Home Linguistics & Semiotics 4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania
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4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania

  • Alice Mitchell
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Swearing and Cursing
This chapter is in the book Swearing and Cursing

Abstract

In the Datooga language of Tanzania, to say ‘your mother’ or ‘your father’ to someone can cause offence. Using data from a video corpus of conversational Datooga, this chapter explores these kin-based insults, as well as other affect-laden linguistic practices that invoke kinship relations. Datooga speakers can attest to the truth of something by referring to their opposite-sex parent. Speakers also invoke kin in everyday interjectional phrases, as well as during ritual hunts - a type of speech act known as gíishíimda. Though these speech practices do not all constitute “swearing” in the narrow sense of using “bad” language, they resemble swear words in the way they link speakers’ evaluations of objects in the world with abstract moral values. In the Datooga case, kinship provides the relevant moral framework; the cultural and moral significance of fathers, in particular, makes them good to swear by. From a crosscultural perspective on swearing, I suggest that Ljung’s (2011) “mother” theme be subsumed under a more general “kinship” theme.

Abstract

In the Datooga language of Tanzania, to say ‘your mother’ or ‘your father’ to someone can cause offence. Using data from a video corpus of conversational Datooga, this chapter explores these kin-based insults, as well as other affect-laden linguistic practices that invoke kinship relations. Datooga speakers can attest to the truth of something by referring to their opposite-sex parent. Speakers also invoke kin in everyday interjectional phrases, as well as during ritual hunts - a type of speech act known as gíishíimda. Though these speech practices do not all constitute “swearing” in the narrow sense of using “bad” language, they resemble swear words in the way they link speakers’ evaluations of objects in the world with abstract moral values. In the Datooga case, kinship provides the relevant moral framework; the cultural and moral significance of fathers, in particular, makes them good to swear by. From a crosscultural perspective on swearing, I suggest that Ljung’s (2011) “mother” theme be subsumed under a more general “kinship” theme.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. Foreword VII
  4. Part I: Othering and abjection as deep practice
  5. 1. “I will kill you today” – Reading “bad language” and swearing through Otherness, mimesis, abjection and camp 1
  6. 2. Ten issues facing taboo word scholars 37
  7. 3. “Damn your eyes!” (Not really): Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands 53
  8. 4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania 79
  9. 5. Aesthetics of the obscure: Swearing as horrible play 103
  10. 6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa) 121
  11. Part II: Cultural mobility as context of transgression
  12. 7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations 147
  13. 8. ‘Don’t say it in public’: Contestations and negotiations in northern Nigerian Muslim cyberspace 165
  14. 9. Mock Chinese in Kinshasa: On Lingala speakers’ offensive language use and verbal hostility 185
  15. 10. The name of the wild man: Colonial arbiru in East Timor 209
  16. Part III: Disruptive and trashy performance
  17. 11. Found and lost paradise: Bad language at a beach in Diani, Kenya 239
  18. 12. The sexy banana – artifacts of gendered language in tourism 259
  19. 13. English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers’ use of rude vocatives 281
  20. 14. “He shall not be buried in the West” – Cursing in Ancient Egypt 303
  21. Afterword 327
  22. Index 333
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501511202-004

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. Foreword VII
  4. Part I: Othering and abjection as deep practice
  5. 1. “I will kill you today” – Reading “bad language” and swearing through Otherness, mimesis, abjection and camp 1
  6. 2. Ten issues facing taboo word scholars 37
  7. 3. “Damn your eyes!” (Not really): Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands 53
  8. 4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania 79
  9. 5. Aesthetics of the obscure: Swearing as horrible play 103
  10. 6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa) 121
  11. Part II: Cultural mobility as context of transgression
  12. 7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations 147
  13. 8. ‘Don’t say it in public’: Contestations and negotiations in northern Nigerian Muslim cyberspace 165
  14. 9. Mock Chinese in Kinshasa: On Lingala speakers’ offensive language use and verbal hostility 185
  15. 10. The name of the wild man: Colonial arbiru in East Timor 209
  16. Part III: Disruptive and trashy performance
  17. 11. Found and lost paradise: Bad language at a beach in Diani, Kenya 239
  18. 12. The sexy banana – artifacts of gendered language in tourism 259
  19. 13. English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers’ use of rude vocatives 281
  20. 14. “He shall not be buried in the West” – Cursing in Ancient Egypt 303
  21. Afterword 327
  22. Index 333
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