Australian Cultural Scripts-Bloody Revisited: Anna Wierzbicka

Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1167–1209
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Australian cultural scripts—bloody revisited§

Anna Wierzbicka*
Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Baldessin Precinct Bldg 110,
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Received 5 August 2000; received in revised form 16 January 2001
Abstract
This paper focusses on ‘‘the great Australian adjective’’ bloody and it shows that far from
being meaningless, the humble bloody is packed with meaning; and that by unpacking this
meaning we can throw a good deal of light on traditional Australian attitudes and values. It
argues that the use of bloody furnishes an important clue to both the changes and continuity in
Australian culture, society, and speech and also offers us a vantage point from which to investi-
gate a whole network of Australian attitudes and values. Furthermore, the paper shows that the
Australian use of bloody also illuminates some important theoretical issues, it demonstrates that
frequently used and apparently ‘‘bleached’’ discourse markers do in fact have their own precise
meaning, and that this meaning can be revealed by means of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage
(NSM), based on empirically established universal human concepts. It also shows that once the
precise meaning of such discourse markers is accurately portrayed, it can provide important clues
to the values, attitudes, and modes of interaction characteristic of a given society or speech
community. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Discourse markers; Cultural scripts; ‘‘NSM’’ semantic theory; Australian culture;
Australian English; Swearing
1. Introduction: ‘‘cognitive ethnopragmatics’’1,2
The way we speak reflects the way we think. Not necessarily at the individual
level—a skilled speaker can conceal his or her way of thinking behind carefully
§
An earlier draft of this paper was read by Nick Enfield and Cliff Goddard. I would like to thank
them both for their detailed and extremely helpful comments. I would also like to thank my family, Clare,
Mary and John Besemeres for many judicious comments on the subject-matter.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-2-6125-3353; fax: +61-2-6125-8214.
E-mail address: anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au (A. Wierzbicka).
1
For an earlier analysis of bloody and related concepts see Wierzbicka (1997).
2
For the term ‘‘ethnopragmatics’’ and the idea of ‘‘ethnopragmatics’’ as a field of study, see Goddard
(Forthcoming a).
0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0378-2166(01)00023-6
1168 A. Wierzbicka / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1167–1209
chosen words and phrases. At the social level, however, ways of speaking do reflect
ways of thinking, in particular, as Franz Boas (1911) emphasized nearly a century
ago, ways of thinking of which the speakers are not fully conscious. They reveal, and
provide evidence for, patterns of thought.
Ways of thinking which are widely shared in a society become enshrined in ways
of speaking. Ways of speaking change as the underlying ways of thinking change.
There can be a lag between the two, but as one can see by studying ways of speaking
at the times of revolutions and other dramatic social transformations, ways of
speaking can change very quickly, too, in response to changes in prevailing atti-
tudes. Of course, cultures are not ‘‘bounded, coherent, timeless systems of meaning’’
(Strauss and Quinn, 1997: 3). At the same time, however,
‘‘...Our experiences in our own and other societies keep reminding us that some understandings are
widely shared among members of a social group, surprisingly resistant to change in the thinking of
individuals, broadly applicable across different contexts of their lives, powerfully motivating sources
of their action, and remarkably stable over succeeding generations. (Strauss and Quinn, 1997: 3)
Common expressions and common speech routines involving those expressions

are particularly revealing of social attitudes. The German philosopher Hans-Georg
Gadamer put it well when he said, in his Philosophical Hermeneutics (1976:72):
‘‘Common expressions are not simply the dead remains of linguistic usage that have become fig-
urative. They are, at the same time, the heritage of a common spirit and if we only understand
rightly and penetrate their covert richness of meaning, they can make this common spirit perceivable
again.’’
To penetrate this ‘‘covert richness of meaning’’ we need an adequate methodol-

ogy. I believe that such a methodology is available in the NSM (Natural Semantic
Metalanguage) theory of semantics and in the theory of cultural scripts which is its
offshoot. The key idea of NSM semantics is that all meanings can be adequately
portrayed in empirically established universal human concepts, with their universal
grammar. (For detailed discussion and exemplification, see Goddard and Wierz-
bicka, 1994; Wierzbicka, 1996a; Goddard, 1998; Goddard and Wierzbicka, forth-
coming)3 (see footnote3 on next page). The key idea of the theory of cultural scripts
is that widely shared and widely known ways of thinking can be identified in terms
of the same empirically established universal human concepts, with their universal
grammar. (See in particular Wierzbicka, 1994, 1996b,c; Goddard, 1997)
In the last few decades, cross-cultural investigations of ways of speaking have
often been conceived in terms of an ‘‘ethnography of speaking’’ (Hymes, 1962). This
perspective provided a very healthy and necessary corrective to the one-sided search
for a universal ‘‘logic of conversation’’ and for ‘‘universals of politeness’’. The the-
ory of cultural scripts, however, proposes that we go still further and complement
the ‘‘ethnography of speaking’’ with an ‘‘ethnography of thinking’’; and it offers a
framework within which such an ‘‘ethnography of thinking’’ can be meaningfully
and methodically pursued.
A. Wierzbicka / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1167–1209 1169
I do not see the ‘‘ethnography of thinking’’ as an alternative to the ‘‘ethnography

of speaking’’, or, more generally, to the ‘‘ethnography of social practices’’. On the
contrary, I believe that we discover shared ways of thinking by studying ways of
doing things, including ways of speaking; and further, that the study of social prac-
tices, including linguistic practices, is best seen not as a goal in itself but rather, as a
path to the understanding of a society’s attitudes and values. The theory of cultural
scripts represents a cognitive approach to culture and society; and it offers a meth-
odology which allows us to explore thinking, speaking, and doing in a unified fra-
mework.4
The theory of cultural scripts combines an interest in the uniqueness and particu-
larity of cultures with a recognition and affirmation of human universals; and it
rejects the widespread perception that, as Sandall (2000: 119) recently put it, ‘‘The
enemy of the particular, the local, the idiosyncratic, the cultural is the universal, and
the universal is always Bad News’’.
In the semantic theory of which the theory of cultural scripts is an off-shoot, the
universal is Good News, and it is the universal—in the form of universal human
concepts and their universal grammar—which gives us the tools for unlocking the
3
The set of universal human concepts which has emerged from cross-linguistic investigations under-
taken by many scholars over the last few decades can be presented in the form of the following table:
English version
Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE(PERSON),
SOMETHING(THING), PEOPLE, BODY
Determiners: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER
Quantifiers: ONE, TWO, SOME, MANY/MUCH, ALL,
Attributes: GOOD, BAD, BIG, SMALL
Mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
Speech: SAY, WORD, TRUE
Actions, events, movements: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
Existence, and possession: THERE IS, HAVE
Life and death: LIVE, DIE
Logical concepts: NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
Time: WHEN(TIME), NOW, AFTER, BEFORE, A LONG
TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME
Space: WHERE(PLACE), HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR,
NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE
Intensifier, augmentor: VERY, MORE
Taxonomy, partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF
Similarity: LIKE (HOW, AS)
4
Strauss and Quinn (1999: 209) talk about ‘‘the ethnography of the inner life’’, based largely on eth-
nographic interviews. The ‘ethnography of thinking’ as I understand it is not inconsistent with that idea
but it relies primarily on linguistic evidence (interpreted through semantic analysis carried out in terms of
universal human concepts).
secrets of the particular. Every human being, and every human group, is a blend of
the universal and the particular. The theory of cultural scripts is based on the
assumption that we need to understand people (both individuals and social groups)
in their particularity, but that we can understand them best in terms of what is
shared; and that one thing that is shared is a set of universal human concepts with
their universal grammar. (cf. Wierzbicka, 1996a; Goddard, 1998)
2. Australian cultural scripts: a preliminary discussion
In commenting on his current reluctance to discuss Australian attitudes the dis-

tinguished poet Les Murray (1999: 168) says that having done a fair bit of it himself,
he has ‘‘now grown very distrustful of the conceptual poverty and stereotyping that
bedevil the Australian Identity industry, and tried as far as possible to steer clear of
any sort of predictable polemic’’.
One can sympathize with Murray’s distrust of stereotyping and his dissatisfaction
with much of the debate on the issue of Australian culture5 and identity. But there is
a difference between, on the one hand, repeating old clichés (or, for that matter,
coining and marketing new ones), and on the other, systematically exploring and
analyzing empirical evidence. One may emotionally identify with aspects of tradi-
tional Australian culture, take pride in them, think about them with nostalgia, or
one may want to reject and condemn them with disgust, shame, and anger. But
whatever attitude—or mixture of attitudes—one chooses, this culture needs to be
understood. To quote Les Murray again, the debate about Australian cultural tra-
ditions has been marred by ‘‘its pervading acrimony, its frequently dismissive and
contemptuous tones, its readiness to bury things before they were dead’’. I would
add to this that there is a tendency to bury things before they are explored and
methodically and fairly explained.
Some of the best clues to the genuine Australian cultural scripts are provided by
key Australian words and expressions. To take some examples:
5
The concept of ‘‘Australian culture’’ is of course an abstraction, as is also ‘‘English language’’ or
‘‘Australian English’’. Abstractions of this kind must not be reified, but this doesn’t mean that they are
not useful and convenient. To quote Enfield (2000: 57):
‘‘The very idea of the English language is a cultural and metalinguistic artefact. So when we work
with categories like English or Lao, this must be kept in mind. And the same goes for ‘Anglo’ or
‘Lao’ culture. What we are really talking about is some set of cultural representations—private
representations which are carried, assumed-to-be-carried and assumed-to-be-assumed-to-be-car-
ried—among some carrier group. (...) if we really want to characterize what cultural representations
unite groups of people, we had better start with the cultural representation in question, and ask what
group of people are united by their sharing it, rather than starting with some group (i.e. an identity,
not extensionally defined), and asking what cultural representations are shared among members.’’
These are very good points, I think. I would only add that to ‘‘start with the cultural representations’’ we
need to start with tangible words, expressions, and other identifiable linguistic phenomena—such as, for
example, the Australian bloody.
it is bad to be a whinger
it is bad to be a sook
it is bad to be a dobber
it is bad to be a bullshit artist (or: bull artist)
it is bad to bignote oneself
it is not very good to be a tall poppy6
it is good to be a good mate
it is good to ‘‘see through’’ bullshit
Formulae of this kind (whose very intelligibility depends on the reader’s famil-
iarity with certain Australian words and expressions, cf. Wierzbicka, 1997) are not
meant to be empirical generalizations about people’s behaviour, but recognizable
‘‘scripts’’ revealing and attesting to some widely held values. Sometimes scripts of
this kind (or fairly close approximations to them) can be heard in everyday dis-
course, being passed on as popular wisdom. Thus a celebrated Canberra rugby
player, Laurie ‘‘Lozza’’ Daley, talking about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour
on the field (1995: 62) observes:
‘‘On-field violence is for losers, but if a team-mate is about to cop a hammering then I’ll go in
swinging because, firstly, you don’t abandon a mate, and, secondly, people are watching and they
wouldn’t think much of your character if you slunk off while a buddy was being smashed.’’
The norm described here by Daley (‘‘you don’t abandon a mate’’) can be articu-
lated in the form of the following cultural script:
I think about some people like this:

