May Your Liver Come Out Of Your Mouth! A Corpus Based Study: Curse Structures in Turkish Utterances

Abstract

Corpus can be described as a database for the purpose of research. Corpus studies have now been used in nearly every field of linguistics since the 1970s and gradually becoming a part of linguistic terminology. In present study cursing elements of Turkish Language were searched employing Turkish National Corpus. Cursing is an interesting subject matter that attracts several areas of linguistics not only micro fields such as, semantics, and syntax but also macro divisions such as psycholinguistics, discourse and pragmatics. In this study, we attempt to investigate the unique features of the curse utterances in Turkish and variations across regions, to understand if social variables such as age, gender and education level have influence on what cursing structures are used, and to find out whether survey results and national corpus are consistent in curse utterances. Data was collected via Turkish National Corpus and survey was developed based on array of research questions and applied to 170 participants. The findings derived from corpus and survey indicate similar features as particular curse words such as beddua (cursing), kahretsin (damn) and bela (trouble-evil) observed more often than kargış (imprecation), ilenme (cursing), mahvetsin (ruin). In parallel with the survey result, the most frequently used curse utterances in the Turkish National Corpus were Allah belanı versin, Allah cezanı versin, kahretsin (damn you, God punish you, damn it). In addition, distinctive curse structures varying from region to region were conceived.

Keywords

• Corpus based approach
• Curse utterances
• Speech Act theory

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