What is it about?
Jamaican curse words are as colourful as they are expressive. You hear them all over the Jamaican diaspora and in media like tv shows and movies. But not much is known about the linguistic structure of these curse words. This paper attempts to shed some light on that issue.
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Why is it important?
Developing a comprehensive description of the grammar of Jamaican Creole means describing all aspects of the grammar. Curse words are just as important as any other aspect of the language like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, since they tend to convey much more emotion than other words. Understanding them is a crucial step in fully describing the language.
Perspectives
This research was interesting to write since it forced me to think about curse words in an entirely analytical manner. Not just as emotive words that are used in times of anger, excitement, or disgust, but as legitimate parts of speech that occupy their own place in the syntactic structure of the language.
Dr. Clive Forrester
University of Waterloo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: 7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations, April 2020, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/9781501511202-007.
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