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Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, involves the use of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion, as a grammatical intensifier or emphasis, or to express informality or conversational intimacy.
Denotation. In linguistics and philosophy, [ 1] the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation.
Pejorative. A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. [ 1] It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a term is regarded as pejorative in some social or ...
Litotes. In rhetoric, litotes ( / laɪˈtoʊtiːz, ˈlaɪtətiːz /, US: / ˈlɪtətiːz / ), [ 1] also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect ...
Formulaic language (previously known as automatic speech or embolalia) is a linguistic term for verbal expressions that are fixed in form, often non-literal in meaning with attitudinal nuances, and closely related to communicative-pragmatic context. [1] Along with idioms, expletives and proverbs.
Cohesion (linguistics) Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence . There are two main types of cohesion: lexical cohesion: based on lexical content and background knowledge. A cohesive text is created in many ...
Tautology (language) In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea, using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". [ 1][ 2] Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. [ 3] Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of ...
Affirmation and negation. In linguistics and grammar, affirmation ( abbreviated AFF) and negation ( NEG) are ways in which grammar encodes positive and negative polarity into verb phrases, clauses, or other utterances. An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses ...