The Case of Fuck in American Ted Talks

Authors

  • Thu Lau International University (Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18592/let.v16i1.20317

Keywords:

fuck, swearword, taboo referents, gender-based, American Ted talks

Abstract

Swearing is part of everyday interaction. Such swear words as fuck, suck, cunt, tits, cocksucker are used more often in informal situations for a number of purposes. This study aims to explore how the American Ted talkers use fuck in their talk. The data were constructed from the Ted Corpus Search Engine. The corpus of male talk consisted of 45,037 words whereas the corpus of female talk contained 18,852 words. The raw frequency of morphological variants of fuck was counted using Concordance tool in AntConc 3.3.4. The raw frequency of the morphological variants of fuck generated from the Concordance tool was then put into SPSS software to calculate Log-likelihood scores and significance level. The results showed no statistically significant difference in the use of fuck in male and female talk. The results indicated that using fuck in male talk can show surprise, promote in-group membership, and exaggerate the problem to create humor. Fuck and fucking in female talk were integrated with other expletives such as whore, shit, and slut to bring humorous effects to the audience. The current findings underscore the importance of helping second language learners understand how such language functions in digital discourse.

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Published

2026-06-12

How to Cite

Lau, T. (2026). The Case of Fuck in American Ted Talks. LET: Linguistics, Literature and English Teaching Journal, 16(1), 126–146. https://doi.org/10.18592/let.v16i1.20317

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