Home Linguistics & Semiotics The type, motive, and function of swear words: a sociolinguistic analysis of Khek Chinese language in Bangka
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The type, motive, and function of swear words: a sociolinguistic analysis of Khek Chinese language in Bangka

  • Widyasari

    Widyasari is an accomplished scholar and educator in the field of English language and translation studies, currently serving as the Head of the English Literature Study Program at Universitas Terbuka (UT) of Indonesia. Her academic journey reflects a deep commitment to language education, open-access learning, and interdisciplinary research. Over the years, she has expanded her research interests into applied linguistics, humor studies in character education, and the pedagogy of translation. She has presented her work at various national conferences and contributed actively to UT’s scholarly ecosystem through textbooks, reports, and curriculum design.

    ORCID logo
    and Muhammad Afifulloh

    Muhammad Afifulloh serves as a lecturer in the Department of Language and Literature at the Universitas Bangka Belitung. He is in the final stages of his Doctoral program at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. His academic interests primarily focus on the intersections of gender, language, literature, and media. Afifulloh has made significant contributions to the field, with several of his scholarly works published in nationally accredited and internationally recognized academic journals. His research output is notable, with 107 citations and an h-index of 6, reflecting the impact of his work within the academic community. His publications cover various topics, from psychological analyses in literature to critical discourse analysis in contemporary cinema. His profile can be accessed at Google Scholar for further details on his academic contributions, including specific publications and their citations.

    ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: September 22, 2025
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This study explores how people in the Khek community of Bangka use swear words. It looks at how swearing helps express emotions and strengthen social ties. Using a qualitative method, the study gathered data through interviews with native Khek speakers. The swear words were analyzed using Jay’s (2000) framework. The study involved 20 adults of different ages, genders, and jobs. Results show that Khek swear words cover topics like sex, animals, race, ancestors, and vulgar language. These words are used to release emotions, create humor, and build community bonds. The study shows that swearing plays an important role in both personal and social life in the Khek community. Future research should look at how swearing varies across different regions. This work helps us better understand the social meaning of swearing and the value of studying minority languages.

提要

本研究探讨了邦加岛克客 (Khek) 族群如何使用咒骂词, 分析咒骂如何帮助表达情感并强化社会关系。研究采用质性方法, 通过访谈克客语母语者收集数据, 依据 Jay (2000) 的框架对咒骂词进行分析。研究对象为 20 名不同年龄、性别和职业的成年人。结果显示,克客语中的咒骂词涉及性、动物、种族、祖先及粗俗用语, 常用于情绪宣泄、制造幽默及增强社区凝聚力。研究表明, 咒骂在克客族群的个人情感表达和社会互动中发挥着重要作用。建议未来进一步探讨不同地区的咒骂差异。本研究有助于加深对咒骂社会意义及少数民族语言价值的理解。


Corresponding author: Muhammad Afifulloh, Language and Literature Department, Universitas Bangka Belitung, Bangka, Indonesia, E-mail:

About the authors

Widyasari

Widyasari is an accomplished scholar and educator in the field of English language and translation studies, currently serving as the Head of the English Literature Study Program at Universitas Terbuka (UT) of Indonesia. Her academic journey reflects a deep commitment to language education, open-access learning, and interdisciplinary research. Over the years, she has expanded her research interests into applied linguistics, humor studies in character education, and the pedagogy of translation. She has presented her work at various national conferences and contributed actively to UT’s scholarly ecosystem through textbooks, reports, and curriculum design.

Muhammad Afifulloh

Muhammad Afifulloh serves as a lecturer in the Department of Language and Literature at the Universitas Bangka Belitung. He is in the final stages of his Doctoral program at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. His academic interests primarily focus on the intersections of gender, language, literature, and media. Afifulloh has made significant contributions to the field, with several of his scholarly works published in nationally accredited and internationally recognized academic journals. His research output is notable, with 107 citations and an h-index of 6, reflecting the impact of his work within the academic community. His publications cover various topics, from psychological analyses in literature to critical discourse analysis in contemporary cinema. His profile can be accessed at Google Scholar for further details on his academic contributions, including specific publications and their citations.

