University of Santo Tomas

Faculty of Arts and Letters

Sensitivity of Filipino College Students in Private and
Public Universities towards Private Parts in Filipino

Karl Daniel E. Buban

Camille S. Palma
Eimreh Hilda C. Velasquez
Monique Vhalerie C. Ozaeta
Yamei Chen
3LM4

October 7, 2010
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I. CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

A. Introduction:

“Iba pa rin kapag sa sariling wika natin nadinig. If you don’t believe me, try saying the
words describing your private parts in both English and Tagalog. O, ano ang mas
‘shocking’?” (Paredes, 2006)

Filipinos in particular are perceived to be more sensitive in their own language

than any other. Sensitivity is defined as the “capacity of an organism or sense organ to respond
to stimulation” or is synonymous to the word “irritability”. It is also defined as the “quality or
state of being sensitive, or the capacity of being hurt.” (Incorporated, 2010) Anyone has heard
stories of how jokes, curses, blasphemous words or even private parts, either heard or spoken,
elicited various kinds of reactions- from laughing, to becoming irritated, uneasy, or offended,
that illustrated sensitivity.

It is pressing how certain issues had been connected with the use of private parts
in the Filipino language, and today’s Filipino youth is most affected, being the part of the
generation that is exposed to peer pressure, family and society expectations, and conforming to
the teachings of the church and school. They are in the age where the current trends are
intertwined with certain moral issues such as addiction to internet, engaging in the consuming of
alcohol, liberality towards the opposite sex and also engaging into sexual acts that truly affects
their personality and character.

Some find the usage of private parts in Filipino to be funny, disgusting, malicious,
non academic, and even non acceptable. The reason for this kind of perception can be attributed
from a lot of causes. One of which are the social norms inculcated by the society from the since
the childhood of people, that had shaped their beliefs and attitudes. “It is the internalized norms
of the culture which generally influence behavior. It can be inferred then that much of adolescent
behavior is culture bound…” (Mendez & Jocano, 1979) It may have been imbued to them from
the beginning that the use of private parts in Filipino is inappropriate, or is shameful, that is why
some of the kinds of behavior they show with regards to a particular subject may be attributed to
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their kind of upbringing. “What the young uphold as desirable or undesirable may be inferred
from their system of values which in turn is manifested in their attitudes. Being a question of
what is proper, these values operate within a range of moral alternatives either personal or
cultural.”[ CITATION Gom86 \l 1033 ]

The kind of emotions or reactions these people also displayed can be related to the
so called phenomena of Verbal Hygiene, that justify that there are certain words in the language
that are considered inappropriate, and therefore through the practice of Verbal Hygiene, be
eliminated. According to [ CITATION Deb95 \l 1033 ], verbal hygiene is composed of practices of
eliminating certain words from speech, born of an urge to improve or clean up language. Some
people think, particularly the youth, that current words used to describe name the private parts in
the Filipino language is an unhealthy part of such language and that these needs removal, so as to
not cause any uneasiness anymore.

With the kind of culture in which the Filipino youth are in at present, particularly
the College students, it is interesting what exactly are their perceptions regarding such a
troublesome issue. Are they now more comfortable with both the hearing and the usage of
private parts in Filipino, and whether or not there is completely a different way of thinking
between those coming from the public or private universities?

The purpose of this study is to determine the sensitivity of Filipino College

students coming from both public and private universities towards the hearing and the usage of
private parts in Filipino and whether or not there is a difference as to the sensitivity between
Filipino College students coming from either a public or a private university.

B. Statement of Problem:
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There are several problems that the study is concerned with, and such are as follows:

General problems:
1. What is the perception of Filipino College students towards the usage and hearing of
private parts in Filipino?
2. Are Filipino college students in public universities more uncomfortable in using and
hearing private parts in the Filipino language than in private universities, the other way
around, or no effect at all?
3. What are the stands of the Filipino students towards the usage of the Filipino version of
private parts?

