Date Approved
2012
Degree Type
Open Access Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department or School
English Language and Literature
Committee Member
Veronica Grondona, Ph.D., Chair
Committee Member
Helen Aristar-Dry, Ph.D.
Abstract
The present study is a corpus-based approach using both the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Blog Authorship Corpus (BAC) to identify variance in spoken use of fuck between genders, age groups, and social classes. The resulting analysis shows that there is little variance in use between male and female speakers, while use is most prevalent during the teens and early 20s. This study offers further support of the idea that there are two distinct meanings of fuck that can be separated into two distinct words, fuck1 and fuck2, by showing that a non-referential definition of fuck (fuck2) is the dominant use between all genders, ages, and social classes.
Recommended Citation
Howe, Ryan, "The use of fuck: A sociolinguistic approach to the usage of fuck in the BNC and blog authorship corpus" (2012). Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. 413.
https://commons.emich.edu/theses/413