‘‘this person is someone like me
I do many things with this person
I don’t want bad things to happen to this person,
as I don’t want bad things to happen to me’’
I know:
if something bad happens to one of these people
I have to do something because of this
Daley’s sense that these norms are binding is reflected in his second comment,
which can be paraphrased as follows:
if I don’t do this
people will think something bad about me because of this
Whether or not folk comments such as those offered by Daley can be regarded as
a reliable guide to widely held popular wisdom, linguistic facts such as the wide use
6
The phrase not very good in the formulation of this script has been chosen advisedly. The popular
wisdom does not hold that it is bad to be a ‘‘tall poppy’’ but rather, that it is not as good as ‘‘some peo-
ple’’ might think; and that in any case, the speaker is not impressed by anyone’s status as a ‘‘tall poppy’’.
of the word mate in Australian English and the very existence of the word mateship
provide incontrovertible evidence for the validity of certain widely shared, and even
more widely recognized, ‘‘cultural scripts’’. (For detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka,
1997).
3. The importance of ‘bloody’ in Australian discourse
In this paper, I will focus on another Australian key word: bloody. The word
bloody has been known for a long time as ‘‘the great Australian adjective’’ (Haskell,
1940; for discussion see Baker, 1966: 196–200). The Australian National Dictionary
(AND) comments that bloody (as an adjective and adverb) is ‘‘used as in general
English but from its frequency and ubiquity [is] often thought of as characteristically
Australian’’.
But is it true that ‘‘the great Australian adjective’’ is used in Australian English
‘‘as in general English’’ and only differs from the ‘‘general English’’ in its ‘‘frequency
and ubiquity’’? I will argue that it is not. I will also argue that the very ubiquity of
this word in Australian English points to its special importance in Australian culture
and raises questions about the Australian cultural scripts reflected in this widespread
use of bloody. Before we can articulate these scripts, however, we need first to look
at the use and meaning of bloody in some detail.
Some readers may raise a brow at this point: ‘‘meaning’’? Does a word like bloody
have any meaning at all? Is not the frequent use of bloody by many Australian
speakers just an automatic reflex, a kind of linguistic hiccup, with no, or virtually
no, meaning at all?7 In this paper I will try to show that far from being meaningless,
the humble bloody is packed with meaning; and that by unpacking this meaning we
can throw a good deal of light on traditional Australian attitudes and values. At this
point let me simply raise the question: why should a person who uses hundreds of
‘‘bloodies’’ every week, and thousands, every year, adhere to this routine at the cost
of such an expenditure of energy if this routine did not mean anything to them?
In fact, dictionaries of English do acknowledge that bloody has a meaning,
although they cannot explore this meaning in depth or articulate it with precision.
For example, the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (published in
1989) comments on the expressive use of bloody as follows: ‘‘a. [adjective]. In foul
language, a vague epithet expressing anger, resentment, detestation; but often a mere
intensive, esp. with a negative, as ‘not a bloody one’’’. In addition, the OED assigns
to bloody a separate (adverbial) sense ‘‘as an intensive’’, glossed as follows: ‘‘very . . .
and no mistake, exceedingly; abominably, desperately. In general colloquial use
7
Claims of this kind have been made for Cockney (in which the Australian bloody appears to have its
roots). For example: ‘‘Cockney swear-adjectives, though very limited in range, are used so much, espe-
cially by workmen and less educated teenage youths, that they heavily colour the language. In the speech
of some men, every second or third word seems to be a swear or sexual adjective. In fact, however, they
have been so much over-used that they have lost practically all their meaning... and the shame is that this
habit of being unable or unwilling to choose an appropriate intensifier has spread to younger people’’
(Wright, 1981: 123)
from the Restoration to c.1750; now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes,
but by respectable people considered ‘a horrid word’’, on a par with obscene or
profane language, and usually printed in the newspapers (in police reports, etc.)
‘b.....y’.’’
From a semantic point of view, it is striking that the OED makes no attempt to
capture the semantic invariant of the word, contenting itself with an open-ended
sequence of alternatives: ‘‘anger, resentment, detestation; but often a mere inten-
sive’’; ‘‘very (. . .), exceedingly; abominably, desperately’’. From a sociolinguistic
point of view, it is striking that the OED still restricts the use of bloody to the
‘‘lowest classes’’.
While these comments have been repeated from the first (1933) edition of the
OED (which in turn repeated it after a first fascicle published in 1887), it is curious
that they have not been deleted or rephrased in the second edition. From an Aus-
tralian point of view the comments seem very peculiar even retrospectively: as noted
by A. Crombie in 1927, in his memoir After 60 years, Recollections of an Australian
bushman, in Australia, ‘‘the bush adjective [i.e. bloody] was neither obscene nor
profane’’ (quoted in the AND). In Australia, bloody, while regarded as a mild
swearword, was never seen as ‘‘foul’’ nor restricted to the ‘‘mouths of the lowest
classes’’. Its use in contemporary Australian speech spans a wide range of genres and
registers—including public discourse, such as, for example, interviews given by
eminent public figures, with a view to publication. Here are a few quotes from an
interview with Bob Hawke included in A place in the sun (Cope and Kalantzis,
2000), a collection of interviews with public figures published in the year 2000.
First, Hawke philosophising about life and politics:
‘‘In the end, it’s all about the creation of happiness. That’s what politics is about. It’s what I’m
about. That’s what we’re here for, to create happiness. A better life for people. So that they can
enjoy their brief time on this bloody planet’’. (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 64)
Second, Hawke reminiscing about his University years:

‘‘There were lots of arguments at University. That’s why I set up the International Club. I was
appalled by the attitude of lots of people. And as I say, I brought them into my home and went to
their places and actually went out of my way to try and raise the moral bloody consciousness (. . .)’’
(Ibid: 65).
And finally, Hawke on education:

‘‘.... the problem is that mankind has suffered a sort of collective lobotomy. One side of the brain,
the technical side, has flourished and grown in an exponential sense, and we should value that. (...)
What we should be worried about is this other side of the bloody brain’’. (Ibid: 73).
Quotes like these provide an excellent illustration for Les Murray’s (1999: 152)
comment about the ‘‘gentrification’’ of the traditional Australian ‘‘larrikin style’’.
According to Murray, since the 1960s,
‘‘the larrikin style (...) has become something of an elite style, affected by women as well as men, and
may inform the social behaviour of students, artists, journalists, businessmen, even prime ministers.
The use of a very salty Australian accent and vocabulary interlarded with learned and literary terms
is one manifestation of the style. Like blue jeans, it moderates the inegalitarianism of higher edu-
cation. The larrikin has almost become an Australian variant of the arrived Bohemian, a style now
dominant in much of the West, or at least present as an alternative elite.’’
The use in the same sentences of learned, literary, scientific, political and generally
‘‘high-brow’’ vocabulary with words like bloody (and bullshit) is a good case in
point. Significantly, such a cultivation of bloody in public language is widespread, as
the book A place in the sun testifies. Examples can be readily quoted from politicians
of different persuasions, different backgrounds, and different personal styles. For
instance, here is another former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, speaking about
Asian immigration to Australia and about Hawke’s decision to accept some thirty
thousand Chinese students and their families after the Tiananmen Square massacre
of 1989:
‘‘Why don’t they look at the bloody exam results? (...) When people criticise that decision, I ask
them, why don’t they just love their country and say, ‘‘Isn’t it bloody marvellous that we’re getting
this talent, because it is going to make our country better?’’ (...) The fact is that our economic wel-
fare is increasingly dependent on Asia. Sixty percent of our exports go to Asia. That’s a hell of a lot
of your bloody jobs’’. (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 70).
Another Australian politician, Peter Wong, born in China and brought up in

Indonesia, whose ‘‘Unity Party’’ stands for ‘‘the diversity of the Australian People’’
(Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 293) and for ‘‘the spirit of multiculturalism’’ (Cope and
Kalantzis, 2000: 295), is also fond of the word bloody. To quote:
‘‘When I resigned I called a press conference (...). At that time I was really very politically naive, and
I didn’t know how to answer their bloody questions’’. (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 292).
Finally, the Australian academic and writer, Donald Horne, who also salutes
Australian diversity and rejects ‘‘cultural homogeneity’’, nonetheless chooses to
express his pro-multicultural stand using the same old Australian cultural symbol—
the word bloody:
‘‘Now that’s what being Australian is. And it mustn’t be ethnic. There’s no bloody ethnic Aus-
tralian. The distinction is between ethnicity and nationality.’’ (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 346.)
Thus, even those commentators who in theory reject the notion that in Australia
cultural homogeneity and continuity could co-exist with cultural diversity and
change, in fact implicitly acknowledge the need for some cultural continuity and
cohesiveness by their use of the word bloody. Another related Australian concept is
the ‘‘fair go’’, which Peter Wong calls ‘‘the fundamental Australian value’’ (‘‘The
Unity Party upholds the fundamental Australian value of ‘a fair go for all’’’, Cope
and Kalantzis, 2000: 294). But even the traditional Australian ideal of the ‘‘fair go’’,
while openly admired by some, is attacked and ridiculed by others, as is also the
traditional Australian ideal of ‘‘mateship’’. On the other hand, traditional Aus-
tralian values and attitudes reflected in the central role played in everyday discourse
by words like bloody and bullshit are seldom publicly attacked and ridiculed—partly
no doubt because they have never been articulated as explicit ideals. One gets the
impression that those who reject ‘‘Australian cultural scripts’’ as so much ‘‘bullshit’’
and ‘‘(bloody) myth’’ do not stop to think what they are doing, and so do not realize
that their position is self-contradictory.
It is hard to believe that when Donald Horne declares: ‘‘there’s no bloody ethnic
Australian’’ he is throwing in the word bloody as an empty flourish. Of course, it
could be argued that he is trying to project a certain image, as a politician might do
by ‘‘dropping his g’s’’. But there is more to it than that. The word bloody does mean
something, and its meaning is not identical with that of any other so-called ‘‘swear-
word’’ in any other language. It seems clear that when Hawke, or Fraser, or Wong,
or Horne use this word they are—consciously or not—showing their allegiance to
certain traditional Australian values and appealing to the sense of these values
among their readers. They are appealing to certain shared ‘‘cultural scripts’’.
An intuitive awareness of these scripts is well attested in ‘‘folk comments’’ like
those ‘‘reported’’ by C. J. Dennis, the author of the hugely popular ‘‘Songs of a
Sentimental Bloke’’ (on which a very popular film was based):
‘‘Our speech was rough, our ways was tough—tough as our bloody game.’’ (C.J. Dennis 1936,
AND.)
Numerous other comments of this kind could be quoted which show that Aus-
tralians are aware of, and value, the ‘‘roughness’’ of their speech, and that behind
that ‘‘roughness’’ lie certain cherished ‘‘cultural scripts’’. It remains to be shown
what exactly these cultural scripts are—and the path to this leads via a semantic
analysis of the word bloody.
Before turning to this analysis, however, it should be said that while the status of
bloody in Australian English has undergone certain changes, its use continues to be
an important part of Australian culture, which (among many other things) distin-
guishes it from other cultures, including present-day British culture(s). The fre-
quencies for bloody in two contemporary corpora—the Macquarie corpus of
Australian English and the COBUILD corpus of British English—make this point
abundantly clear. In the COBUILD corpus of ‘‘UK books’’ (based on 5 million
running words), there are on average about 60 occurrences of bloody per one million
words, and in the COBUILD corpus of ‘‘Spoken English’’ (based on 9 million run-
ning words) the figure is similar (about 50 per million). In the Macquarie corpus,
based on published material (18.5 million running words), the corresponding figure
is significantly higher (160 occurrences per one million words).8 It might be added
that in the Cobuild corpus of American books the occurrence of bloody is extremely
low (24.5 per million, that is, less than a half the figure for the UK books, and nearly
seven times less than in the Macquarie corpus). According to H. L. Mencken’s
classic study The American Language, ‘‘Perhaps the most curious disparity between
8
The exact figures are as follows:
UK Books: 322 in 5.4 million (60 per million)