Specific problems:
1. What are the initial reactions of Filipino college students in hearing private parts in
Filipino?
2. Are the Filipino College students also using the Filipino version of private parts?
3. What influenced the Filipino college students towards their perception of the Filipino
version of private parts?
4. What are the reasons for their reactions towards the usage and hearing of the Filipino
version of private parts?
5. What for them are the disadvantages as well as the advantages of the usage of the Filipino
version of private parts?

C. Scope and Limitations:

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The scope of the study extends to the issue relating language, sensitivity and private parts
in the Filipino Language. Included in the study are two universities, one a public university,
(University of the Philippines) and the other a private university, (University of Santo Tomas).
Filipino College students with different majors were asked to participate in the said study.
The limitation of this research is the number of schools included in this experiment which
only consisted of two universities from the urban area, one from a public university, and another
from a private university. There are also only 50 respondents from each university whom we
asked to partake in answering the surveys that the researchers prepared. Expediency and
feasibility were observed but the researchers ensured that it will not create too much of an effect
to make the research confound, by distributing the surveys to the different colleges from each
university, to tap to a variety of Filipino college students. Furthermore, other universities or
colleges coming from rural areas maybe taken up and included in future studies.

D. Definition of Terms:

1. Sensitivity - The quality or state of being sensitive.

- The capacity of an organism or sense organ to respond to stimulation.
2. Private Parts
a. Puke/Pekpek (vagina) – a canal in a female mammal that leads from the uterus to the external
orifice of the genital canal.
b. Titi (penis) – a male erectile organ of copulation by which urine and semen are discharged
from the body and that develops from the same embryonic mass of tissue as the
clitoris.
c. Utong (nipple) - the protuberance of a mammary gland upon which in the female the
lactiferous ducts open and from which milk is drawn.
d. Bayag (testis) - a typically paired male reproductive gland that produces sperm and secretes
testosterone and that in most mammals is contained within the scrotum at sexual
maturity.
e. Puwet (buttocks or often called as “butt”) – the back of a hip that forms one of the fleshy
parts on which a person sits; often used as a euphemism for ass in idiomatic
expressions.
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f. Bulbol (pubes; often called “pubic hair”) - the hair that appears on the lower part of the hypo
gastric region (public region) at puberty.
g. Suso (breast) - either of the pair of mammary glands extending from the front of the chest in
pubescent and adult females of humans and some other mammals; also :
either of the analogous but rudimentary organs of the male chest especially
when enlarged.
h. Tinggil (clitoris) - a small erectile female organ located within the anterior junction of the
labia minora that develops from the same embryonic mass of tissue as the
penis and is responsive to sexual stimulation.
[ CITATION Mer10 \l 1033 ]

Difference between Private and Public Universities

The basic difference is in how the college is supported. If it's "public" it answers to the
state and to the state's budget process. If it's private, it depends more on its tuition income and
endowment (money given by donors). Private schools are often more expensive than public
schools.
Many private schools are thought to have stronger academic reputations than public
schools. However, there are many public schools that offer top-notch educations. More often
than not it is the student who determines how strong of an education he or she gets. The culture
in these two types of colleges also varies.

II. CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

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The experimenters had experienced scarcity of related resources of literature due

probably to the sensitivity of the topic and it being an uncommon and unpopular topic to discuss.
With this, the researchers were only able to provide a few related literatures for the study.

The Influence of Language on Perspectives of People

1. Simpson, P. (1993). “Language, Ideology, and Point of View”. London New York:
Routledge.
The basic principle of Whorfianism is that linguistic differences determine
differences in world – view. Thus, our language delineates the boundaries of our understanding;
or, put another way, the way we see the world is constructed by the language we use. Taken a
little further, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis specifies that the linguistic is the shaper of ideas, the
programme and guide for the individual’s mental activity; consequently, speakers are therefore
very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression
for their society. In this view, words precede concepts, so if you have few words, your perception
of the world around you will be seriously impoverished.

