Schimpfwörter und Beschimpfungen: Thesen zur Terminologie und zum Forschungsstand in der Sprachforschung

ENThe goal of this article is to overview essential problems related to the linguistic phenomena, such as swearwords and invectives. To reach this goal some aims are set out: 1) The terms with which these phenomena are designated differ in German linguistics. For this reason, a summary of the most usual terms is provided. The conclusion of this is to state that two closely corresponding but slightly independent terms should be at the core: swearword as a lexical semantic, invective and linguistic-communicative term. 2) Till the present day, swearwords and invectives have been underrated objects of any linguistic research, although some basic ideas are given, which will be presented in this article. The span goes from historical linguistics to forms of applied linguistics and interdisciplinarity. 3) After clarifying their theoretical status, it appears that there is a need to conduct research on swearwords and invectives by working on large corpora of linguistic data. The Internet and numerous freely accessible digital resources can make it possible to carry out a research to elaborate a reliable knowledge about swearwords and invectives. The presentation form of this article is theses, because they seem to be the best way to present findings in a compact way. Due to the intention to present an overview of ideas about the status of and the research on swearwords and invectives, the selected specialized literature had to be critically reviewed, partially by quoting it in detail.