Week 9- Accomplishing Socio-cultural identity in talk- Bloody hell!

This weeks reading by Wierzbicka looks at the cultural scripts around the word bloody. She explores its usage in a variety of different ways, such as a mild ‘swear’ word to being used in everyday conversations. She follows how the word has evolved from something used by the lower classes of society to evolving into our everyday Australian rhetoric. In today’s society the word bloody has been embedded into the language so much so that we hardly even notice it when it is used as a ‘swear’ word and even less so when it is used in a different context such as ‘how the bloody hell are ya!?’ I myself have found that I tend to used bloody more to expel frustration at a situation, and rather than employing the use of a much harsher expletive I’ll exclaim something along the lines of ‘bloody hell!’ The most interesting part of the use of the word bloody for me is how it can be used as a sign of being equal with someone, such as politicians wanting to appeal to the lower socio-economic classes.

Cliff Goddard also looks at cultural scripts in language and he says that the goal of looking at language in this way allows one to look at speech practices from the perspective of the speaker themselves. In using this approach we are able to understand that despite speaking the same language there are different variations of the same language and within those different variations are culturally specific words and phrases that demonstrate different meanings. This is demonstrated in Wierzbicka’s article when she looks at the cultural significance of ‘bloody’ and the range of ways in which it is used.

References:
Wiezbicka, Anna. 2002 "Australian Cultural Scripts- bloody revisited." Journal of Pramatics 34: pp. 1167-1209.
Goddard, Cliff. 2009 Cultural Scripts in "Culture and Language Use" by Senft, G. Ostaman, J. & Verschueren, J. (eds.). John Benjamans Publishing Comapny: Amsterdam.