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A Socio-Pragmatic Study of Insulting in English News
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Media has become a common platform for communication as a tool of offense. English language has many insult words which are commonly used in the world of media. This study investigates the socio-pragmatic aspect of insulting in English news. It aims at identifying and analysing insult words and expressions used by news presenters. To specify the problem of the study, language has a harmful power that hurts the addressees and seriously harm their psychological well-being. The insulting words that are an element of all human languages are the source of this abusive power. The study questions sought to find out are if news presenters use insult words, which insult words, and in what social contexts. In this study, the descriptive method is used to describe the language of insult as it is used by some English news media, namely, ITV News and BBC News .The study is conducted by performing a socio-pragmatic analysis based on some contexts of English news. This study gives a BBC model of insulting language that reveals moments of highly emotional reality. The findings reveal that the use of insult words sometimes embodies a sense of personal hatred as in 'gleeful'. Moreover, the insulting words sometimes reflect racial content as in 'nigger'. It is also found that the wrong use of some positive words leads to an offense as in ‘wheelchair bound’. The presented model also conveys its social and pragmatic significance and offers a specific illustration of derogatory language.

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