A Study on Sensitivity
2. Corr, P. J. (2008). “The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality”. Cambridge,
U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Today, it may seem trite to link personality factors to emotion and motivational
systems, but this neo-consensus did not prevail in the 1960s, when very few personality
psychologists argued for the importance of basic systems of emotion underlying personality. It is
a mark of achievement that Gray’s (1970) hypothesis – novel as it was then in personality
research – is today so widely endorsed. The emergence of a neuroscience of personality – an
oxymoron not too long ago – was shaped in large measure by Gray’s work. However, as we shall
see below, the main elements of Gray’s approach already existed in general psychology: like
Hans Eysenck’s (1957, 1967) theories, Gray’s innovation was to put together the existing pieces
of scientific jigsaw to provide the foundations of a general theory of personality. As with the
construction of any complex structure, it is, indeed, prudent to have firm foundations – in the
case of theory, verified concepts and processes from anywhere in the discipline (or from other
disciplines) – upon which the further building blocks of theory may be placed. For this reason
Gray, like Pavlov (1927) before him, advocated a twin-track approach: the conceptual nervous
system (cns) and the central nervous system (CNS) (cf. Hebb 1955; see Gray 1972a); that is, the
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cns components of personality (e.g., learning theory; see Gray 1975) and the component brain
systems underlying systematic variations in behaviour (ex hypothesis, personality). As noted by
Gray (1972a), these two levels of explanation must be compatible, but given a state of imperfect
knowledge it would be unwise to abandon one approach in favour of the other. Gray used the
language of cybernetics, in the form of cns-CNS bridge, to show how the flow of information
and control of outputs is achieved (e.g., the Gray-Smith 1969 Arousal-Decision model; see
below). That RST focuses on a relatively small number of basic phenomena is in the nature of
theory building; but this fact should not be interpreted, as it sometimes is, as implying that RST
is restricted to explaining only these phenomena.

Issues on the considered ‘Unsafe’ topics

3. Jay, T. B. (2003) “The Psychology of Language”. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice
Hall.
Unsafe topics traditionally include religion, sex, politics, income, disease, body
products, body processes, and mental health. The joint project in polite settings would avoid
unsafe topics as one would avoid cones on an automotive test track. One good way determine
what constitute unsafe or taboo topics is to look for the presence of euphemisms. Allan and
Burridge (1991) provide a detailed analysis of euphemisms, which are safe words that are used
as substitutes for more emotional, offensive, or inappropriate words. For example, the term
working girl is a euphemism for whore. This euphemism belies our anxiety around conversations
about sexuality while at the same time allowing us to approach the taboo topic in guarded terms.

Reactions of youth to the sensitive topic of the usage of private parts in Filipino Language
4. Atalia, E. S. “Tampal sa Bibig: Parusa sa Salitang Hindi Masabi (Isang Field Research
sa Euphemismong Filipino Bilang Pagsuko sa Protestang Sosyo-Politikal)”. University
of Santo Tomas Manila, Philippines.
Mr. Atalia conducted a study on the reaction of three different classes of social
status with regards to the usage of private parts in Filipino and English Language. He conducted
an interview with twenty-two (22) respondents and divided them into three classes from classes
A (colleges students from private universities) B (college students from public universities), and
C (Out of School Youth). The results showed that respondents from class A do not have any
difficulties in identifying their private parts in either in Filipino or English language. While
respondents from class B and C, especially in class C prefer to use English as a medium in
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referring to private parts because for them using the Filipino version of private parts is a taboo
because it sounds malicious. These respondents used alternative words instead or the so-called
“Euphemism”.

Comparison between public and private universities

5. Are private colleges better than public colleges? (Chase, n.d.)
In several areas, private colleges provide much needed advantages over public
colleges, easily making them better than their other. Private colleges tend to offer a more one-on-
one experience between faculty and the student body. This, inevitably, makes for a higher quality
education, leading to better retention of the material, and, one could assume, more applicable
knowledge after graduation and a better career field to enter into. Conversely, public colleges are
susceptible to a larger classroom size with fewer staffed professors leading to more self-taught'
courses. And then there's tuition. Arguably a more important difference between private and
public college, the cost of education has become an extraordinarily important issue. Private
colleges are notorious for their high tuition compared to public schools. It's this reason that many
students, who would thrive in the private school environment, ultimately choose public colleges.

III. CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

A. Research Design:
Descriptive Research Design
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“Descriptive research design is a valid method for researching specific subjects and as a
precursor to more quantitative studies.” [ CITATION Mar08 \l 1033 ] The researchers used the
descriptive research design, specifically the one shot survey method. It is in this method where
each respondent should take and answer this survey only once when it was being administered
and conducted by the researchers. Only one survey questionnaire was given per respondent.
B. Data Gathering Instrument and Technique:
The respondents of the study were selected using the simple random sampling method.
Among the top universities of the Philippines located in Metro Manila divided between private
and public sector, the researcher randomly selected one university from each sector. In the
private sector, University of Santo Tomas was selected and in the public sector, University of the
Philippines. Respondent’s size consists of 50 respondents from each university a total of 100
respondents.
The researchers went to these schools to conduct the survey; a four page survey forms
were given to the respondents which indicates the information about the researchers, the topic,
and instructions on how to answer the form as well as the questions. We first conducted the
survey among students of the different colleges of the University of Santo Tomas. We chose
students preferably those who seem to be available doing nothing. We just approached them one
by one and asked them if it is okay for them to answer these survey forms. The next day, we
went to University of the Philippines and conducted the same survey. We asked students in the
campus (mainly in the Sunken Garden area and), in different buildings (particularly inside the
lobbies of A.S. bldg., Engineering Bldg., and in the Economics Bldg.) and in the places where
we spotted students who seems to have nothing to do or who seems not busy.
Dates of the Actual Survey:
1. University of Santo Tomas, Espana, Manila
September 22, 2010 (4:00 – 6:00 pm)
September 23, 2010 (6:00 – 7:00 pm)
2. University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City
September 23, 2010 (9:00 am – 12:00 nn)

C. The Respondents:
Respondents Age Sex University Course
1 21 Male UST Music
2 20 Female UST AB
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3 18 Female UST AB
4 19 Male UST Music
5 21 Male UST Accountancy
6 19 Female UST CFAD
7 17 Female UST Commerce
8 17 Male UST AB
9 16 Male UST Engineering
10 17 Male UST Engineering
11 20 Female UST AB
12 17 Male UST CTHM
13 18 Female UST AB
14 18 Male UST Engineering
15 17 Female UST Engineering
16 19 Male UST Engineering
17 18 Male UST Engineering
18 22 Female UST AB
19 17 Male UST Engineering
20 18 Female UST Commerce
21 18 Female UST Chemistry
22 19 Male UST Biology
23 17 Male UST Chemistry
24 19 Male UST Psychology
25 17 Male UST Commerce
26 19 Female UST Legal Management
27 21 Male UST Architecture
28 20 Male UST Economics
29 19 Male UST BS Math in Actuarial Science
30 17 Male UST Occupational Therapy
31 19 Male UST Physical Therapy
32 17 Female UST Accountancy
33 18 Female UST Accountancy
34 18 Male UST Accountancy
35 17 Female UST Nursing
36 18 Female UST Accountancy
37 17 Male UST Music
38 16 Female UST Library Science
39 16 Male UST Education
40 18 Male UST Interior Design
41 18 Male UST Advertising
42 18 Male UST Pharmacy
43 19 Female UST Advertising
44 17 Female UST Nursing
45 17 Female UST Nursing
46 18 Female UST Nursing
47 16 Male UST Nursing
48 17 Female UST BSN
49 17 Female UST Nursing
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50 16 Female UST Nursing

