E) Vulgar Words or Vulgarisms

/'The term vulgarism, as used to single out a difinite group of words of non-standard English, is rather misleading. The ambiguity of the term apparently proceeds from the etymology of the word. Vulgar, as explained by the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, means a) words or names employed in ordinary speech; b) common, familiar; c) commonly current or prevalent, generally or widely disseminated?)

Out of seven various meanings given in Websler's Third New International Dictionary six repeat nearly the same definitions that are given in the Shorter Oxford, and only the seventh is radically different. Here it is:

"5a: marked by coarseness of speech or expression; crude or offensive in language, b: lewd, obscene or profane in expression,..: indecent, indelicate."

These two submeanings are the foundation of what we here name vulgarisms. So vulgarisms are:

1) expletives and swear words which are of an abusive character,
like 'damn', 'bloody', 'to hell', 'goddarn' and, as some dictionaries state,
used now as general exclamations;

2) obscene words. These are known as four-letter words the use of
which is banned in any form of intercourse as being indecent. Historians
tell us that in Middle Ages and down into the 16th century they were
accepted in oral speech and after Caxton even admitted to the printed
page. All of these words are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Vulgarisms are often used in conversation out of habit, without any thought of what they mean, or in imitation of those who use them in order not to seem old-fashioned or prudish. Unfortunately in modern fiction these words have gained legitimacy. The most vulgar of them are now to be found even in good novels. This lifting of the taboo has given rise to the almost unrestrained employment of words which soil the literary language. However, they will never acquire the status of standard English vocabulary and will always remain on the outskirts.

Wyld, H. C. Op. cit., p. 16.

Thus, to excuse oneself in the meaning of 'to leave', as in 'Soames excused himself directly after dinner' (Galsworthy); or the meaning of a thought = 'a little' as in 'A thought more fashionably than usual' (Galsworthy) are fixed as separate meanings in some modern British and American dictionaries, but are neglected in others.

Every word possesses an enormous potentiality for generating new meanings. This power is often under-estimated by scholars who regard a word as a unit complete in itself and acknowledge a new-born meaning only when it has firmly asserted itself in language and become accepted by the majority of the language community. But not to see the latent possibilities of a word is not to understand the true nature of this unit of language.

The potentiality of words can also be noted in regard io emotive meaning. Emotive meaning also materializes a concept in the w^rord, but, unlike logical meaning, emotive meaning has reference not directly to things or phenomena of objective reality, but to the feelings and emotions of the speaker towards these things or to his emotions as such. Therefore the emotive meaning bears reference to things, phenomena or ideas through a kind of evaluation of them. For example:

I feel so darned lonely. (Graham Green, "The Quiet American".) He classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness; he did not

want to see that knife descend, but he felt it for one great fleeting

instant. (London)

The italicized words have no logical meaning, only emotive meaning. Their function is to reveal the subjective, evaluating attitude of the writer to the things or events spoken of. Men-of-letters themselves are well aware that words may reveal a subjective evaluation and sometimes use it for definite stylistic effects, thus calling the attention of the reader to the meaning of such words. Thus, for example, in the following passage from "The Man of Property" by Galsworthy:

"She was not a flirt, not even a coquette—words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word—but she was dangerous."

Here the words 'flirt' and 'coquette' retain some of their logical meaning. They mean a person (particularly a girl) who endeavours to attract the opposite sex, who toys with her admirers. But both words have acquired an additional significance, viz. a derogatory shade of meaning. This shade may grow into an independent meaning and in this case will be fixed in dictionaries as having a special emotive meaning, as, for example, have the words fabulous,, terrifying, stunning, spectacular, swell, top, smart, cute, massive and the like.

Many words acquire an emotive meaning only in a definite context. In that case we say that the word has ^contextual emotive meaning.

Stephen Ullmann holds that

"Only the context can show whether a word should be taken as a purely objective expression, or whether it is primarily designed to

The problem of meaning in general linguistics deals mainly with such aspects of the term as the interrelation between meaning and concept, meaning and sign, meaning and referent. The general tendency is to regard meaning as something stable at a given period of time.- This is reasonable, otherwise no dictionary would be able to cope with the problem of defining the meaning of words. Moreover, no communication, would be possible.

(Jfn stylistics meaning is also viewed as a category which is able to acquire meanings imposed on the words by the context. That is why such meanings are called contextual meaning s7)This category also takes under observation meanings which have fallen out of use.

In stylistics it is important to discriminate shades or nuances of meaning, to atomize the meaning, the component parts of which are now called the semes, i. e. the smallest units of which meaning of a word consists. "A proper concern for meanings," writes W. Chafe, "should lead to a situation where, in the training of linguists, practice in the discrimination of concepts will be given at least as much time in the curriculum as practice in the discrimination of sounds."³

It will be shown later, in the analysis of SDs, how important it is to discriminate between the meanings of a given word or construction in order to adequately comprehend the idea and purport of a passage and of a complete work.

It is now common knowledge that lexical meaning differs from grammatical meaning in more than one way. Lexical meaning refers the mind to some concrete concept, phenomenon, or thing of objective reality, whether real or imaginary. Lexical meaning is thus a means by which a word-form is made to express a definite concept.

Grammatical meaning refers our mind to relations between words or to some forms of words or constructions bearing upon their structural functions in the language-as-a-system. Grammatical meaning can thus be adequately called "structural meaning".

There are no words which are deprived of grammatical meaning inasmuch as all words belong to some system and consequently have their

¹ Jakobson, R. The Conference of Antropologists and Linguists.— In: "Selected
Writings". The Hague, v. 2, p. 565.

² Chafe, W. L. Meaning and the Structure of Language. Chicago, 1970, p. 351.

³ Ibid., p. 78.

And so God save the Regent, Church and King! Which means that I like all and everything.

In the first line the word 'like' gives only a slight hint of irony. Parliamentary debates are usually long. The word 'debate' itself suggests a lengthy discussion, therefore the word 'like' here should be taken with some reservation. In other words, a hint of the interplay between positive and negative begins with the first 'like'.

The second use of the word 'like' is definitely ironical. No one would be expected to like taxes. It is so obvious that no context is necessary to decode the true meaning of 'like'. The attributive phrase 'when they're not too many' strengthens the irony.

Then Byron uses the word 'like' in its literal meaning. 'Like' in combinations with 'seacoal fire' and 'a beef-steak' and with 'two months of every year' maintains its literal meaning, although in the phrase "I like the weather" the notion is very general. But the last line again shows that the word 'like' is used with an ironic touch, meaning 'to like' and 'to put up with' simultaneously.

Richard Altick says, "The effect of irony lies in the striking disparity between what is said and what is meant."¹ This "striking disparity" is achieved through the intentional interplay of two meanings, which are in opposition to each other.

Another important observation must be borne in mind when analysing the linguistic nature of irony. Irony is generally used to convey a negative meaning. Therefore only positive concepts may be used in their logical dictionary meaning. In the examples quoted above, irony is embodied in such words as 'delightful', 'clever', 'coherent', 'like'. The contextual meaning always conveys the negation of the positive concepts embodied in the dictionary meaning.

2. INTERACTION OFPRIMARY AND DERIVATIVE LOGICAL MEANINGS