Contextual meaning of the swear words used in soulfly's primitive album

ABSTRACT

Fuck, fucking, fucked up, fuck off, fuck you, fucker, motherfucker, freak, freaking out, bitch, bastard, shit, bullshit, damn, goddamn, and assholes are examples of English swear words that are considered taboo which can not be said in formal situation in western culture.

Swear words can be defined as words that refer to something that is taboo and / or stigmatized in the culture, should not be translated literally, and can be used to express strong emotion an attitudes. These words can be utilized to describe many situations (dismay, fraud, trouble, aggression, passive, confusion, difficulty, despair, incompetence, philosophical, laziness, displeasure, rebellion, abusive, and expletive).

Contextual meaning can be defined as meaning that is elaborated based on knowledge of the previous sentences (spoken or written), general knowledge of the world, knowledge of the speaker, and situation that occurred.

Lyric is words of song expressing direct personal feeling. In other hand, lyrics are composed for singing.

This study is aimed at answering research problem and gain better understanding of the swear words. The problem is What is the contextual meaning of swear-words found in lyrics of Soulfiy in Primitive album? The objective of this study is to find out the contextual meaning of swear-words based on analysis in every Soulfly’s song in Primitive album.

The research design used in this study is the Qualitative one due to attends to find out, describe, and explain the contextual meaning of the swear words used in Soulfly’s Primitive album and the data are in the form of text of the song or symbolic one not members.

The result of this study shows that Soulfly uses various swear words such as: fuck, shit, screw, damn, motherfucker, bitch, assholes, etc. Most of swear words which are used by Soulfly express hate to something or someone and abusive, but none of the swear words meaning that express sexual intercourse and narcotic (marijuana, heroin, etc).

From this analysis, the writer realizes that this study is far from being perfect. The writer hopes that there will be other researchers who concern to this topic and explore the swear words dealing with other topics such as grammar of swearing, social restriction on swear words in a certain culture, ritualized swearing in certain speech communities at the same culture, swear words on children (psycholinguistics aspects), etc. He also hopes that this analysis can raise the readers’ desire to understand and interest in studying the swear words found in literary works or daily conversations. Hopefully, this thesis will be useful for everyone who is interested in studying about linguistics and literature.