Sexual Language Usage in German Polish and Spanish Swearwords

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics grade: 17 University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar) course: Sex Sexuality and Language language: English abstract: Language is a multifaceted medium and sophisticated system of communication. It has many characteristics and functions - informing advising arguing asking suggesting or expressing feelings to name just a few. The last function is in particular also the one that is essential and most important here as the issue of this study is to examine the emotionally charged obscenities more precisely anger and aggressiveness that is expressed through the speech. American English as any other language contains a number of words that are used for the purpose of insulting people(Aman 1972: 161). What character swearing has within a certain language depends however on the determined sociocultural norms taboos cognitions about the world and linguistic conventions of an ethnic group(Jay 2008: 267). Reinhold Aman the author of the Bayrisch-österreichisches Schimpfwörterbuch argues that this is the reason for the unique set of offensive words within each country(Aman 1972: 161). In terms of English there are hundreds of taboo words and phrases [used for swearing]; the semantic range of referents that are considered taboo is [however] limited in scope. Taboos in English are placed primarily on sexual references [...] (Jay 2009: 154). Based on these facts the purpose of this research is to find out whether several European languages in this case German Spanish and Polish - all belonging to distinct language families use insults in a sexual manner as well.In doing so this research is based in general on the publications of Timothy Jay an author who is the precursor in the area of the speech of violence and who has edited many scientific works on that specific topic. In order to provide information about the essential concepts and to