University Presentation Showcase: Undergraduate Division

The Effect of Taboo Words in American Sign Language and English

Caroline HaydonFollow

Presenter Hometown

Elizabethtown, Ky

Major

Psychology

Department

Psychology

Degree

Undergraduate

Mentor

Sara Incera

Mentor Department

Psychology

Abstract

Caroline Haydon & Sara Incera

Multilingual Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University

Researchers have found that listeners respond more intensely to taboo words when hearing them than when reading them. Our goal is to investigate whether this effect extends to American Sign Language (ASL) and to determine whether ASL participants respond more intensely to signed taboo words than to written taboo words. We recruited 76 people to take part in this study (50 English-speaking EKU undergraduate students and 16 people from the state of Kentucky who use American Sign Language as their primary language). For the English survey, participants were given words in written and oral English. For the ASL survey, participants were given words in written English as well as words in a visual ASL format. All participants were asked to rank each of those words based on how taboo they were (on a scale from “1 – Not Taboo at All” to “5 – Extremely Taboo”). The results indicate that, in both surveys, there was no significant difference between the written and spoken/signed versions. This shows that the modality of a taboo word does not affect how the taboo word is perceived. While much research has been done investigating taboo effects in English, to our knowledge this is the first study to investigate these issues in ASL. Understanding how signers respond to emotional language is essential to understanding how language modality influences listeners. This study will impact our understanding of taboo words and how these words affect people, not only in English but in ASL as well.

Keywords: American Sign Language (ASL), English, Taboo, Response, Language.

Presentation format

Poster

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 

The Effect of Taboo Words in American Sign Language and English

Caroline Haydon & Sara Incera

Multilingual Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University

Researchers have found that listeners respond more intensely to taboo words when hearing them than when reading them. Our goal is to investigate whether this effect extends to American Sign Language (ASL) and to determine whether ASL participants respond more intensely to signed taboo words than to written taboo words. We recruited 76 people to take part in this study (50 English-speaking EKU undergraduate students and 16 people from the state of Kentucky who use American Sign Language as their primary language). For the English survey, participants were given words in written and oral English. For the ASL survey, participants were given words in written English as well as words in a visual ASL format. All participants were asked to rank each of those words based on how taboo they were (on a scale from “1 – Not Taboo at All” to “5 – Extremely Taboo”). The results indicate that, in both surveys, there was no significant difference between the written and spoken/signed versions. This shows that the modality of a taboo word does not affect how the taboo word is perceived. While much research has been done investigating taboo effects in English, to our knowledge this is the first study to investigate these issues in ASL. Understanding how signers respond to emotional language is essential to understanding how language modality influences listeners. This study will impact our understanding of taboo words and how these words affect people, not only in English but in ASL as well.

Keywords: American Sign Language (ASL), English, Taboo, Response, Language.