UK Spoken English: 464 in 9.3 million (50 per million)
US Books: 138 in 5.6 million (24.5 per million)
Macquarie: 3000 in 6 million (160 per million)
the vocabulary of the two languages is presented by bloody. The word is entirely
without improper significance in America, but in England it is regarded as indecent,
with overtones of the blasphemous’’ (1936: 311, quoted in Hughes, 1991: 172). A
century later, the situation has no doubt changed a little, due to television, films, and
so on; but even so, one can surmise that not very many occurrences of bloody in the
US corpus stand for its ‘‘swearword’’ use at all.9
The high frequency of bloody in Australian speech does not mean that this word is
perceived as acceptable to everyone. On the contrary, its expressive value is linked
with a perception that ‘‘for some people’’ it is not acceptable. This wide use of a
word regarded by some people as unacceptable shows that many speakers place a
special value on presenting themselves as breakers of some other people’s conven-
tions. Hughes (1991: 172) quotes on this point, with approval, Mencken’s (1936:
311–312) comment that ‘‘The more it [bloody] is denounced by the delicate, the more
it is cherished by the vulgar’’. As I will argue in more detail below (see Section 6), in
Australia, a certain defiance against ‘‘the delicate’’ is written into the very meaning
of the word bloody itself.
4. ‘Bloody’ in parliamentary debates
It is not only its frequency which distinguishes the use of bloody in Australian
English from its use in British English. To begin with, there is the characteristically
Australian use of bloody in highly positive collocations, such as bloody marvellous,
or bloody beautiful, which I will discuss in more detail later. There are no such
examples in the British corpus.10
Furthermore, there is also a marked difference in the type of discourse in which
bloody can freely occur. The language of parliamentary debate is a good case in
point. In the British parliament, bloody is used only rarely, and when it does occur, it
tends to be the subject of elaborate explanations and profuse apologies. In the
Australian parliamentary debates, on the other hand, it is, at least latterly, quite
commonplace and in most cases it passes without any comment. The following
examples come from Hansard for the ACT Legislative Assembly:
I think $500,000 for the ACT to spend on Namadgi is bloody good news. (22/6/
1995, p. 1089.)
This government takes the view that if you are in deficit it is bloody stupid to
borrow money to invest money. (20/9/1995, p. 1559.)
She [Ms.Follett] knows that her leadership is under challenge. It will be, because
she is doing such a bloody hopeless job—a totally hopeless job. (21/2/1996, p.
101.)
They [supermarkets] have the hide to offer cheaper groceries, have they? Un-
bloody-believable. (27/6/1996, p. 2407.)
9
It is striking that in Jay’s (1992) extensive book-length study of swearing in America there is no
mention of bloody at all.
10
This does not mean, needless to say, that such positive collocations NEVER occur in British English.
What are you explaining for? I did not ask you the bloody question. (12/12/1996,
p. 4820.)
. . . those people in Mental Health Services (...) are doing a bloody good job. (27/
2/1997, p. 577.)
Mr. Whitecross: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. (...)
Mr. Corbett: A good question.
Mr. Humphries: What a bloody dumb question, if you (...) ask me! (3/8/1997, p.
2826.)
The use of bloody in the Australian parliament is not always accepted without
protest, but this tends to happen only in cases of a personal attack, as in the fol-
lowing example:
Mr. Moore: You are a bloody liar, and you know it.
Mr. Berry: Mr. Moore!
Mr. Speaker: Order! Come on! (24/6/1997, p. 2017.)
... that would be a result of Mr Berry’s bloody stupid questions—I withdraw the
word ‘‘bloody’’. (17/4/1996, p. 1001.)
When an apology for the use of bloody is offered, it tends to be perfunctory or

humorous. For example:
If you adopt the standard which they are arguing for today, Ministers will be
dropping like flies, every bloody week that the Assembly sits. Excuse the French.
(24/22/1999, p. 3601.)
In the British parliament the occasional use of bloody is treated rather more ser-
iously, as the following examples (from the House of Commons) illustrate:
The ruling group on Westminster council wants to deal with Waitrose, Tesco and other super-
markets, and with Howard de Walden Estates, so that those involved can make a bloody great
profit- [Interruption.] I am sorry; a huge profit. My cockney origins are getting the better of me. I
am upset that education is to get a kick in the teeth from Westminster council and from a Con-
servative Government who pretends to be neutral. (26/6/1995.)
Mr Cook: That is fine from the point of view of career development, but it is not
much bloody good in terms of taking care of children.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I know that the hon.
Gentleman feels strongly about the matter, but I would ask him to moderate his
language somewhat.
Mr. Cook: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, for using the term ‘‘bloody’’, if
that was the word that caused offence. Was there any other?
Madam Deputy Speaker: Not yet.
Mr. Cook: I had no intention of causing offence, I promise you, and I promise the
House. I apologise for using the term ‘‘bloody’’—but I still feel as strongly as
that, or even more strongly. (6/12/1995.)

Mr. Faulds: Bloody disgrace.
Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) should
keep his temper—nobody in the House wants to hear it.
Mr. Newton: I shall say as calmly as I can to the hon. Gentleman that, if we felt
that Bosnia did not matter, we would not have recalled Parliament during the
recent short recess precisely because of an important development that needed to
be debated.
Thus in the House of Commons, speakers guilty of letting the occasional bloody
slip in apologize not only for the use of a word regarded as improper, but also for
their social origins, for causing offence to the House, and for the loss of emotional
self-control. From an Australian point of view this sounds excessive.
A hundred and seventy years ago, Edward Gibbon Wakefield in his ‘‘Letter from
Sydney’’ (quoted in Hornadge, 1980: 76) wrote:
‘‘Bearing in mind that our lowest class (the convicts) brought with it a peculiar language, and is
constantly supplied with fresh corruption, you will understand why pure English is not, and is
unlikely to become, the language of the colony. (...) Terms of slang and flash [criminal argot, A.W.]
are used, as a matter of course, from the gaols to the Viceroy’s palace, not excepting the Bar and the
Bench. No doubt they will be reckoned quite parliamentary, as soon as we have a parliament.’’
The use of bloody in the Australian parliament at the turn of the century confirms
the validity of Wakefield’s insight: it is not just the frequency of bloody which dis-
tinguishes Australian discourse from other Englishes but also its sociolinguistic and
socio-cultural status. What remains to be done is to elucidate the meaning of this
key word, and its place in the over-all network of Australian cultural scripts.
5. Why ‘bloody’?
But why focus on bloody? Why not study shit, crap, and above all, ‘‘modern’’ ‘‘f-
words’’ (f..k and f..king)? Or, for that matter, why not discuss Australian swearing in
general? There is a widely shared perception that swearing plays a particularly
important role in Australian English, more so than in other Englishes. Why not,
then, discuss the special role of swearing in Australian English in more general
terms, rather than concentrate on one particular swearword?
I believe that Australian swearing in general is indeed an important field of study
which has received relatively little attention in the past. (For pioneering efforts in
this direction, see in particular, Taylor, 1975, 1976; Hill, 1992; Kidman, 1993). But
there can hardly be a fruitful study of ‘‘Australian swearing in general’’ without a
study of individual swearwords (a synthesis requires some groundwork).
Still, if one must choose, why focus on bloody rather than on something else? In
fact, there seems to be a growing reluctance in Australia to discuss the traditional
Australian ‘‘b-words’’: bugger, bullshit, and above all bloody. The very salience of
this word in Australian speech over the last two centuries has meant that it has
attracted a great deal of non-scholarly attention and has become part of a stereotype
image of Australians. As a result, many Australians who still use bloody on a daily
basis have come to find references to the Australian use of bloody tedious, and seem
to prefer to be seen as people who use ‘‘f-words’’ rather than the old ‘‘b-words’’: ‘‘f-
words’’ seem to many not only more modern but also sometimes more chic—and
almost more ‘‘progressive’’. (As one of my students, a punk, recently said to me,
‘‘bloody is a word that my grandfather used to use; I only use f..., and so do all my
friends’’.)11
I do not dispute the accuracy of my punk-student’s self-assessment. Nonetheless, I
believe that bloody is much more important as a key to Australian culture and
Australian ‘‘cultural scripts’’ than are any ‘‘f-words’’ or other expletives currently
seen as more ‘‘trendy’’ than the old ‘‘b-words’’.
One reason for this is the place of bloody in the 200 year period in which Aus-
tralian culture developed and consolidated its distinct character (largely, though of
course not exclusively, in opposition to British culture).
Another reason is that of historical continuity: my punk-student’s experience (or
perception) notwithstanding, bloody is still widely used in Australia, as, for example,
numerous recent citations in the Macquarie Corpus of Australian English demon-
strate; and it has been used widely for over two centuries, in ways which have always
struck overseas visitors as distinctive.
Of course Australian culture has been changing, but change is not inconsistent
with continuity; and in fact, change itself can only be understood against the back-
ground of continuity (without some continuity, it would not be a case of cultural
change but of a cultural death). For example, the fact that the word bloody can now
be used in the Australian parliament, and that the word bullshit can now be used
freely in print, illustrates both the change and the continuity in the Australian cul-
ture and society.
In addition to the important role of bloody in the Australian past and its role in
linking the past with the present, bloody plays an important role as a unifying ele-
ment in contemporary Australian society. ‘‘F-words’’ do not have this role because
they are inherently divisive: the person who is using an ‘‘f-word’’ is aware that many
people within Australian society itself find it offensive and he or she is deliberately
disregarding the potential offence in order to express a strong feeling. As a first
approximation, this can be represented along the following lines:
f..k, f..king
11
An anonymous reviewer asks: ‘‘Is it necessary to ask why the investigator doesn’t study fuck or
shit?’’. Personally, I am in sympathy with this reaction. If I have nonetheless felt the need to justify the
‘‘preferential treatment’’ given here to bloody, it is because of the reactions of several Australians to my
paper and to the talk based on it (which I gave at the Workshop on Ethnopragmatics at Melbourne
University in July 2000); to many Australian colleagues, anxious to avoid stereotyping, it is important
that the increasing use of fuck and shit in Australia (at the expense of bloody) should also be acknowl-
edged.
I feel something (very bad) now

