Charts showing share of BLWs per speaker in all-female
(orange), all-male (blue), and mixed (green) groups.
ENGL276
of swearing, and it therefore
would have driven the
focus away from swearing
and gender. In each group
interaction the informants
are good friends who
would meet in this setting
frequently and thus the
data I recorded was a fairly
reliable reflection on their
language outside of the
recordings. Due to them all
being university students,
their ages only vary from
18-25. My analysis will thus
be focused on bad language
use in young adults, both
male and female.
Once I collected and
analysed the recor dings, I
asked each informant the
following question:
Would you expect the data
to show that males/females
swear more in a single-sex
or a mixed-sex group? Why
do you think this?
I included this question in
my methodology as it will
help me to identify what
the informants’ attitudes
towards
swearing
in
males and females are,
and whether their actual
language differs from this.
*****
The first recording and
data is the all-female group
interaction. The orange
graphic, above, shows
the percentage of the 40
recorded BLWs spoken by
each informant. The most
obvious feature of this chart
is the equal distribution of
swearing between speakers
A, C and D. Although
speaker B uses noticeably
fewer BLWs, they are still
present within her language.
The distribution of BLWs
within the all-male group
interaction,
shown
in
blue,
is
less
evenly
distributed between the
four interlocutors. Speaker
A’s instances of swearing
- more than 50 per cent of
45 instances - dominate,
a feature that is not so
prevalent in the first chart.
From the recording itself it
is also clear that speaker A
is a more dominant speaker
throughout the interaction,
giving reason as to why he
may have a much higher
percentage of BLWs.
The BLWs in the mixed
group, shown in green, are
even less evenly distributed,
with male speaker A being
the dominant force in
providing expletives and
female speaker B not
33
contributing any to the total
list of 35 BLWs. Comparing
this to the two single-sex
interactions, it seems it
has more in common with
the interaction between
all males than all-females:
there is one informant
dominating the expletives,
which suggests he is the
more dominant speaker.
From the fourth chart, (next
page), we can see just how
many different BLWs were
used in each interaction and
the specific expletives that
were used. The all-female
group uses the lowest variety
of BLWs, with only nine
different ones being used
throughout the interaction.
The interaction that comes
second in its use of different
BLWs is the mixed-sex
group with a variation of 14