The utilisation of profanity among Malaysian university students
List of Authors
  • Mirza Madihah Zainal

Keyword
  • profanity, swear words

Abstract
  • In Malaysia, the use of swearing is something that is frowned upon its offensiveness, but university students have been seen to use profanity. This study is interested to find out to what extend this is prevented among students from The Faculty of Islamic Studies and English Language Studies. It intends to investigate whether both faculties use English swear words and Malay swear words, their reasons behind the use of them and frequency use of swear words when they communicate. A questionnaire is used to collect data and the data will be analysed through descriptive statistic. The theory used in this research is Timothy Jay’s, Neuro – Psycho – Social theory (NPS) of cursing. Findings shows the differences use of swear words among students from FPI and ELS where FPI students prefer to use Malay swear words and ELS students use English swear words more. Despite FPI students are more preserved, they still tend to use swear words to express their feelings and this is the same as ELS students. The result also revealed that FPI and ELS students stated that the reasons behind their use of swear are because of media and peer influence. Finally, FPI students are seen to be more careful when it comes to profanity while ELS students are freer when using profanity.

Reference
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