I want to say something because of this
many people think that some words are bad words
these people think that it is bad to say these words
I want to say a word like this now
I know that if someone heard this word this person could feel something bad
because of this
I don’t want not to say this word because of this
The reference to ‘‘many people who think that these words are bad words’’ makes
‘‘f-words’’ as it were counter-cultural; and what is perceived as the greater intensity
of the ‘‘f-words’’ can be explained in terms of their ‘‘shock value’’ of which the
speaker is not only aware but in fact relies on.12
As for the common Australian interjection shit!, it does not have the same syn-
tactic potential as bloody. For example, it could not be substituted for bloody in
utterances like ‘‘those bloody women!’’, ‘‘he was a bloody character!’’, or ‘‘it is a
bloody good story’’. As an interjection, which cannot be syntactically integrated into
the utterance, it cannot be used as a comment on some aspect of the proposition
currently being expressed.
Bloody is not an interjection, although it can be used as one in the combination
bloody hell! and a few others. Since it can be syntactically integrated in a sentence (as
an adjective and adverb) it can be used as a comment on various aspects of what is
being said; and this gives it the potential to be used across a wider range of speech
genres than a mere interjection could. For example, it is no accident that in parlia-
mentary debates one is more likely to come across phrases like ‘‘three whole bloody
years’’, ‘‘you bloody unionists’’, ‘‘a bloody hopeless job’’ or ‘‘a bloody good job’’,
than exclamations like ‘‘bloody hell!’’. At the same time, the defiant ring of bloody as
a mild ‘‘swearword’’ is not divisive but, on the contrary, uniting: the tacit assump-
tion among the users of bloody is that most other Australians would not find this
word ‘‘horrid’’ or its use offensive. To put it differently, bloody symbolically unites
Australians against the rest of the world, rather than divides them against one
another. This is another reason why bloody is potentially more useful to politicians
than, for example, ‘‘f-words’’, and why bloody rather than these other ‘‘stronger’’
swearwords can be heard in parliamentary debates.
As I will discuss later, one of the important Australian cultural scripts has to do
with being ‘‘like other people’’ and being seen as someone who wants to be ‘‘like
other people’’. The use of bloody is an important symbol of being ‘‘like other peo-
12
One may wonder whether in British English bloody does not still include a reference to ‘‘many peo-
ple’’ (who think that it is a ‘‘bad word’’), rather than to ‘‘some people’’. Of course, in England, too, most
theatre audiences would no longer be shocked on hearing the word bloody, as they reportedly were in 1930
when George Bernard Shaw made a flower-girl in his play Pygmalion say ‘‘Not bloody likely!’’ (Wright,
1981: 123). Nonetheless, as the Hansard materials (not to mention the OED) illustrate, in England bloody
is still assumed to be regarded by ‘‘many people’’ as a ‘‘bad word’’.
ple’’. The use of bloody by politicians in general, and by the leader of the ‘‘Unity
Party’’ in particular, epitomizes this function of this old but enduring Australian
cultural symbol.
6. The two meanings of ‘bloody’
In using the word bloody, the speaker expresses a feeling concurrent with the
utterance—usually, but not always, a ‘‘bad feeling’’:
when I say this I feel something (bad)
This expressive function of bloody is highlighted in the following example from a

parliamentary debate:
You funded it, (...) and you tell me that you are going to drop their bloody
funding down to one year. How dare you! I withdraw the expression ‘‘bloody’’,
Mr. Speaker. However, I do not withdraw the feeling that I put behind this. (24/6/
1998, p. 948.)
Here, the expressed feeling is plainly a ‘‘bad feeling’’, as the concurrent exclama-
tion ‘‘How dare you!’’ makes clear.
The Australian National Dictionary (AND) treats bloody as polysemous, distin-
guishing its use as an adjective from its use as an adverb. The adjectival use is
defined as follows: ‘‘an intensive, ranging in force from ‘mildly irritating’ to ‘exe-
crable’’’. The adverbial use is described as ‘‘an intensive: extremely, very’’. Thus, the
AND links the adjectival use with ‘‘bad feelings’’, while presenting the adverbial use
as not necessarily linked with bad feelings.
Despite some apparent counter-examples, I believe the AND is essentially right on
this point. For example, the following sentences (otherwise neutral in their content)
unmistakably convey a ‘‘bad feeling’’ on the part of the speaker.13
And bloody Ralph! (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)

South bloody Africa! (George Johnson, 1964)
Where is that bloody kid? (Sally Morgan, 1987)
‘You sound like a bloody lawyer’, Judith said. (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)
The ‘‘bad feeling’’ is a semantic contribution of the word bloody (used as a nom-
inal modifier), and can be represented as follows:
when I say this I feel something bad
By contrast, used in a (broadly speaking) adverbial way, bloody does not neces-
13
Unless otherwise indicated, all the attributed and dated examples given without a page number come
from the Macquarie Corpus of Australian English.
sarily suggest a ‘‘bad feeling’’ of any kind, and in fact can be associated with a
‘‘good feeling’’, as in the following example:
‘‘A bloody good definition of the desert’’, he said, and chuckled. (Lawson Glassop,
1944.)
Of course, bloody used as an adverb (or, more generally, non-adjectival discourse

marker) can also be associated with a bad feeling, as in the following example:
‘‘That will be all, thank bloody you’’, a voice inside me hissed as I swallowed hard
and made my last play. (Geoffrey Quinlan, 1990.)
Generally speaking, however, when bloody is not being used as a nominal modi-
fier, the nature of the feeling can only be guessed from the context. For example, the
word chuckled offers a positive clue, whereas hissed provides a negative one. When
no clear positive or negative clue is provided, bloody as a non-adjectival discourse
marker still suggests a feeling, but an unspecified one.
The polysemy of bloody is sufficiently demonstrated by the unmistakable differ-
ence between utterances like ‘‘Bloody Ralph!’’ (a bad feeling) and ‘‘Bloody funny!’’
or ‘‘Bloody amazing!’’ (an unspecified feeling). (In fact, the negative implications of
utterances like ‘‘Bloody Ralph!’’ are so clear that the Macquarie Dictionary of Aus-
tralian Colloqualisms: Aussie Talk (1984: 31) goes so far as to ascribe to bloody used
of people a separate sense: ‘‘difficult; obstinate; cruel’’.) More difficult to establish
are the exact conditions under which the two meanings are realized. Although the
matter requires further investigation, by and large the generalization given in the
AND is, I think, valid: when bloody is used as an adjective modifying a noun it
implies a bad feeling (‘‘I feel something bad’’), otherwise it implies an unspecified
feeling (‘‘I feel something’’). The validity of this generalization is somewhat clouded,
however, by the existence of some apparent counter-examples.
First, there are some set expressions in Australian English such as, above all,
bloody oath and bloody beauty, where bloody conveys an unspecified rather than a
bad feeling. (Of course bloody beauty as a whole conveys a very good feeling, but
this can be seen as the contribution of beauty rather than of bloody). Furthermore,
bloody beauty can be used as a model, giving rise to ‘‘bloody marvel’’, ‘‘bloody
genius’’, ‘‘bloody paradise’’, ‘‘bloody palace’’, and so on. Some examples:
A bloody marvel! (Frank Hardy, 1950)

You’re a bloody genius, Jack! (Frank Hardy, 1950)
It’s bloody paradise! (James McQueen, 1984)
‘‘This isn’t a hospital, you know, it’s a bloody palace.’’ (Colleen McCullogh,
1975)
The link between ‘‘bad feelings’’ and adjectival use of bloody is also clouded by the
fact that bloody can be used as a discourse marker relating to a whole phrase, and
can often be inserted in the middle of the phrase, where it may find itself before a
noun. There are certain types of phrases where such an addition of bloody (without
any bad feeling) is particularly common.
Thus, a phrase with a numeral, like twenty years, or a hundred uniforms, can be
expanded by insertion of bloody:
‘‘I’ve known youse for twenty bloody years, Ron’’, Curly said, ‘‘and I still haven’t
worked out who Tim gets his looks from.’’ (Colleen McCullogh, 1979).
A hundred bloody uniforms wouldn’t do anything for you, boy. (David Wil-
liamson, 1972).
A phrase with the semantic element ‘‘all’’, such as the whole lot, no doubt, or every
thing, can be similarly expanded:
‘‘The whole bloody lot.’’ Kelly grinned excitedly. (D’Arcy Niland, 1955).
I watch every bloody thing. (David Williamson, 1972).
There is no bloody doubt about it. (David Williamson, 1972).
Other quantitative expressions, like a bit or more, can also be so expanded. For
example, a bit of luck can be expanded to a bloody bit of luck, and more brains, to
more bloody brains:
By ginger, a bloody bit of luck I didn’t take my pants off, too. (Norman Lindsay,
1938.)
This one has more bloody brains and guts than any of us three. (Joan Lindsay,
1967.)
Extremely positive expressions like ‘‘wonderful place’’ or ‘‘marvellous bloke’’ can

be expanded to ‘‘wonderful bloody place’’ and ‘‘marvellous bloody bloke’’:
. . . it’s a wonderful bloody place, Jack, and you’ll love it up there . . . (George
Johnson, 1964.)
‘‘I think you’re a marvellous bloody bloke.’’ (Randolph Stow, 1965.)
The exact conditions under which a bloody preceding a noun functions as a

