Success Story with Scott D. Clary cover image

Valerie Fridland - Professor, Sociolinguist, and Author | Language and the Good in Bad English

Success Story with Scott D. Clary

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The Importance of Intensification in Language

S swearing came from an emotional core emotional response and it was in response to that we did it first but a lot of times what we find with language is these things that language has come to represent then get picked up and move to a different context. So O for example is a metaphorical extension of surprise so now when I say damn I'm happy  it's like I'm intensifying my happiness right? It's again extrapolated to the context from its original use but no longer carries that same original emotional intensity does that make sense it could have worked the same way this emotional sense of what a word meant in one context got extrapolated into profanity today. A whole show on that

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