Comprehending Dirty-Word Descriptions

Timothy B. Jay
1981 Language and Speech  
The study of diity-word descriptions extends our knowledge of semantic, comprehension, and contextual language processes. Two studies were conducted to examine how we interpret and react to diity-wor(| descriptions. Subjects were asked to judge how much they would like a fictitious person described with dirty and non-dirty adjective pairs. Liking was significantly influenced by (a) semantic interpretation (connotation v. denotation), (b) the intrinsicalness of the adjective to the person
more » ... ed (prenominal adjective order), and (c) the contextual relation between the speaker and the listener (friend v. enemy).
doi:10.1177/002383098102400102 fatcat:32tdufgcargz5bmwco2dbzvjvm