modifier of the whole phrase and conveys an unspecified rather than a bad feeling
require further investigation. Two points, however, are worth noting: first, that in
phrases like a marvellous bloody bloke or a wonderful bloody place, bloody can be
moved to a pre-adjectival position without a change of meaning: a bloody marvellous
bloke, a bloody wonderful place; and second, that while bloody Ralph! is fully idio-
matic, a bloody bloke and a bloody place are not (in Australian English, apparently
in contrast to British English).14
14
In plays by British authors bloody is sometimes used in phrases like bloody woman or bloody man. I
could not find any such examples in Australian plays, and all the speakers of Australian English whom I
have consulted regarded them as slightly odd.
Finally, the ‘‘emphatic’’ (neutral rather than ‘‘bad’’) bloody is often added to a
whole saying which expresses an attitude or an evaluation. For example, ‘‘That’s the
spirit’’ can be expanded to ‘‘That’s the bloody spirit’’ (Frank Hardy, 1950), ‘‘Forget
your troubles!’’ to ‘‘Forget your bloody troubles!’’ (Henry Handel Richardson,
1917), and ‘‘He is a character!’’ to ‘‘He is a bloody character!’’ (‘‘the locals called
him a bloody character’’, Frank Hardy, 1963). In these examples, bloody seems to be
modifying a noun without implying a bad feeling, in fact, however, it modifies the
saying as a whole. This applies to set phrases and ready-made sayings like ‘‘that’s
the spirit!’’, ‘‘forget your troubles!’’ or ‘‘he is a character!’’, which appear to function
as not fully analyzable units. If bloody can be inserted in the middle of a word (e.g. un-
bloody-believable!), it can also be inserted in the middle of a set phrase. Thus, in ‘‘It’s the
bloody cat!’’ bloody modifies cat (and implies a bad feeling), whereas in ‘‘That’s the
bloody spirit!’’ bloody does not modify spirit (and no bad feeling is implied).
Accordingly, in what follows I will distinguish two distinct meanings of bloody—
bloody1, which includes the component ‘‘when I say this I feel something bad’’, and
bloody2, which includes the component ‘‘when I say this I feel something’’.15
I would not claim that ambiguity between bloody1 and bloody2 can never arise. In
spoken language, such an ambiguity would usually be resolved by the intonation
and facial expression (and of course by the context, both linguistic and situational).
In most sentences, however, the structural clues (adjectival vs. non-adjectival use)
seem to be sufficient to show which of the two meanings is intended. If bloody is
inserted in the middle of a word (as in un-bloody-believable) or when it is used
adverbially (and precedes an adjective, as in bloody funny) it is always bloody2. On
the other hand, the sentence ‘‘it’s the bloody cat’’ (in contrast to ‘‘it’s the cat’’)
clearly implies that the speaker ‘‘feels something bad’’ (if only very mildly ‘‘bad’’),
and since there are here no contextual, prosodic or other clues which could explain
this implication, it must be attributed to bloody (the adjectival bloody, i.e. bloody1).
In addition to the ‘‘feel bad’’ and ‘‘feel’’ components, both meanings of bloody
include other components as well, which I will try to identify in the next three sections.16
7. The nature of the feeling expressed by ‘bloody’
As we have seen, the feeling expressed by bloody can either be ‘‘bad’’ (bloody1) or
unspecified (bloody2). But what kind of ‘‘bad feeling’’ is expressed by bloody1 and
what range of unspecified feelings can be expressed by bloody2?
15
It should be emphasized again that neither ‘‘I feel something bad’’ nor ‘‘I feel something’’ are meant
to be idiomatic English expressions but rather, semantic formulae couched in NSM, that is, in a semi-
artificial semantic metalanguage. They are meant to be intelligible through, rather than couched in,
ordinary English.
16
Needless to say, I am not suggesting that the listeners have to consciously identify the syntactic role
of bloody in order to determine its meaning in a particular context. But the observation that ordinary
users of language often rely, subconsciously, on syntactic information to interpret the meaning of a
polysemous word can hardly be regarded as controversial.
Let us begin our inquiry into the nature of these feelings by looking more closely
at the bad feelings conveyed by bloody1. As we have seen, the OED links bloody with
‘‘anger, resentment, detestation’’, and the AND ascribes to it an expressive force
‘‘ranging (...) from ‘mildly irritating’ to ‘execrable’’’. While formulae of this kind are
clearly unsatisfactory in that they fail to capture the semantic invariant, it is surely
not an accident that neither dictionary mentions, for example, ‘‘sadness’’, ‘‘anxiety’’,
‘‘fear’’ or ‘‘depression’’. And indeed, sentences like the following sound strange:
? ‘‘Where is that bloody kid?’’ he said sadly.
? ‘‘Shut the bloody door, will you?’’ she said fearfully.
To account for the apparent incompatibility of bloody with reporting words like
‘‘sadly’’ or ‘‘fearfully’’, I would suggest that the emotional attitude implied by bloody
is active, like that of anger, and that this can be captured in a component along the
lines of ‘‘I want to do something because of this’’. This is why a sentence with bloody
would usually not be interpreted as a ‘‘whinge’’ (with its implication that ‘‘I can’t do
anything’’), even if without bloody it could be so interpreted. The very insertion of
bloody tends to ensure that such an interpretation is no longer available. For example,
if someone says ‘‘I’m losing my bloody patience’’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 1992), this
person seems to be trying to ensure that he or she still sounds ‘‘tough’’. Admittedly,
such a strategy is not always accepted, as the following example illustrates:
17
An interesting parallel is provided by the use of exclamations like Christ! or Jesus! in Australian
English, which sound angry, in contrast to the British English exclamation Oh Christ!, which is normally
associated with feelings like regret or fright (and generally, helplessness rather than an impulse to act). A
few examples, first from the English playwright Simon Gray (1986) and then from the Australian play-
wright David Williamson (1993/1975):
REG: (...) You didn’t do your National Service, I take it.
BEN: Oh Christ! Sorry, I mean no. (p. 57)
ANITA: Are you growing a beard?
SACKLING: Oh Christ! (Feeling his chin) I forgot! (p. 213)
QUARTERMAINE: What—where?
SACKLING: At my place—oh Christ! Don’t say I forgot to invite you. Well you’re
invited. (p. 267)
As these examples illustrate, the exclamation Oh Christ! is normally not associated with anger, aggression or
defiance. By contrast, the common Australian exclamation Christ! sounds angry and defiant. To illustrate:
ROBBY: I think we might call Mr Fletcher over.
GORDON: [over-enthusiastic] Why not. Christ, that’ll spike his guns. His jaw’ll hit
the floor. (p. 64)
GERRY: Laurie thought that you and Tony and Ted had some sort of permanent
conspiracy not to drop him.
JOCK: Christ, no. If he’s been playing up we’ll put him down like a shot. (p. 147)
PETER [to Hans] Are you worried about the tank, shithead?
HANS: Christ, no. I’m more worried about the holidays. (p. 11)
In Australian speech, Christ! is closely related to the adjectival bloody, since it, too, expresses a bad feeling
(‘‘I feel something bad’’), an active attitude (‘‘I want to do something because of this’’) and a desire to
break a social taboo (in fact, ‘‘Jesus bloody Christ’’ is a common collocation). The difference is that
Christ! sounds aggressive (‘‘I want to do something bad because of this’’) and also more deliberately
offensive (‘‘many people think that it is bad if a person says some words when this person wants to do
something bad, I want to say something like this now’’).
‘I’m sick to death of this bloody holiday’, he whinged, blaming Janet. (Ross
Fitzgerald, 1987.)
Here, the speaker who uses bloody is trying to sound, roughly speaking, angry
(and to imply ‘‘I want to do something because of this’’), but the narrator rejects this
and interprets the sentence as a ‘‘whinge’’ (‘‘I can’t do anything’’).
Similarly, when on the face of it someone expresses something like pity or com-
passion with a sentence like
Poor bloody Alec! (Kylie Tennant, 1946.)
the insertion of bloody seems to be meant to ensure that the speaker still sounds
‘‘tough’’. Yes, they do feel ‘‘something bad’’, but they do not want to project an
image of someone who is reduced to utter helplessness (‘‘I can’t do anything’’). The
very fact that the collocation ‘‘poor bloody (X)’’ is very common in the Macquarie
corpus, supports this interpretation. (It maybe particularly important to sound
‘‘tough’’ when in fact one is feeling sorry and probably helpless.) A few more examples:
.. and poor bloody David Meredith ... (George Johnson, 1964.)
Poor bloody Poms! (T.A.G. Hungerford, 1983.)
Poor bloody bird, I thought. (Dal Stevens, 1986.)
The use of bloody ensures that the speaker can combine their expression of feeling
sorry for someone with a seemingly active attitude: ‘‘I want to do something’’.
But what exactly can a person do in a situation in which they seem to be only able
to say bloody? That’s just it: they can say bloody (or bugger, as in poor bugger—
another common Australian collocation)—and in doing so, they can symbolically
break ‘‘some people’s’’ social taboo. Thus, insignificant as it may seem, the use of
bloody can always serve as a symbolic act of defiance, and so as a tool for projecting
a culturally valued image17 (see footnote 17 on the previous page). This defiant,
rebellious, active, ‘‘larrikin’’ image can be portrayed, in part, as follows:
some people think that some words are bad words
A person who says bloody signals that they want to express their feelings, and
also, that they are not going to describe these feelings in any detail. They do,
however, signal that their feeling is associated with an active attitude: ‘‘I want
to do something’’. The combination of the semantic components: ‘‘I feel some-
thing bad’’ and ‘‘I want to do something’’ links bloody1 with ‘‘anger’’. The full
meaning of the English words anger and angry includes more than a reference to ‘‘bad
feelings’’ and to ‘‘wanting to do something’’, but it does include these two components.
(For detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka, 1999.) The meaning of bloody (bloody1) can be
represented more fully (though still not exhaustively) as follows:
when I say this I feel something bad
I want to do something because of this

In the case of the ‘‘adverbial’’ bloody2 (as in, for example, ‘‘bloody amazing!’’ or
‘‘bloody funny!’’) no bad feeling is being expressed, but the unspecified feeling which
is being expressed is also linked with an active stance (‘‘I want to do something
because of this’’). Even when one does want to say that one feels helpless and
depressed, the use of bloody adds an active edge to the utterance, as a comparison of
variants A and B shows:
A. I am depressed.
B. I am bloody depressed.
Exclamations expressing highly positive feelings (e.g. ‘‘You bloody beauty!’’) are
compatible with bloody but only if the sentence as a whole is compatible with an
active attitude. For example, a person who exclaims: ‘‘You bloody beauty!’’ may
jump from their seat, clap their hands, shake their fists in jubilation, and so on (or at
least look as if they wanted to engage in such behaviour). Accordingly, I would pro-
pose for bloody2 a semantic formula along the same lines as that assigned to bloody1,
with the only difference being that between ‘‘feel bad’’ and just ‘‘feel’’:
when I say this I feel something

I want to do something because of this
8. ‘Bloody’ as a sign of truth and sincerity
The traditional Australian ethos valued truth and authenticity in human relations,
and was suspicious of what was seen as fake, non-genuine, purely conventional. The
key word reflecting this aspect of the Australian ethos was dinkum, reportedly
(AND) from the Cantonese expression din kum, ‘real gold’, used by Chinese workers
during the gold rush.
Dinkum is now seldom used in Australian English, except in the phrase fair din-
kum and perhaps dinkum Aussie. Even these are perceived as archaic, and when used,
are often rendered in a stylised way, as a kind of cultural quotation. In the past,
however, the word dinkum played an important role in the Australian ethos and self-
image, as the following citation in the AND vividly illustrates (Knyvett, 1918):
‘‘One of these spies was only discovered through misuse of a well-known Australian slang word ....
He was getting a lot of information and seemed to know several officers’ names, but he bungled over
one of them, and on the officer he was speaking to inquiring ‘Is that dinkum?’ he answered: ‘Yes,
that’s his name!’ There was no further investigation, he was shot on the spot.’’
The Australian National Dictionary glosses dinkum as ‘‘reliable, genuine; honest,

true’’. As the examples given in the AND illustrate, the main focus of this word
appears to have been on a person or thing really being what they were said to be—
and fully deserving to be called that. For example:
He was a real dinkum bloke. (T. Shepherd, 1976.)

