(IM)Politeness Study on Swearing as a New Youths’ Culture: A Status Quo Verdict

Abstract

This sociolinguistics paper attempts to position an early hypothesis on the swearing act in communication among Malaysian youths between the two challenging lines of politeness and impoliteness area. Since Malaysia practices high-culture context (HC) in which the sociocultural background has been highly promoting politeness in all aspects, this issue may rise some debates on its relevance and functions in the current communication amongst the youths who are defined as the speech community (SpCom). 400 sets of questionnaire had been distributed to the respondents. Descriptive analysis is being used to reveal the results. This study uses Theory of Politeness, Theory of Impoliteness and Functions of Swearing as the basis to its analysis. The full data is however, still in the stage of its interpretation. Initial finding shows that the status quo of the act of swearing is deemed acceptable and is normally uttered by the speakers in context. Some main concepts are discussed in the paper. This verdict hence, suggests that swearing is a new youths’ culture based on the initial responds by the unit of analysis through the research tool circulated.