Introduction
The English language is a sophisticated structure used differently by various speaking groups. The sociolinguistics field concentrates on how language changes depending on social variables like age, gender, and socioeconomic class. Eckert (2004) claims that adolescents are a social group with distinctive linguistic habits. According to McEnery and Xiao (2004), language use can evolve, with younger groups frequently incorporating new grammatical characteristics.
Researching how adolescents use language can show how languages change and vary. Individuals between 13 and 19 are commonly referred to as teenagers or adolescents. Various physical, cognitive, and societal changes frequently define the age group.
This research aims to look into the English language swearing by adolescents. Swearwords are words that are forbidden and deemed insulting in some social settings. Any term considered vulgar or profane, such as bloody, fuck, and heck, will be designated a swearword for this study. The research question is: Are teenagers more likely to use swear words in their speech?
Materials and Methods
The study’s database is the British National Corpus (BNC), a compilation of spoken English samples. The BNC is a sizable repository of written and spoken words drawn from various sources, including books, newspapers, and transcripts of said talks. The research concentrated on three particular swearwords: bloody, fuck, and heck to examine the use of obscenities by teenagers in the English language. The study looked at the prevalence of these expletives among people of various ages, particularly teenagers between the ages of 13 and 24 and older individuals. The 10 million words that comprise the spoken portion of the BNC used in this research were gathered from different parts of the United Kingdom between 1990 and 1994.
The study used corpus linguistic techniques to look at the frequency of these expletives per million words for each age category. The spoken portion of the BNC was searched for occurrences of the three selected swear words as part of the analysis technique used in this study. The frequency of these expletives was then determined for each age category and contrasted.
The study sought to ascertain whether there was a notable variation in the use of these expletives among various age groups. The methodology used in this research aimed to offer a quantitative analysis of how often teens use English swear words. The study sought to cast light on how age affects the use of swearing in spoken language by analyzing the frequency of these swearwords across various age groups.
Results
Table 1 presents the word frequency (per million words) of three commonly used English swear words, namely bloody, fuck, and heck, across different age groups. This mini-research endeavor aimed to determine if there are any differences between how adults and adolescents use these expletives. The verbal section of the British National Corpus, which contains 10 million syllables, provided the data for this research.
Table 1 shows that the frequency of the three expletives varies significantly depending on the age category. First, the lowest age group (0–14) uses the term fuck most frequently. This indicates that young people use vulgarity more frequently, possibly due to a lack of societal expectations or a wish to resist (McEnery & Xiao, 2004). Second, the eldest age group (60+) is the one that uses the term bloody the most. It may be due to a variation in language use between generations, with older adults more apt to use conventional English expressions.
Thirdly, the groups (0–14) and groups (60+) are the ones who use the term heck the most frequently. It might imply that the term heck is a relatively recent invention that has acquired acceptance among newer generations. Finally, it’s important to note that, except for bloody, all three terms become less common as people age. It indicates a shift in societal attitudes toward language use, or it might indicate that older people prefer to swear less.
These results may have a more plausible explanation if younger people feel more at ease expressing their feelings through bolder words. However, it is also interesting to observe that people prefer to use these expletives less frequently as they age (Eckert, 2004). There are several reasons why this might be the case, including societal expectations and cultural conventions regarding language use and alterations in individual tastes and views as people mature.
The limitation of the research is that it is constrained by the prevalence of these three swear words; thus, it is unclear if the same trends would appear for other swear words or profanity (Lindgren & Bohnacker, 2021). The data support earlier research that age plays a significant role in linguistic use. According to Eckert (2004), teenagers use more profanity than adults for various reasons, such as peer pressure and a desire to show individuality. Additionally, he argues that there might be generational variations in the use of profanity, which could impact how people of various ages communicate.
Conclusion
The study examined three swear words (fuck, heck, and bloody) across different age groups. Overall, the findings point to substantial differences in how these words are used by different age groups, with adolescents (aged 15 to 24) using them more frequently than other age groups. Interestingly, usage of the term bloody rises with age, reaching a high in the 45–59 age group before falling off in the 60–plus age group. One drawback of this research is that it only considers age as a linguistic variable, whereas other variables may influence swearing among speakers. For instance, the societal setting and a person’s gender could influence how often they curse.
Future studies might examine how these additional variables affect the use of swear terms. Further studies utilizing qualitative techniques, such as focus groups and interviews, could also give a deeper grasp of the factors influencing variations in these words’ usage by age group. This research shows how frequently swear words are used among people of various ages and emphasizes the significance of considering age when analyzing language use.
References
The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition) (2007). Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Web.
Eckert, P. (2004). Adolescent language. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes from the twenty-first century (pp. 361-374). Cambridge University Press.
Lindgren, J., & Bohnacker, U. (2021). How do age, language, narrative task, language proficiency, and exposure affect narrative macrostructure in German-Swedish bilingual children aged 4 to 6? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 15(4), 16–35. Web.
McEnery, A., & Xiao, Z. (2004). Swearing in modern British English: The case of fuck in the BNC. Language and Literature, 13(3), 235-268.