References

Allan, Keith & Kate Burridge. 2006. Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511617881Search in Google Scholar

Andersson, Lars-Gunnar. 1985. A project on swearing: A comparison between American English and Swedish. Göteborg: Department of Linguistics, University of Göteborg.Search in Google Scholar

Bird, Steven. 2020. Decolonising speech and language technology. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on computational linguistics, 3504–3519. Available at: https://aclanthology.org/2020.coling-main.313/.10.18653/v1/2020.coling-main.313Search in Google Scholar

Brown, Penelope, Stephen C. Levinson & Roger J. Brown. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813085Search in Google Scholar

Chappell, Hilary M. 2015. Linguistic areas in China for differential object marking, passive, and comparative constructions. In Hilary M. Chappell (ed.), Diversity in Sinitic languages, 13–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723790.003.0002Search in Google Scholar

Chen, Wei. 2012. Swearing and taboo language in Chinese dialects. Beijing: Beijing University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Cheng, Lisa. 2010. Cultural meanings in Chinese profanity: A comparative perspective. Journal of Asian Linguistics 18(2). 143–160.Search in Google Scholar

Crystal, David. 2003. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek, Bousfield & Anne, Wichmann. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35(10–11): 1545–1579.10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00118-2Search in Google Scholar

Díaz-Pérez, Francisco J. 2020. Translating swear words from English into Galician in film subtitles: A corpus-based study. Babel 66(3). 393–419. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00162.dia.Search in Google Scholar

Djarot, Muchammad. 2020. Campur kode dalam bahasa Tionghoa dialek Khek di kalangan pelajar Kabupaten Kubu Raya. JP-BSI 5(2). 83–88. https://doi.org/10.26737/jp-bsi.v5i2.1868.Search in Google Scholar

Evita, Christiana, Tjen Veronica & Yoanna Afrimonika. 2024. Analisis penguasaan kata benda dalam bahasa Khek pada mahasiswa Hakka prodi pendidikan bahasa Mandarin. JPPK 1061–1070. https://doi.org/10.26418/jppk.v13i5.78510.Search in Google Scholar

Gao, Ying. 2019. Insider knowledge and taboo expression: A sociolinguistic study of Chinese dialect swearing. Language & Communication 64. 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2018.12.002.Search in Google Scholar

Geeraerts, Dirk & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.). 2010. The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199738632.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 2005. Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face behavior. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction.Search in Google Scholar

Herlina, Herlina, Deden Ramdani & Agus Syahrani. 2021. Leksikon Etnomedisin Penyakit dalam Bahasa Khek Dialek Pontianak. Jurnal Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran Khatulistiwa 11(3). https://doi.org/10.26418/jppk.v11i3.53302.Search in Google Scholar

Holgate, Erik, Isabel Cachola, Daniel Preoţiuc-Pietro & Junyi Jessy Li. 2018. Why swear? Analyzing and inferring the intentions of vulgar expressions. In Proceedings of the 2018 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 4405–4414.10.18653/v1/D18-1471Search in Google Scholar

Hoogervorst, Tom & Chia Chia. 2021. At the periphery of Nanyang: The Hakka community of Timor-Leste. Sinophone Southeast Asia, 52–90. Leiden: Brill.10.1163/9789004473263_004Search in Google Scholar

Huang, Su-chen. 2013. Indonesian Hakka dialect study in Pontianak. Taoyuan: National Central University.Search in Google Scholar

Hughes, Geoffrey. 2006. An encyclopedia of swearing: The social history of oaths, profanity, foul language, and ethnic slurs in the English-speaking world. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Search in Google Scholar

Jay, Timothy. 2000. Why we curse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.91Search in Google Scholar

Jay, Timothy & James H. Danks. 1977. Ordering of taboo adjectives. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 9(6). 405–408. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337038.Search in Google Scholar

Jay, Timothy & Kristin Janschewitz. 2008. The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research 4(2). 267–288. https://doi.org/10.1515/JPLR.2008.013.Search in Google Scholar

Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth R. Rose. 2002. Pragmatic development in a second language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Kompas. 2009. Penguasaan bahasa Mandarin di Bangka rendah. Available at: https://news.kompas.com/read/2009/02/08/19335629/penguasaan-bahasa-mandarin-di-bangka-rendah.Search in Google Scholar

Kövecses, Zoltán & Réka Benczes. 2010. Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kurniawan, Julius Novan Deni & Agus Subiyanto. 2023. Analytical causative construction in Banyumasan dialect and West Kalimantan Hakka dialect: A linguistic typology study. Lingua Didaktika: Jurnal Bahasa dan Pembelajaran Bahasa 17(1). https://doi.org/10.24036/ld.v17i1.119188.Search in Google Scholar