They reckoned I was now entitled to call myself a dinkum Queenslander.
(Ruth Conquest, 1963.)
You’ll be a dinkum Aussie soon, Kochansky, he said. (J. Waters, 1954.)
If a person was said to be simply ‘‘dinkum’’ this could be taken to refer to their
‘‘genuineness’’ as a human being, for example:
He was rough, but he was dinkum. (G. Wilmott, 1944.)
How is the ‘‘dinkum’’ ethos related to the key speech routine involving the use of
bloody? When bloody is described as ‘‘a mere intensifier’’, or as a substitute for very
or exceedingly, the link between bloody and dinkum is lost. In fact, however, bloody
(in contrast to very) is by no means restricted to gradable predicates and it is closer
to really (non-gradable) than to very (gradable). For example, a sentence like:
I’m losing my bloody patience. (James MacQuinn, 1984.)
is better compared to ‘‘I’m really losing my patience’’ than to ‘‘I’m getting very impa-
tient’’. Similarly, when someone says ‘‘What a bloody awful smell!’’ (S. Hogbotel, 1973)
what is meant is not a smell that is ‘‘very awful’’ but rather one that is ‘‘really awful’’.
As we have seen, the AND describes both the adjectival bloody1 and the adverbial
bloody2 as ‘‘an intensive’’, elaborating in the case of bloody2: ‘‘extremely, very’’. But this
explanation clearly does not apply to the adjectival bloody, as in ‘‘bloody Ralph!’’ or
‘‘it’s the bloody cat’’ (‘‘*very Ralph’’, ‘‘*it’s the very cat’’). What does it mean, then, to
call this use of bloody, too, ‘‘an intensive’’ or ‘‘an intensifier’’? The mystery is solved, I
suggest, when we note that the impression of ‘‘intensification’’ can be due to two dif-
ferent semantic elements, ‘‘very’’ and ‘‘true’’ (‘‘truly’’). When we consider words like
un-bloody-believable it becomes clear that what is involved here is not the idea of ‘‘very’’
(*‘‘very unbelievable’’) but rather, the idea of ‘‘true’’ (‘‘truly unbelievable’’)—not in the
sense of abstract truth predicated about some propositions but in the sense of truthful
speech by the present speaker, here and now; and this can apply to both the adverbial
and the adjectival use of bloody, thus allowing us to explain in unitary terms why
both these uses are perceived as ‘‘intensives’’.18
18
In other languages, too, so-called ‘‘intensifiers’’ can be based either on the concept VERY or on the con-
cept TRUE. For example, in Italian so-called ‘‘absolute superlatives’’ like bellissima, from bella ‘beautiful’, can
be shown to include in their meaning the element VERY (‘very beautiful’), whereas reduplicated intensifiers
like bella bella can be shown to mean ‘truly beautiful’ rather than ‘very beautiful’. Expressive reduplication is
applicable also to non-gradable adjectives such as nero ‘black’ (e.g. i capelli neri neri ‘truly black hair’) and even
to some nouns (e.g. caffè caffè ‘true coffee, real coffee’). (For detailed discussion, cf. Wierzbicka, 1986b, 1991).
Returning now to dinkum, dinkum was not the opposite of ‘‘false’’ but of ‘‘not
real’’. ‘‘False’’ applies, essentially, to sentences (a sentence can be either ‘‘true’’ or
‘‘false’’), but ‘‘not real’’ can also apply to objects and people; for example, a piece of
metal can be ‘‘not real gold’’. The word dinkum does include a reference to ‘‘truth’’,
but it also includes a reference to people’s perceptions of things. Things are not
always what they seem to be, or what they are said to be; but this particular thing—
‘‘a dinkum X’’—really is what it seems, or is said, to be. Similarly, when people say
something they are not always saying something true and so their words cannot
always be accepted as valid; but when I call someone a ‘‘bloody fool’’ I mean that
this person really is a fool.
Establishing a link between bloody and really enables us better to account for
sentences where there does not seem to be any relation between bloody and the
propositional content, for example:
Get it your bloody self. (Wal Watkins, 1971)
Here, bloody has clearly nothing to do with the factual truth of the sentence
(which is not a statement), but it can still be roughly glossed as ‘‘I really (truly) mean
it’’. It is thus related not to some aspect of the propositional content but rather to
the speaker’s stance.
In order to capture this aspect of bloody (relevant to both bloody1 and bloody2) I
would propose the following phrasing of the relevant component: ‘‘when I say this I
say something true’’. Thus, when one says something negative about someone or
something, as in ‘‘he is a bloody fool’’, bloody can be understood as vouching for the
validity and truth of the negative judgment:
I say: he is a fool
when I say this I say something true
On the other hand, when bloody relates exclusively to the sentence’s illocutionary
force (that is, roughly, the speaker’s stance) it can be interpreted as vouching for the
genuineness of the expressed attitude. For example, in the sentence:
‘‘Go on, put the bloody thing down’’, Ivor said. (Wal Watkins, 1971.)
bloody seems to imply not only that the speaker feels something bad but also that
he ‘‘means’’ what he says:
I say: I want you to do it
I think you will do it because of this
when I say this I say something true
Perhaps for this reason, bloody is often used with the imperative, and also in sen-
tences expressing an intention to definitely do something. For example:
I’m pulling out in the bloody mornin’. (Nino Culotta, 1962.)

‘I’m not’, Lunt said with finality, ‘saying a bloody word’. (Thea Astley, 1974.)
That’s the last time I’m using one of those bloody things. (Gabrielle Corey and
Kathy Lette, 1979.)
... determined I would go through it, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sen-
tence, word by bloody word—and destroy it! (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1982.)
In all such sentences bloody seems to emphasize the speaker’s determination:
when I say this [that I will do it] I say something true
More generally speaking, whenever bloody cannot be understood as vouching for

the truth of the sentence itself, it can be understood as vouching for the speaker’s
sincerity. For example, in the sentence:
Gets bloody cold these nights. (David Malouf, 1984.)
bloody vouches for the correspondence between the sentence and the external state
of affairs described in it: ‘‘it gets really cold these nights’’. On the other hand, in Bob
Hawke’s declaration about the creation of happiness for people as a goal of politics
in general and his personal goal in particular (‘‘so that they can enjoy their brief time
on this bloody planet’’), bloody appears intended to vouch for the speaker’s sincerity
(‘‘when I say that that’s what politics is about and what I am about I say something
true’’). In both cases, however, the same semantic formula applies: ‘‘when I say this I
say something true’’.
The link between bloody and truth (‘‘dinkum’’ truth) is clearly reflected in the once
common collocation ‘‘bloody oath’’, or ‘‘my bloody oath’’, for example:
My bloody oath. (Nevil Shute, 1952.)

‘‘My bloody oath’’, Ivor said. (Wal Watkins, 1971.)
My bloody oath. (Harold Lewis, 1973.)
It is also reflected in the combination ‘‘bloody good’’ and its variants, where the
speaker is vouching for the validity of the positive evaluation. This use of bloody is
so important in Australian English that it requires a separate discussion.
9. ‘Bloody good’
As noted earlier, in Australian English bloody is often used in very positive con-
texts, in particular, in combinations such as bloody marvellous, bloody great, bloody
wonderful, bloody beautiful, bloody beauty, bloody beaut, or bloody nice. Some
examples with bloody marvellous:
‘Christ’, I whispered, ‘she’s bloody marvellous!’ At the end of the first act I was
infatuated. (Lawson Glassop, 1944)
It was a bloody marvellous concept. (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)
‘This is bloody marvellous’, was an often-repeated comment. (A. Fisher, 1986.)
Examples with bloody great:
This is bloody great. (Bluey, 1975)

That’s a bloody great idea! (Bluey, 1975)
Des said that he had come across a bloody great idea for his hold. (Bert Newton,
1977)
Examples with bloody beautiful, bloody beaut and bloody beauty:
You bloody beaut! (Lawson Glassop, 1944)

The little bloody beauties. (Kylie Tennant, 1946)
You bloody little beaut! (J.E. Macdonnell, 1958)
It was the bloody beautest bull’s eye you’ve ever seen. (George Johnson, 1964)
They’re so bloody beautiful. (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)
... his heart beats like a bloody beauty. (Barry Dickins, 1985)
... The ASAQ set about telling fête patrons what a bloody beaut sport this is ...
(Tracks, 1992)
Examples with bloody wonderful:
‘‘... and tell her I’m fit as a fiddle and having a bloody wonderful time.’’ (George
Johnson, 1964)
... it’s a wonderful bloody place, Jack, and you’ll love it up there. (George John-
son, 1964)
It is remarkable that in the British corpora of English (COBUILD’s ‘‘Spoken

English’’, 9 million running words, and COBUILD’s ‘‘UK books’’, 5 million run-
ning words) collocations like ‘‘bloody marvellous’’, ‘‘bloody great’’, ‘‘bloody nice’’,
‘‘bloody wonderful’’ or ‘‘bloody beautiful’’ are not attested at all. Nor do these
corpora record any examples of ‘‘bloody beauty’’ or ‘‘bloody beaut’’, of which the
Macquarie Corpus records numerous examples. The collocation ‘‘bloody good’’
does occur in the British corpus of Spoken English, but only occasionally, and it
clearly does not have the same salience as in Australian English, where it has given
rise to a whole family of superlatives. Before considering the meaning of such char-
acteristic Australian superlatives, let us first consider the meaning of bloody in the
more basic collocation bloody good, as in the following example:
This is a bloody good story. (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)
It seems clear that in this sentence bloody does not suggest that ‘‘I feel something
bad’’; at the same time, however, there is no reason to assume that the speaker ‘‘feels
something good’’ (cf. e.g. ‘‘this is a bloody good reason to leave / to get rid of X’’).
Rather, bloody suggests here that ‘‘when I say this I feel something’’; in addition, it
seems to suggest that ‘‘I say this because I want to say something true (not because I
want to say something good)’’. The exact nature of the feeling is not explained,
beyond the same clue as in negative contexts: that it is ‘‘active’’ rather than ‘‘pas-
sive’’ (‘‘I want to do something’’), and also, that to express what I feel I want to say
what some people regard as a ‘‘bad word’’.
The collocation bloody good would normally be understood as implying ‘‘very
good’’ (just as bloody cold would normally be taken as implying ‘‘very cold’’, and
bloody hot—‘‘very hot’’. There is no need, however, to posit for this reason a third
meaning of bloody, including the element ‘‘very’’. In certain contexts, the phrase
bloody good could be understood as a defiant affirmation that something really was
good, without the added implication that it was very good. The semantic formula,
then, which has been assigned to bloody in general can be seen as applicable here,
too.
Turning now to overtly superlative (enthusiastic) collocations such as bloody
marvellous we will note first of all that they are fully symmetrical to negative collo-
cations like bloody awful. While awful by itself implies that ‘‘when I think about it I
feel something bad’’, bloody awful implies, in addition, that ‘‘when I say this I feel
something’’. Similarly, while marvellous by itself implies that ‘‘when I think about it
I feel something good’’, bloody marvellous implies, in addition, that ‘‘when I say this
I feel something’’. Furthermore, in both cases, the addition of bloody implies that ‘‘I
say this because I want to say something true’’. But in the case of bloody marvellous
there is an extra reason for this assurance of truthfulness—not part of the meaning
but a highly probable implication:
I say this because I want to say something true

