics of swearing: Impoliteness among Malaysian Youths
Some
respective scholars: Culpeper, Brown & Levinson, Austin,
Van Dijk
1.1 Introduction
Politeness
is one of the issues which is vastly discussed in sociolinguistics area. It is
an area in which many research done on the use of language in society. It is
associated with a few concepts such as face, culture, contexts and emotion. However,
there is another term in sociolinguistics which its fundamental concept is
politeness: impoliteness. Based on the researcher’s readings, impoliteness is a
linguistics term used to address ‘rude’ and ‘aggressive behaviour’ in different
fields. Impoliteness is an issue much discussed lately. Politeness among people
is getting eroded; people are being impolite. Hence, in this chapter, the
researcher will briefly discuss on the statement of problems, research
objectives, the research questions, framework, its limitations and significance
towards the study.
1.2 Statement
of Problems
To
recap, impoliteness is a linguistics term used to address ‘rude’ and
‘aggressive behaviour’ in different fields (Cupeper: 2009). In this study, the
researcher will be focusing on words uttered by youths in the targeted context,
specifically, swearing words or vulgar words. Vulgar words themselves have a
negative implicatures to the hearers.
Based
on readings, there are insufficient discussions on impoliteness in linguistics. Most of the scholars have focused on the
politeness than impoliteness. In impoliteness, scholars borrow the term
politeness, and adapt the frameworks of politeness in order to justify the
findings of their research. This statement is supported by Culpeper’s (2001 in
Culpeper, 2009) note, where the problem in explaining impoliteness area is the
inability to adequately discuss impoliteness as vast as in politeness concepts.
Culpeper is one of the pioneers in this sociolinguistics area of impoliteness.
He has studied on impoliteness from the Western perspectives. In this research,
the researcher will be focusing on Malaysian context. The findings will later be
filling in the gap of one of the Asian countries: Malaysia.
A few evidences on impoliteness area
are found in media sources including Reader’s Digest and based on the
researcher’s observations. Based on the observations at cyber cafe and
university campus, youths uttered swearing words such as: ‘sial’, ‘babi’, ‘shit’ and
‘fuck’ in publics. Just recently, to date (4th October 2013),
there was an issue on one of the Malaysian soccer players, known as Nurshahrul
Adlin Talaha, and his wife had verbally humiliated a security guard with words
such as ‘bodoh’ (Bahasa Melayu). This
is so embarrassing when young people humiliated an elder with such word with
negative indication. They should have shown respect to the eldest, and for
that, they had been criticized by society. There are also many instances in the
social network site, Facebook, for instance, where the statuses posted
contained vulgar words. On top of that, the researcher would like to bring in a
few more evidences by Reader’s Digest magazine, and a few websites on
‘impoliteness’ in Malaysia.
i.
The rank of Malaysia in the survey
conducted by Readers Digest
ii.
Six years ago, Reader's Digest placed
Malaysia's rudeness level at 33 out of the 35 countries ranked. The latest
appraisal by the magazine shows Kuala Lumpur almost at the bottom of a list of
Least Courteous Cities at number 34 out of 36 major cities in the world. (Lim,
Y., Tariq I., & Chin C.: 2012)
iii.
Kuala
Lumpur ranked way down in Reader’s Digest latest appraisal
iv. How Polite Are We? Title: Remember Ibrahim Ali's 'K' word? M'sians ranked 3RD RUDEST in the WORLD!
These
highlighted evidences clearly indicate that impoliteness does really a crucial
issue not only for Malaysia identity, but also, should be unveiled and
discussed, with respect to the area of sociolinguistics.
1.3 Research
Objectives
There
are two objectives set for this research which are:
i.
to identify the vulgar words uttered by Malaysia youths in the respective
context,
ii.
to examine the applicability of
Culpeper’s findings on the most linguistics ways on impoliteness in Malaysian
context,
It
is important to identity the swearing words used by the Malaysian youths since
this study intents to analyze the applicability of Culpeper’s research results
in impoliteness results (which are discussed from Western perspective) in the
pragmatics of swearing in impoliteness. The findings later will be a new input
in pragmatics, the insights from Malaysian perspective. This would be one of
the significances of the findings. Due to different social norms, it is hoped
that the data collected will achieve the research questions.
