Swear Words in Netflix‘s Adult Animation „BoJack Horseman“ Season 1. A Corpus-Assisted Study
Swear Words in Netflix‘s Adult Animation „BoJack Horseman“ Season 1. A Corpus-Assisted Study

Summary/Abstract: This study has emerged from the research on telecinematic discourse and corpus linguistic studies. The aim of this paper is to provide a socio-pragmatic analysis of swear words in the dialogues of the Season 1 of the TV show “BoJack Horseman”, on the basis of the Bojack Horseman Corpus, prepared and compiled by the author. Lemmas such as crap, fuck, shit, damn, ass, dick, bitch, and suck are analysed, as well as their grammatical forms and functions they serve. The findings illustrate the importance of foul language employed by the show-writers and uncover the sociopragmatic aspect of the distribution of swear words in this particular TV show. The language used by the characters of the show depicts, to some extent real-life conversations, and swear words in them are used alike. The swear words in the dialogues function as an outlet for extreme emotions, a form of catharsis, or an extra emphasis added to the utterance. The offensiveness of swear words in “BoJack Horseman” is described as mild and moderate, but the swear words do occur in nearly every episode of the show. However, they are used not only to carry a negative impact (such as an insult or provocation), but also to convey positive information (the sense of social bonding or camaraderie).

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