Bloody Sociology...

Hey! So i've finally gotten around to posting a comment on someone elses blog, which is rather exciting. This week i have chosen to victimize Emily Wickham here, so be sure to check that out if you happen to be called Matt and are marking me on this :D

I've also realize that my name may not be mentioned on this blog at any point, which would be super awkward. So hi Matt, it's Connie! You know, the linguistics one? Remembering now? Cool, I'm glad we settled that. 

OK! So we've realised that i'm rubbish at posting comments, apparently they like dissapearing into the ether never to be found again. So I'll just stick it here, and you can go read Emilys post before this next bit so you know what im wittering about.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that Australian culture has morphed the word ‘bloody’ from a negative into a positive. Obviously it has become less negative in terms of offensiveness in comparison to how it’s perceived by other English speaking cultures (perhaps to a Brit, poor young Ronald’s hatred of spiders would be significantly greater than an Australian would perceive it). However in terms of meaning I think it definitely still retains a negative value in many circumstances (e.g. “You bloody fools” or “I bloody well hate them”. I like the way Wierzbicka sorted bloody into either ‘bloody1’ and ‘bloody2’, the first pertaining to its use as a negative word, and the second pertaining to its use as a neutral word, not, as you say, a positive. Of course the overall impact of an utterance containing bloody2 can be positive, though that impact generally comes from the words surrounding bloody2, which are merely intensified through its use, for example: “Hermione, you’re bloody marvellous!” It’s obviously a positive statement, however bloody is just acting as an intensifier for the positive adjective ‘marvellous’, and in itself doesn’t actually contain any positive qualities, but rather means she is ‘truly’ or ‘really’ marvellous.

As you say, bloody is definitely a marker of Australian cultural identity, and Wierzbicka believes that this use of bloody as meaning something truly or genuinely possesses some kind of quality is definitely an indicator of this. She says it probably developed from the harshness of the Australian landscape for early pioneers and farmers out in the back of nowhere, who relied on others around them and thus really needed to be able to trust them and know that they had a ‘fighting spirit’ and were serious in taking necessary actions. So the use of bloody in phrases such as “I’ll kick his bloody teeth in”, bloody would act as a marker of sincerity and a meaning to take action. Personally I’m not all that sure about this idea, but it’s certainly interesting and something to think about.