Abstract

VAN HUYSSTEEN, Gerhard B  and  KOEKEMOER, Simoné. An empirical comparison of the potential offensiveness of some epithet pairs in Afrikaans. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2023, vol.63, n.3, pp.560-584. ISSN 2224-7912.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2023/v63n3a10.

In Afrikaans and other Germanic languages there is a subcategory of exocentric compounds that can be used evaluatively as personal names. The focus of this article is on such exocentric compounds that are used pejoratively as epithets (i.e., epithetic exocentric compounds (EECs)), and even more specifically on EECs that are based on one of two conceptual metonymies: BODY PART FOR PERSON (for example, skinder / bek gossip / mouth 'gossiper ') and (PART OF) GARMENT FOR PERSON (for example, slaap / kous sleep / sock 'sleepy head'). These kinds of metonymic exocentric compounds are also sometimes referred to in the literature as bahuvrihi or possessive compounds (Booij, 2020). The article empirically examines the potential offensiveness of EECs. An online questionnaire with nine questions was filled out by 98 respondents, of which 92 respondents ' responses were usable. In this questionnaire, respondents had to rank the items (words) from least offensive to most offensive. For each of the nine questions, the rankings were converted to numerical values, so that the median per word could be quantified as a relative offensiveness value. Next, a Friedman test was performed for each question, which showed that there were indeed statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences between the items in each question. To determine where exactly the differences lie (i.e., which word pairs 'medians differ statistically significantly), Wilcoxon's signed-rank test was used, and the p-values were adjusted with the Bonferroni method (for adjusted *p-values). This information could then be used to accept or reject the null hypotheses. The first research question was: "Are metonymic EECs more or less offensive than semantically equivalent non-EECs?" The null hypothesis, which stated that there is no distinction to be made between the potential offensiveness of EECs and semantically equivalent non-EECs, could be rejected in a few cases (for example, that vet / gat (fat / hole 'fatso'), and dik / gat (thick / hole 'fatso') are more offensive than seekoei ('hippopotamus') and vark ('pig') (question 1 ), as well as dik / sak (thick / sack 'fatso') andvet / sak (fat / sack 'fatso'), versus dikk-erd (thick-NMLZ 'fatso') and vett-ie (fat-DiM 'fatso') (question 5). Nevertheless, there was not enough convincing evidence to be able to say with the necessary certainty that non-EECs are less offensive than EECs. One of the possible reasons for this is that non-EECs such as dwaas ('fool') and ghwar ('fool') also have other, additional, negative meaning elements than their EEC counterparts (dwaas/kop foolish / head 'fool', anddorm-kop stupid / head 'fool'). Our conclusion is therefore that non-EECs ~ EECs. The second research question was: "Are suffixoids that are references to body parts more or less offensive than suffixoids referring to articles of clothing?" To compare the potential offensiveness value of suffixoids, it was stated as a null hypothesis that there is no distinction to be made between suffixoids referring to body parts versus suffixoids referring to articles of clothing. Although we could here too not simply reject the null hypothesis, we could still order the investigated suffixoids on a spectrum of potential offensiveness, namely: / nose ~ / trousers / H-sack / H-hole.

Keywords : Afrikaans; affixoid; compound; conceptual metonymy; empirically; epithet; epithetic exocentric compound; evaluative language; exocentric compound; mock name; nickname; offensiveness; pejorative; personal name; suffixoid.

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