‘Bad’ Indian English on Reddit
Publikation: Beitrag in Fachzeitschrift › Forschungsartikel › Beigetragen › Begutachtung
Beitragende
Abstract
‘Bad language’ has been established as an informal cover term for linguistic forms and practices ranging from non-standard language to slang and ‘forbidden words’, such as expletives and swearwords. Despite substantial scholarly interest in the topic, there are only a handful of studies dealing with ‘bad language’ in Outer-Circle varieties of English. This study seeks to redress that imbalance by investigating ‘bad’ Indian English (IndE). Our dataset, a multi-million-word corpus of the contemporary IndE Reddit forums (or ‘subreddits’) r/indianews and r/IndiaSpeaks, displays extensive multilingual swearing, even though both subreddits express in their rules that users should not be abusive or offensive. This study thus presents the first comprehensive account of the forms, functions, and contexts of the common Hindi-derived swearwords madarchod ‘motherfucker’ and bhenchod ‘sisterfucker’ as well as the English expression *fucker as adapted to the Indian communicative space, such as in cowfucker.
Details
| Originalsprache | Englisch |
|---|---|
| Seiten (von - bis) | 783-800 |
| Seitenumfang | 18 |
| Fachzeitschrift | Asian Englishes : an international journal of the sociolinguistics of English in Asia, Pacific |
| Jahrgang | 27 |
| Ausgabenummer | 3 |
| Frühes Online-Datum | 2 Sept. 2025 |
| Publikationsstatus | Veröffentlicht - 2025 |
| Peer-Review-Status | Ja |
Externe IDs
| ORCID | /0009-0006-9698-1799/work/191531261 |
|---|---|
| Mendeley | 80092281-5857-362f-886f-bed195eeed9d |
| Scopus | 105014939269 |
Schlagworte
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Schlagwörter
- swearing, Reddit, computer-mediated communication, Indian English, multilingualism