(not because I want to say something good)
In other words, I say this not because I want to sound like a nice guy, but because
even I, tough and unsentimental as I am, can’t help thinking something very good
about this particular thing and feeling something good because of this. Or: ‘‘I say
this in spite of myself, I don’t like to be gushing, but I have to be truthful’’.
I mentioned earlier that there is a hidden link between the use of bloody and the
use of bullshit in Australian English. This link is easy to see in the case of the positive
use of bloody. Bullshit implies that someone says something not because they want
to say something true but because they want to manipulate other people into
thinking something (in some ways, therefore, it is an opposite of dinkum). A few
examples:
You’d get yourself a new bird, a real one, no catholic girls’ school bullshit and
pretence about her. (William Nagel, 1975)
I thought there was a fair degree of bullshit about Oxford. (Blanche d’Alpuget,
1982)
Don’t give me that bullshit! (Frank Moorhouse, 1988)
You saw through all the bullshit. (Frank Moorhouse, 1988)
To describe somebody else’s words as ‘‘bullshit’’ means to express something

along the following lines:
sometimes people say something because they want other people to think something
not because they want to say something true
this is something of this kind
By calling something ‘‘bloody good’’ or even ‘‘bloody marvellous’’ I am signalling

to the hearer that, roughly speaking, I am not ‘‘bullshitting’’ but rather saying
something genuine, something ‘‘dinkum’’. Bloody does not serve here to signal more
intensive feelings but rather to assure the hearer that I am saying what I am saying
because I want to say something true (and, by implication, not because I want to say
something good).
Thus, the positive use of bloody can be interpreted, as it were, as a mark of the
speaker’s sincerity. This is particularly clear when the praise applies to the addressee.
For example, when someone says something like:
It is bloody nice of you to come out all this way. (Murray Bail, 1988)
Davy, I can’t tell you how bloody grateful I am. (George Johnson, 1964)
I think you were bloody marvellous. (James McQueen, 1984)
they appear to be using bloody to forestall the suspicion that they are saying some-
thing purely conventional. Bloody adds here something like ‘‘I mean it’’, or, in my
terms, ‘‘I say [that I think] this because I want to say something true’’ (and not
merely because I want to say something good). The use of a ‘‘bad word’’ is particu-
larly effective in such a context, because it signals that the speaker is not a follower
of social conventions. If social conventions are explicitly being rejected then (it is to
be inferred) in saying ‘‘it is nice of you’’ the speaker must be saying something sin-
cere rather than something purely conventional. At the same time, the use of bloody
shields the speaker from the embarrassment of sounding overly enthusiastic, appre-
ciative, or affectionate. It provides a shield for the ‘‘indecent’’ exposure of good
feelings, as well as adding credibility to the positive judgment expressed.
For example, in David Malouf’s novel ‘‘Johnno’’ the hero (‘‘sprawled out on the
dirty floor, his hair a bird’s nest’’) says to his friend ‘‘Dante’’, who has a more
‘‘civilized’’ and conventional personal style, the following:
‘‘Really Dante, this is bloody good of you. It is! I want to be frank with you, I’ve
been drinking. In fac’, I am absolutely bloody PISSED.’’
The contrast between Johnno’s deliberately outrageous style of behaviour and the
conventional ring of the phrase ‘‘good of you’’ could undermine the credibility of
Johnno’s expression of gratitude; and the insertion of bloody counteracts this. At the
same time, Johnno maintains his image as a larrikin. (A person like Johnno could
never say—except ironically—‘‘it is very good of you’’, or ‘‘it is good of you’’; he
can, however, say ‘‘it is bloody good of you’’.) The following short example is
equally eloquent:
How bloody good to see you, old cock! (George Johnson, 1964)
This could be a textbook illustration of one familiar Australian ‘‘cultural script’’

(see Section 10.5). The following example with bullshit (and, more specifically, with
bullshit artist) is another:
‘‘If there is one thing the Australian people don’t like it is a bullshit artist. (Mur-
ray Bail, 1988)
10. ‘Bloody’ and cultural scripts
10.1. ‘Bloody’ as a sign of belonging
When one reads interviews with public figures published in the year 2000 and
studded with bloody one is struck first of all by the vitality and force of cultural
scripts based on the idea of ‘‘likeness’’: ‘‘like me’’ and ‘‘like other people’’. When a
Prime Minister or a university professor makes a point of using bloody in public
discourse, this is bound to bring to mind the familiar Australian script which can be
formulated in simple and universal concepts as follows:
it is good if other people can think about a person:

‘‘this person is someone like me’’
The linguistic evidence for this script cannot be discussed here in any detail; I will,
however, point out the central role of the semantic component ‘‘someone like me’’ in
a host of Australian keywords, expressions, and conversational routines including
mate, mateship, dob in, dobber, altered surnames like Thommo for Thomson or
Gibbo for Gibson, first name forms like Shaz for Sharon, Gaz for Gavin, or Lozza
for Laurie, and so on. (For further discussion, see Wierzbicka, 1986a, 1991, 1992,
1997).
Another familiar script, based on the notion ‘‘not like other people’’ (combined
with the notion that ‘‘I am someone very good’’), can be formulated as follows:
it is bad if a person thinks:

I am someone very good
I am someone not like other people
with its offshoot:
it is bad if a person thinks:

I want other people to think about me like this:

‘‘this person is someone very good, this person is not someone like other people’’
The evidence for these last two scripts is provided by the proverbial Australian
folk comment about a ‘‘Pom’’ (i.e. an Englishman): ‘‘he thinks he is better than me’’,
and related collocations like ‘‘Pommy upstart’’, ‘‘a jumped-up Pommy bastard’’ and
‘‘whinging Poms’’. A prototypical ‘‘whinging Pom’’ is not simply someone who
tends to ‘‘whinge’’ but most particularly someone who tends to ‘‘whinge’’ about
Australia and assume that England is superior to it. A characteristic example from
the beginning of the twentieth century is provided by ‘‘The plaint of the Pommie’’
(1913, AND):
’Orrible country, there isn’t no doubt of it.

Nothing but sunshine and flowers and sport.
Tell me, oh, tell me a way to get out of it,
Back to old Lambeth, for ’ere yer gits nought.
And a more recent quote (T. Keneally, 1972, AND):
I’d pass a law to give every single whingin’ bloody Pommie his fare home to
England. Back to the smoke and the sun shining 10 days a year and shit in the
streets. Yer can have it.
The allergy to any presumption of superiority is not limited to ‘‘Poms’’, although

it may have its roots in Australian attitudes to England, and Australian perceptions
of England’s attitudes to Australia. Australian words and expressions like to bignote
oneself, a tall poppy, to cut down tall poppies, to knock down, knockers, and so on
provide ample evidence for this allergy. The celebrated rugby player ‘‘Lozza’’ Daley
captures some of this traditional attitude in his recent comment on his own success
and fame when he explains that ‘‘the big test is how you handle it all because if it is
allowed to go unchecked it can cause one huge problem, a ‘big-head’’’, and sums up:
‘‘no one likes a big-head’’ (Daley and Clyde, 1995: 40).
This recalls Les Murray’s (1999: 152) comment that ‘‘the use of a very salty Aus-
tralian accent and vocabulary interlarded with learned and literary terms (...) mod-
erates the inegalitarianism of higher education’’. The combined use of abstract
intellectual vocabulary and of the bloody routine seems at times to send an appeas-
ing message to the ‘‘man-in-the-street’’: ‘‘don’t think that because I use words like
this I think that I am not someone like other people’’. This message combines
smoothly with the one described earlier: ‘‘I want you to think: this person is some-
one like me’’.
10.2. ‘Bloody’ as a token of defiance
In the year 2000, the use of bloody—like the wearing of blue jeans—can be a sign
of belonging. But 150 years ago, however, when the English traveller A. Marjor-
ibanks was writing his ‘‘Travels in New South Wales’’, its basic function was clearly
different.
‘‘The word bloody is the favourite oath in that country. One man will tell you that he married a
bloody young wife, another, a bloody old one; and a bushranger will call out, ‘Stop, or I’ll blow
your bloody brains out’. I had once the curiosity to count the number of times that a bullock driver
used this word in the course of a quarter of an hour, and found that he did so twenty-five times. I
gave him eight hours in the day to sleep, and six to be silent, thus leaving ten hours for conversation.
I supposed that he commenced at twenty and continued till seventy years of age . . . and found that
in the course of that time he must have pronounced this disgusting word no less than 18,200,000
times.’’ (Quoted in the AND.)
Given the isolation of the Australian bush and the famed taciturnity of Australian
men (interspersed with sporadic ‘‘yarns’’ with their mates), the estimate of 10 hours
talking a day may be rather far off the mark, but even if the figure of 18 million were
to be reduced to 1 million or to a mere 100,000, the point remains: the frequency of
bloody in Australian speech was for a long time extremely high, and the cultural
script or scripts enacted in this conversational routine must have been extremely
important. If we try to look at it from the point of view of an Australian man like
the one whose use of bloody Marjoribanks recorded, we must again ask the ques-
tion: what was so good about this routine that made people follow it (at the cost of
such an expenditure of energy)? And the first answer that suggests itself is that it
must have had to do with the high value placed on something like a spirit of defiance
and the rejection of social conventions. The cultural script in question can be for-
mulated as follows:
it is good if a person thinks something like this:

‘‘some people think that some words are bad words
these people think that it is bad to say such words
I don’t want not to say such words because of this
I can say such words
I want to say such words’’
This script is of course related to a broader script of defiance, rebelliousness, and

larrikinism:
it is good if a person thinks:

‘‘some people say that it is bad to do some things
I don’t want not to do these things because of this’’
19
An anonymous reviewer raises a difficulty at this point: ‘‘Apart from the oddness of invoking ‘‘truth’’
in the case of, say, directives, should not a linguistic formula be clear, explicit, and unambiguous?’’ But
first, it is not ‘‘truth’’ (an abstract and perhaps complex concept) which is being invoked here but the
simpler concept of ‘‘really / truly’’, as in I really (truly) mean it; and second, a linguistic formula which
intends to portray the speaker’s meaning should not be any more precise than what the speaker is con-
veying: if the speaker’s message is vague the corresponding explication should be vague to exactly the
same degree. (For detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka (1986c.)
The important place given to out-law figures like Ned Kelly in the Australian
legend is clearly related to this script. (It is only a short step from the defiant ‘‘I
don’t want not to do these things because of this’’ to the rebellious ‘‘I can do these
things’’, ‘‘I want to do these things’’.) For the average person, however, ‘‘saying bad
words’’ could be felt as symbolically fulfilling the same function as the daring
involved in ‘‘doing bad things’’.
10.3. ‘Bloody’ and the desire for truth in interpersonal relations
As discussed earlier, the frequent use of bloody appears to have also reflected a
search for genuineness in interpersonal relations. In the harsh Australian conditions,
where individuals had to rely on other individuals to survive, it was important to be
able to think that other people’s words could be trusted. It was important to know
that what other people said was ‘‘dinkum’’, that behind words there would be
actions, that human relations could be based on truth, not on social conventions,
verbal graces, polite verbiage, long words, smooth phrases, ‘‘bullshit’’ of any kind.
The distrust of ‘‘bullshit’’ went hand in hand with the appreciation of truth, of
words which were not ‘‘empty words’’ intended to please or to impress, but which
said what one really meant. The use of bloody could be seen as a token guarantee of
that. For example, the sentence quoted by Marjoribanks:
Stop, or I’ll blow your bloody brains out.
could be loosely paraphrased as
Stop or I’ll blow your brains out—and I mean it.
These considerations, as well as other linguistic evidence (especially to do with

bullshit and its family) suggest the following cultural script:19
it is good if a person says things to other people because this person wants to say
something true
not because this person wants these people to think something about something
10.4. ‘Bloody’ and the cult of the active (‘‘fighting’’) spirit
As discussed earlier, bloody is associated with an active attitude; and while the
range of feelings conveyed by it is quite broad they are all feelings linked with the
semantic component ‘‘I want do do something’’. In the case of bloody1 (roughly
speaking, adjectival), this component is combined with the component ‘‘I feel
something bad’’, and the combination of these two components links bloody1 with
anger. Consider for example the following two sentences:
He’s just wrecked Jillie’s career for his own bloody advantage. (C.J. Koch, 1978)
‘‘Jesus bloody Christ, what a lot of bastards you dirty buggers are!’’ (Colleen
McCullogh, 1975)
If the word bloody were deleted in these sentences, it would still be clear that the
speaker ‘‘feels something bad’’; but depending on the intonation, the speaker’s
mood could be seen as depressed, despairing, bitter, disgusted, and so on. The
addition of bloody, however, seems to add here an active, as it were angry tone: ‘‘I
want to do something because of this’’. Sometimes this ‘‘angry’’ edge of bloody (or
bloody well) is overtly acknowledged, as in the following dialogue (Randolph Stow,
1965):
- ‘You talk like a bloody Pommy’, Mike said.

