A study of curse words in the "Three words and two slaps" of the Ming dynasty = 明代「三言二拍」罵語研究

Abstract

This thesis makes uses of the "Three Words and Two Slaps", which is a collection of novels written in the style of story-telling script in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), as a corpus to study the curse words of short stories in different themes. The "diachronic and synchronic" method is used. From the diachronic aspect, the story-telling script of the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties is discussed to reflect the reason why the curse words change in different eras. From the synchronic aspect, since the "Three Words and Two Slaps" was written in the Ming Dynasty, the curse words are compared with the proverbs of other novels in the Ming Dynasty to reflect the influence of novel features on curse words. This thesis sorts out the curse words in the corpus and makes an induction and analysis. There are five chapters in the thesis, with the first being an introduction by defining the curse words and expounding the relevant research overview. The next chapter divides the curse words into two categories, analyzes the occurrence frequency, characteristics and sentence patterns of the curse words to show how they reflect the social concept at that time. Chapters three focuses on the usage of the curse words. By studying the historical and cultural background of the curse words, the relationship between curse words and literary creation is explained. Besides, the differences between the curse words in the "Three Words" and the "Two Slaps" are also investigated in order to analyze why these curse words were selected. The fourth chapter looks into the characteristics of the curse words. From the restrictions and collocations of the curse words and the relationship between the curse words and the cursed person, the linguistics features of the "Three Words and Two Slaps" are explored from the perspective of curse words. The last chapter is a conclusion summarizing the categories, usage and characteristics of the curse words covered in the foregoing chapters. By comparing the curse words used in different literary works, the ways of thinking of specific eras and social classes, as well as the language habits of readers and listeners, are reflected, which provides a new perspective for Chinese language studies.