Swearing In Media Analysis

Swearing in media – an overview

Although, as it has been discussed above, the precise definition of offensive speech is yet to be established, the fact that uttering obscenities is an infringement of cultural norms can be taken for granted (Ożóg 2011; Maćkowiak 2009). Moreover, swear words are something of a peculiarity, since nearly 92 % of Polish people perceive cursing as an unacceptable practice, but that does not stop them from spicing up their conversations with coarse lexemes (Maćkowiak 2009). Considering the employment of offensive expressions in media, the attitudes of viewers differ radically – while some television watchers believe that expletives should be banned from broadcasting, others argue that such vocabulary is an indispensable element of emotionally charged scenes (Kaye and Sapolsky 2009). Still, the research conducted by the

According to Kaye and Sapolsky (2011), the increase in the application of expletives on air has been observable since the 1980. The study conducted by the authors reveals that coarse language is present in all of the major broadcast and cable networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PAX, Lifetime, MTV and TNT, to name but a few). Moreover, about 9 out of 10 scrutinized programmes included at least one occurrence of a lexical item deemed as offensive. An in-depth analysis indicated that in general, crude expressions were uttered at a rate of 7.6 times per hour in 2001, especially within the programmes broadcasted by the cable network. To illustrate, expletives were ubiquitous in sundry shows such as The Simpsons (lousy big shit, he thinks he’s so big), Cops (bastard, motherfucking), NYPD (pissy little bitch) and South Park (a single episode with 162 instances of the word shit). As one may expect, this escalation of problem has been soon noticed by the viewers, who flooded FCC with complaints (Kaye and Sapolsky