To
answer question number 1 to 2, the researcher will use the Understanding Impoliteness
Model by Culpeper (2009) and which involves the concepts of face, social norms and rights, intention and
emotion in impoliteness and Approaches to Politeness.
1.4 Research
Questions
There
are two research questions which will be answered through this research which
are:
i. i)
What are the vulgar words uttered by
Malaysia youths in the respective context?
ii. ii) How applicable do the Culpeper’s
findings on the most linguistics ways on impoliteness in Malaysian context?
1.5 Conceptual Framework
1.5.1 Understanding
Impoliteness Model by Culpeper J., 2009
This model
for the understanding of impoliteness is actually adapted based on the model of text comprehension described
in van Dijk and Kintsch 1983, and van Dijk's work on racism, 1987. This model
is in fact incorporates the “notion of face and the notion of social norms” to
be used in impoliteness area.
Quality face
(personal positive values, cf. Spencer- Oatey 2008) turned out to be
overwhelmingly the most important type of face relating to impoliteness. Social
norms as authoritative standards of behaviour are the basis of sociality
rights. I argued that these rights relate to morality, and that this is an
important feature of impoliteness. For some definitions of impoliteness,
intentionality is criterial... Emotions are key to impoliteness. Van Dijk
(1987: 188-89) claims that evaluative beliefs, which constitute attitude
schemata, may be associated with emotive aspects, such as like and dislike.
(Culpeper, 2009: p. 15)
The
statements above precisely describes on the elements involved in impoliteness
as suggested by Culpeper. Some important elements in this model are quality
face, social norms, intentionality, and emotions.
1.5.2 Approaches to Politeness
There
are a few approaches to politeness including Brown and Levinson’s Theory of Politeness
which will be used to answer the research questions.
1.6 Limitations
of the Study
- Samples - Only restricted to a few respondents
- Contexts – The research focuses in a few cybercafés in Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan and also 20 samples of Facebook status.
Hence,
based on these limitations, the findings of the research cannot be generalized
to all youths in Malaysia as the samples and context do not represent them
holistically.
1.7 Significance
of the Study
The
contributions of this study are:
i. i)
adds value - serves as a new input in
pragmatics of swearing words from Malaysian context
ii.
benefits
linguists generally, and pragmaticians, specifically
iii. ii)
assists society in educating them on the
issue of impoliteness
iv. iii)
helps in elevating an awareness on
impoliteness among youths
References/resources:
Cresswell,
J., W.,1994. Research Design Qualitative
and Quantitative Approaches. California.
Sage Publications.
Culpeper., J. 2009. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-063-27-0015.
Swindon: ESRC
Culpeper J,. et. Al. 2013. Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness. Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Jamet, D, & Jobert, M. Introduction: “Do you wanna talk about impoliteness? How rude!!” accessed on 15th September
2013 from http://lexis.univ-lyon3.fr/IMG/pdf/Lexis_special_2_-_Introduction.pdf
Jay,
T., & Janschewitz K., 2008. in Journal of
Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture,
Volume 4 (2) de Gruyter – Jul 1, 2008 Proceedings:
Kitamura,
N,. 2000. Adapting Brown and Levinson’s
‘Politeness’ Theory to the Analysis of Casual
Conversation. Proceedings of ALS2k,
the 2000 Conference of the Australian Linguistic
Society
Matveev
A., V., 2002. The Advantages of Employing
Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in
an Intercultural Research: Practical Implications from the Study of Perceptions
of an Intercultural Communication
Competence by American and Russian Managers. University of New York.
Perelmutter, R. 2010. Impoliteness recycled: Subject ellipsis in Modern Russian complaint discourse Renee Perelmutter. 2010.* University of Kansas, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, 1445 Jayhawk Blvd.,Rm.2127,Lawrence,KS66045 7590,USA
Saeed, J., I., 2003. Semantic . Third Edition. Wiley
Blackwell Publisher. USA. Accessed on March
2013.
http://books.google.com.my/books?id=Wq_uJzzhJYwC&printsec=frontcover&dq= mantics&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nqpXUfHMPMLYrQfSkoDwDw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/7/24/nation/11717118&sec=nation
http://www.readersdigest.ca/health/relationships/how-polite-are-we
SOP could have been better
ReplyDeleteOriginality questionable as you are only replicating another study with different context
RQs not oustanding. These are MA RQs
Look for better dimensions of politeness