Death of 'drongo': Are Aussie insults and swearwords dying out?

Linguists have found that younger people use swearwords and insults in different ways than older people. (Getty Images: Sergio Mendoza Hochmann) Link copiedShareShare articleAustralians love a good insult: from Australiana-inspired quips like 'galah', to four-letter favourites that have stood the test of time and phrases too colourful to publish. But there is one thing linguists agree on: younger generations swear differently to those who came before them. "Age has a big role to play in the way in which people use language," senior lecturer in Dialectology at the University of Sheffield, Dr Chris Montgomery, told triple j hack. "Likewise there might be some terms that are used by older people that young people find particularly offensive, particularly … in relation to minoritised groups," Dr Montgomery said. Older swear words and insults are falling out of favour with younger people "because all of language is changing and terms will just drop out of usage", said co-host of the Because Language podcast and lecturer in linguistics at the University of Western Australia, Daniel Midgley. "Nobody wants to talk like the older generation. We want to use language like people that we hang out with." Changing societal taboos have a lot to do with what words we find offensive. "When we talk about swearwords in most languages, we're talking about five different things: God, poop, sex, disease, and then slurs," Mr Midgley said. "If we go back several decades, blasphemous expressions were a lot more common," PhD student at the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics at Monash University, Dylan Hughes, told triple j hack. Mr Hughes and Mr Midgley both say that the most controversial category of swearword or insult is slurs, especially against minority groups. "There are some terms that we thought were squelched but they're coming back," Mr Midgley said. "There is currently a huge debate over what's wrong with ableist language, what's wrong with sexist language." "It just goes to show that the meaning of a word really does have a lot to do with its context and what people intend when they say that word," Mr Midgley said. While social media can be a driver of new language in general, Mr Hughes said music has been more of an influence in what swearwords or insults younger people use. "A lot of American and also British terms come through various forms of rap music, that then gets spread on social media, so they interact together." Mr Hughes's research has found that Black countercultural movements in the United States and United Kingdom, including rap and hip-hop music, contributed to half of all contemporary youth slang impressions used among his research group of Victorian high school students. Young people will often adopt slang words ironically at first, before they eventually become part of their everyday vernacular, Mr Hughes said. "The funny cycle is this idea that people will hear a new phrase, maybe from the kids that aren't cool in school, if you want to think about it in a school context. Then they might, as a joke, start using those expressions ironically, but soon enough that irony kind of wears," Mr Hughes explained. Words and phrases that we find offensive has changed, as societal taboos change. (Unsplash: Nik) "We often underestimate how much of language change is from trying to be funny, trying to boost your own social credit among your friends," Mr Midgley said. "We notice when somebody does something novel or fun and we might decide to take it on, and that's the way that words and expressions spread." The sense of irony and nostalgia are some of the reasons older terms like "moll" or "duffer" are coming back into fashion, according to Mr Hughes's research. But while younger people may be re-embracing words their parents or grandparents use, longer phrases used to insult — like "ugly as sin" or "mutton dressed as lamb", for example — have fallen out of favour completely. Neither of those phrases rated a single mention from the under 40s respondents who were part of Mr Hughes's research. Linguists at the University of Sheffield recently teamed up with British arts project Modern Toss to create a database of regional swearwords and insults. "The aim of the project was to put together an exhibition that would tour the country, looking at local swearwords and phrases, including an interactive map that you can push buttons and they'll swear back at you," Dr Chris Montgomery said. Dr Montgomery says, while accents and dialects have been studied closely, swearing remains "one of the least documented parts of regional languages" and could be an important marker of identity. "[In the census] we're particularly interested in these sorts of hyper-local expressions that outsiders really aren't going to recognise," Dr Montgomery said. But Mr Hughes warns against trying to apply the same hyper-local focus to Australian research, saying there isn't as much regional variati

Death of 'drongo': Are Aussie insults and swearwords dying out?

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