Kusuma, Bayu Mitra A. & Theresia Octastefani. 2022. The history of Hakka diaspora in Indonesia: Migration waves and negotiations with national identity. International Journal of Culture and Art Studies 6(2). 96–107. https://doi.org/10.32734/ijcas.v6i2.8928.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. n.d. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George & Mark Turner. 2008. More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Leung, Mary. 2015. Profanity and kinship in Chinese dialects: A comparative sociolinguistic study. Asian Language Studies 10(1). 25–39.Search in Google Scholar

Lev-Ari, Shiri & Ryan McKay. 2023. The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 30(3). 1103–1114. https://doi.org/10.3758/S13423-022-02202-0.Search in Google Scholar

Liu, Hongyin, Yafeng Zhang & Yi Wang. 2021. Building emotion lexicons for low-resource languages: Challenges and approaches. Language Resources and Evaluation 55(1). 55–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-020-09506-3.Search in Google Scholar

Ljung, Magnus. 2011. Swearing: A cross-cultural linguistic study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230292376Search in Google Scholar

Lo Bianco, Joseph. 2009. Heritage language education and social inclusion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12(4). 441–454. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050802357792.Search in Google Scholar

Lo, Adrienne & Chi Cheung Fung. 2018. Swearing across generations: Kinship and conflict in Chinese discourse. Pragmatics 28(3). 349–372. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.17042.lo.Search in Google Scholar

Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts. 2005. Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1). 9–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/JPLR.2005.1.1.9.Search in Google Scholar

Matusz, Łukasz. 2022. On dogs, cows, and donkeys: The use of animal metaphors in linguistic insults. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 19(2). 53–68.Search in Google Scholar

Natalia, Dea. 2023. Tio Ciu’s language maintenance of Chinese Pontianak in Jakarta. Tangerang: Buddhi Dharma University BA thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Nielsen, Anne-Kathrine S. & David Rendall. 2013. Parsing the role of consonants versus vowels in the classic Takete–Maluma phenomenon. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 67(2). 153–162. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030553.Search in Google Scholar

Pan, Yuling. 2021. The performativity of Chinese swearing: Ritualized aggression and cultural norms. Language in Society 50(4). 601–626. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740452000092X.Search in Google Scholar

Reiman, Amanda K. & Mitchell Earleywine. 2022. Swear word fluency, verbal fluency, vocabulary, personality, and drug involvement. Journal of Individual Differences 44(1). 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000379.Search in Google Scholar

Ruslan Anip, Erenst. 2025. Documentation of Khek Bangka language. Honolulu: ScholarSpace, University of Hawaiʻi. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/21604/poster.pdf (accessed 25 April 2024).Search in Google Scholar

Saputra, Putra Pratama & Afifulloh Muhammad. 2020. Pemetaan penggunaan bahasa Melayu Bangka. KREDO: Jurnal Ilmiah Bahasa dan Sastra 3(2). 307–321. https://doi.org/10.24176/kredo.v3i2.4560.Search in Google Scholar

Scherer, Cory R. & Blair J. Sagarin. 2006. Indecent influence: The positive effects of obscenity on persuasion. Social Influence 1(2). 138–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510600747597.Search in Google Scholar

Stephens, Richard, John Atkins & Andrew Kingston. 2009. Swearing as a Response to Pain. Neuro Report. 20(12). 1056–1060. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e32832e64b1.Search in Google Scholar

Talebinejad, Mohammad Reza & H. Vahid Dastjerdi. 2005. A cross-cultural study of animal metaphors: When owls are not wise. Metaphor and Symbol 20(2). 133–150. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327868MS2002_3.Search in Google Scholar

Tsang, Wing. 2017. Identity, honor, and insult: A study of kinship-based swearing in Cantonese and Hakka. Journal of Chinese Sociolinguistics 29(3). 200–218.Search in Google Scholar

Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2006. An introduction to sociolinguistics, 5th edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Wijayanti, Ratna. 2025. Dinamika Sosial Etnis Tionghoa Hakka di Pulau Bangka. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Adicita.Search in Google Scholar

Yao, Xinzhong. 2000. An introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-09-22
Published in Print: 2025-10-27

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 6.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/caslar-2025-2001/html
Scroll to top button