Syntactic-functional Analysis Of Chinese Swearword

The Chinese nation has been a civilized and ceremonial state since ancient times.As a special linguistic phenomenon,swearword is disparaged by many literati because of its inelegance and vulgarity.However,as an objective linguistic phenomenon,swearword is frequently used in daily communicative activities.Therefore,it cannot be ignored by linguists.With regard to the researches of swearword,it is a little late for Chinese linguists to be involved in this field.Nevertheless,the domestic researches on Chinese swearwords have achieved fruitful results and research perspectives have begun to diversify.The analysis of previous studies mainly centers on definition of swearwords,classification of swearwords,functional approach to swearwords and sociolinguistic approach to swearwords and so on.However,there are few works related to Chinese swearwords from the perspectives of syntactic features and biolinguistics.Therefore,the main task of this thesis is to explore swearwords from syntactic features and functions when swearwords evolve into interjections and discourse markers,aiming to develop and perfect the previous findings.The corpus of this research mainly comes from the BCC corpus and daily communicative language.Through the material collection and analysis,it aims to discover the syntactic features and functions of Chinese swearwords which result from interjectionization and discourse markers.In terms of swearwords resulting from interjectionization,syntactically,the author mainly investigates the syntactic behaviors according to Chomsky's structure dependency and structure independency;functionally,the author employs Popper's four language communicative functions to explore the functions of swearwords from the perspective of biolinguistics.In terms of swearwords serving as discourse markers,the author divides it into three main contents: firstly,there is a discussion about pragmatic functions of swearwords;secondly,in information transmission,how are the swearwords considered as costly signals?;thirdly,in line with Zahavi's handicap principle,the aim is in order to reveal the relationship between swearwords and reliability of information transmission.After research,the author mainly reaches the following conclusions:(1)Syntactically,swearwords serving as interjections and discourse markers are structure-independent.It means that swearwords are equipped with strong independency,which cannot form a larger linguistic unit with other constituents such as phrase or sentence;(2)Functionally,with respect to swearwords resulting from interjectionization,combining with Popper's four language communicative functions,the author finds out that there are only two functions,respectively expressive function and signalling function;with regard to swearwords serving as discourse markers,there are three respects involved,they are face-threatening function,explicit information function and prominence of subjectivity;(3)In information transmission,when swearwords serve as discourse markers,on the one hand,the characteristic of structure independency of swearwords and generation of negative emotions illustrate that swearwords can be regarded as costly signals;on the other hand,in line with Zahavi's handicap principle,the author draws a conclusion that there is a close relationship between swearwords and reliability of information transmission.That is,the more impolite swearwords are,the costlier signals are;the costlier signals are,the more reliable information is.In a word,the use of swearwords augments the reliability of information transmission.At the same time,this relationship further reveals the fundamental reasons for swearing acts.This study not only expands the scope of the exploration of swearwords,but also reveals the fundamental reasons for this linguistic phenomenon from the perspective of biolinguistics.Therefore,this research of swearwords is a new attempt both from the perspectives of syntax and biolinguistics.However,a lack of the understanding of biolinguistics and shortage of material collection are the main limitations in this study.Therefore,the author hopes that in future studies,the researchers will be able to collect more material and extend the study of swearwords to other aspects of biolinguistics,revealing swearing behaviors from different perspectives.