51 17 Female UP BSME
52 17 Male UP BSME
53 19 Female UP BSME
54 19 Female UP BSME
55 20 Female UP BSME
56 20 Male UP BSIE
57 20 Female UP BSIE
58 19 Male UP BSCE
59 18 Male UP BSCE
60 18 Male UP BSME
61 18 Male UP BSME
62 18 Male UP BSME
63 21 Female UP BSN
64 16 Male UP COE
65 19 Male UP BAPA
66 20 Male UP BAPA
67 16 Male UP BSS
68 16 Female UP BSS
69 16 Male UP BSS
70 18 Male UP BSS
71 17 Male UP BSS
72 17 Male UP BSECE
73 15 Male UP COE
74 16 Female UP BSECE
75 16 Male UP BSCHEM
76 17 Female UP BSSP
77 16 Female UP BSM
78 17 Female UP BSECE
79 17 Male UP BSM
80 20 Female UP BAA
81 17 Female UP BS Geology
82 18 Male UP BS FLCD
83 17 Male UP BS FLCD
84 19 Male UP BA Filipino
85 19 Female UP BA PolSci
86 18 Male UP BS ComSci
87 19 Male UP BA PolSci
88 17 Male UP BS CE
89 18 Male UP BS CE
90 17 Female UP BS Statistics
91 17 Male UP BS ECE
92 17 Female UP BA History
93 18 Female UP BS ID
94 19 Male UP BS IE
95 20 Female UP BS BAA
96 16 Male UP BS CS
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97 17 Male UP BS MBB
98 17 Male UP BS CE
99 15 Male UP BA Journalism
100 19 Male UP BA Philosophy

Our respondents (samples) were college students from two of the most well-known
universities in the Philippines, The University of Santo Tomas and University of Philippines
(which is the population of this study), having 50 respondents each, which totaled to a sum of
100 respondents. There were 41 female and 59 male respondents with the average age of 18
years old. There were no required majors or courses observed to determine the qualified
respondents, but the surveys were randomly distributed to different majors.

D. Statistical Treatment:

Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)/Predictive Analytic Software (PASW)

- The primary program used for analyzing the data that the researchers had gathered is
the SPSS, which manipulates and summarizes data using graphics and tables for
statistical analyses (Aquino, 2010). SPSS is also the most widely used programs and
is used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government,
education researchers, marketing organizations and others for statistical analysis in
social science (Wikipedia, n.d.).

 Measures of central Tendencies

- According to The Free Dictionary.com “(in descriptive statistics) an indication of the
middle point of distribution for a particular group. Measures include the mean
average score, the median or middle score of distribution, and the mode, the most
frequently occurring measure.”
- Mean/Average - Mean is the most common measure of central tendency. It is simply
the sum of the numbers divided by the number of numbers in a set of data. This is
also known as average.
 The mean for the age is 17.89 or 18

 Cross tabulation
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- We also used the cross tabulation in SPSS that creates two (or more) dimensional
table and records the number (frequency) of respondents that have the particular
characteristics described in the cells of the table.
- Statistical technique that establishes an interdependent relationship between two
tables of values, but does not identify a causal relationship between the values; also
called two-way tabulation.
-Answers.com
- Cross-tabulation is about taking two variables and tabulating the results of one variable
against the other variable. An example would be the cross-tabulation of course performance
against mode of study. It also gives you a basic picture of how two variables inter-relate. It
helps you search for patterns of interaction. Obviously, if certain cells contain
disproportionately large (or small) numbers of cases, then this suggests that there might be a
pattern of interaction.[ CITATION Mon10 \l 1033 ]

 Graphical Tables, Charts, and Bar Graphs

- The use of tables, charts and bar graphs was also observed by the researchers for
easier analysis, comparison, and presentation of data and also was used to make facts
clearer and more understandable by the researchers and future readers.

 Percentages
- This treatment was used to express or differentiate the value of one variable in
comparison to another.
Data: There were 50 respondents in UST. 35 of them said that they use the Filipino
language in identifying private parts while 15 did not. To get the percentage of those
who utter private parts in Filipino and those who do not, the researchers calculated
through the example below:
35 15
100 70% 100 30%
50 % 50