SWEARING IN MILLER’S DEADPOOL: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

The existence of swearing in Miller’s Deadpool raises American parents’ anxiety that swearing which is a considerably bad linguistic practice will affect children’s way of speaking. This study, therefore, addresses two objectives: 1) to delineate the categories of swearing, and 2) to reveal the characters’ reasons for deploying such swearing. To achieve the objectives, the principles of sociolinguistics on swearing as both theoretical and methodological underpinnings were adopted. Moreover, considering the issue was a social phenomenon which was demonstrated through language, a qualitative research design was chosen as its research type. Furthermore, linguistic units in this research were in the forms of morphemes, words, and phrases portraying the use of swear words in Deadpool while the context of the data was in the form of utterances in both dialogues and monologues. To gain credibility of the research then, investigator triangulation was utilized. Through a careful examination using the perspective of sociolinguistics, this study reveals that 1) there are six types of swearing occurring in the motion picture, namely abusive swearing, cathartic swearing, humorous swearing, idiomatic swearing, dysphemistic swearing, and emphatic swearing. Furthermore with respect to second objective, this study suggests seven out of nine factors appeared such as anger/tension-release, emphasis, story-telling, intimacy, a way to shock, part of personality, and vulnerability, whereas normality and habit are not found as there is no in-group pressure or social expectation, and less awareness triggering speakers for swearing.  However, there are also three new emerging motivational factors which are not stated in the expert’s theory during the study, i.e. aversion, pain, and surpirse motives.

Keywords: swearing, Miller’s Deadpool, sociolinguistics, the United States