- ‘I bloody well do not’, Rob said, angrily.
But even when it is not, the very use of bloody encourages such a reading, unless
the context overtly excludes it. One more example (Thomas Keneally, 1972):
It’s those bloody Catholics again, evicting the poor bloody Protestants.
The speaker shows that he is sorry for the Protestants (‘‘poor’’), but it seems also
quite clear that he is angry with the Catholics, and that in both cases (whether he is
focussing on the Catholics or on the Protestants) he ‘‘wants to do something because
of this’’.
Facts of this kind suggest the following cultural script:
when a person feels something bad
it is good if this person thinks:
‘‘I want to do something because of this’’
A script of this kind is supported by other linguistic evidence as well. Above all, it
is supported by the positive aura of the Australian word battler, the importance of
which in the traditional Australian discourse and the traditional Australian ethos
cannot be doubted. Without wishing to undertake here a full discussion of this
important concept I will note the following semantic components of battler:
bad things have been happening to this person for some time
this person has felt something bad because of this
this person doesn’t think because of this: ‘‘I can’t do anything’’
this person thinks: ‘‘I want to do something because of this’’
The same ethos is reflected in the key Australian expression good on you!, which—
unlike the pan-English well done or congratulations—does not imply a success or
achievement but which salutes a ‘‘fighting spirit’’. (For further discussion, cf.
Wierzbicka, 1992: 389–391) Typically, one says ‘‘good on you’’ to a person who in a
difficult situation ‘‘wants (or has wanted) to do something’’. This is closely related to
the ‘‘anti-whinging’’ script:
when a person feels something

because something bad happened to this person
it is bad if this person thinks:
‘‘I can’t do anything because of this
I want someone else to know this’’
it is bad if this person says many things about it to other people
10.5. ‘Bloody’ and the expression of ‘‘good feelings’’
As mentioned earlier, an ‘‘unchecked’’ expression of good thoughts and good

feelings is sometimes felt to be problematic in traditional Australian culture. The
well-known Australian use of the word bastard in a positive sense is a good indica-
tion of this. The familiar form of greeting: ‘‘G’day you old bastard!’’ testifies to the
reality of a cultural script which discourages unqualified expression of good feelings
(especially in interaction between men). The greeting implies that the speaker is
pleased to see the addressee and feels something very good towards him but that he
does not want to put these good feelings on record and prefers to be heard saying a
word that ‘‘some people think is a bad word’’. The use of collocations like bloody
marvellous, bloody beautiful, or bloody beauty is clearly related to the ‘‘g’day you old
bastard’’-routine, as also are phrases like ‘‘bloody good to see you’’.
Why should the expression of very good feelings be seen as problematic in Aus-
tralia? The two obvious reasons relate to credibility and image. Saying overtly that
‘‘I think that something is very good’’ and that ‘‘thinking about it I feel something
very good’’ can be taken as insincere, and as an attempt to create a good impression
and to please someone, and so it can be suspect. If I want the addressee to believe
that I really mean my enthusiastic appraisal I may feel a need to counteract this
suspicion. Using bloody can serve this function very well, because by doing so I
convey the message that I don’t care about social conventions as such, about what
‘‘some people might think’’, and so if I do say something very positive I do so
because I really mean it.
But this consideration of credibility is also linked to the question of one’s image.
According to the traditional Australian ethos, it is not good to be seen as a person
who tries to please others or to create a good impression. Therefore, if I do want to
express some very positive thoughts and feelings I may feel the need to overcome
some resistance on my own part: ‘‘I don’t want to say often that I think something
very good and feel something very good because of this, but on this particular
occasion I just can’t help myself’’. This implied overcoming of an inner resistance
makes an utterance like ‘‘Bloody marvellous!’’ particularly emphatic, more so than
‘‘Really marvellous!’’. By using bloody I am signalling to the hearer that I am not the
20
In my earlier discussion of whinge (Wierzbicka, 1997: 181–182), I assigned to whinge, inter alia, the
component ‘‘I want someone to do something because of this’’. The validity of this component is ques-
tioned by Michael Clyne (1994: 50), and upon further consideration of data, I believe he is right on this
point.
kind of person who would readily express very good thoughts and very good feel-
ings; rather, I am the kind of person who by preference expresses bad feelings (of
course, of the ‘‘I want to do something’’ kind, not of the ‘‘I can’t do anything’’
kind).
In fact, even a phrase like bloody beautiful often seems to be associated with a
defiant tone which suggests a residual ‘‘bad feeling’’. For example, when the son of
the designer of the Australian national flag defends it against critics, saying (as
reported in the daily newspaper The Australian):
It’s a bloody good flag, it’s a bloody beautiful flag. (C. Stewart, 1992.)
one gets the impression that bloody signals both his good feelings for the flag and his
bad feelings towards anyone who might deny that it was a good flag. One might
even wonder whether the use of bloody in a positive context does not usually carry
with it a whiff, a suggestion, of some bad feeling towards some imaginary target—
perhaps towards someone who might want to deny the truth of what the speaker is
affirming.
I have not included any mention of a bad feeling of this type in the explication of
phrases like bloody beautiful, in the belief that it probably is not a part of the
semantic structure of these phrases as such; but the message of a concurrent bad
feeling may easily attach itself to the phrase and be conveyed by the intonation, as
was the case—one imagines—in the utterance about the flag.
What cultural scripts are suggested by all this? Unexpectedly, perhaps, the very
frequent use of bloody in Australian discourse suggests a far greater readiness to
express emotions than is the norm in English speech in England. It is not seen as bad
(or very bad) to say bloody, because it is not seen as bad to say that I feel something
when I do feel something. Of course, it is bad to ‘‘whinge’’—to say that I feel
something bad because I think: ‘‘something bad happened to me, I can’t do anything
because of this’’. (For a detailed discussion of whinge, see Wierzbicka, 1991, 1997).20
It is not bad, however, to say that I feel something bad if I indicate at the same time
that ‘‘I want to do something because of this’’.
On the other hand, it may indeed be seen as bad (from an Australian perspective)
to want to say often that ‘‘I feel something very good’’ (especially if I indicate that
my very good feelings are due to thinking that something is very good). Accord-
21
Grice (1975: 53) describes ‘‘irony’’ as follows:
‘‘Irony. X, with whom A has been on close terms until now, has betrayed a secret of A’s to a busi-
ness rival. A and his audience both know this. A says ’X is a fine friend’. (Gloss: It is perfectly
obvious to A and his audience that what A has said or has made as if to say is something he does
not believe, and the audience knows that A knows that this is obvious to the audience. So, unless
A’s utterance is entirely pointless, A must be trying to get across some other proposition than the
one he purports to be putting forward. this must be some obviously related proposition; the most
obviously related proposition is the contradictory of the one he purports to be putting forward.’’
My own explication of irony, formulated in simple and universal human concepts, is largely, but not
entirely, consistent with Grice’s description. In particular, it does not include the idea of ‘‘obvious-
ness’’, which I think applies to sarcasm rather than to irony.
ingly, when I do want to say that I feel something very good, it is good to signal at
the same time that in general I am not someone who wants to do this often; it is
good to signal that in general I tend to express bad feelings rather than good feelings;
that I don’t seek to please other people and that in principle I think nothing of
breaking social conventions.
10.6. ‘Bloody’ as a tool for expressing sarcasm
Bloody is often used in Australian English to express sarcasm and a whole range
of related attitudes. Some of these attitudes can be described with a single word,
such as ‘‘sarcastic’’, ‘‘sardonic’’, ‘‘biting’’; others can only be identified by means of
an unnamed cognitive scenario. Rather than try to analyse this whole spectrum of
attitudes and communicative strategies here, in what follows I will focus on the
named strategy of ‘‘sarcasm’’. Thus one can easily express sarcasm by combining
bloody with an adjective of positive evaluation, as in phrases like bloody clever,
bloody charming, or bloody funny. In fact, even ‘‘superlative’’ phrases like bloody
great or bloody marvel can also be used sarcastically; especially in sentences where
the superlative praise is directed at the addressee. Some examples:
You’re a bloody marvel, I hope they can breed off you. (Richard Beckett, 1986)
Ha bloody ha. (Rodney Hall, 1987)
‘It’s a bloody wonder she ain’t flooded it out long before now’, Bill sniggered.
(Colleen McCullogh, 1975)
That’s a bloody fine attitude, that is’, retorted Corrigan. (Frank Hardy, 1950)
‘You’re so bloody clever with your robberies at the Trades Hall’, John West said.
(Frank Hardy, 1950)
Let’s find this bloody marvel. (James McQueen, 1984)
This is not the place to undertake an in-depth analysis and detailed discussion of
sarcasm, irony, and other related phenomena, or to try to survey the extensive lit-
erature on the subject (see, in particular, Grice, 1975; Ducrot, 1984; Sperber and
Wilson, 1995; Haiman, 1998), but a few brief remarks will be in order. An utterance
like ‘‘ha-bloody-ha’’ can be described as sarcastic but not as ironic because the
intended message is obvious (‘‘not funny’’)—far too obvious for irony. In irony, the
intended message is meant to be intelligible but not obvious; and is not necessarily
intended for the addressee but quite possibly for some other audience, present or
imaginary.21 By contrast, in the case of sarcasm the intended message is indeed
meant to be obvious, and obvious to the addressee. Formulaically:
[Irony] if someone hears this, this someone can know what I think
[Sarcasm] when you hear this, you will know what I think
In sarcasm, then, it is not a matter of ‘‘if’’ but of ‘‘when’’, not ‘‘someone’’ but
‘‘you’’, not ‘‘can know’’ but ‘‘will know’’.
For example, no mental effort or alertness is required to understand the message

of a sarcastic utterance like ‘‘ha-bloody-ha’’. Irony can be missed by the addressee,
and the addressee may not even be expected to see it: it may be meant to go over the
addressee’s head; but sarcasm is meant to be noticed by the addressee. The reason
why a sarcastic remark is usually easy to interpret is because all it requires is a kind
of simple reversal from ‘‘good’’ to ‘‘bad’’ (for example from ‘‘original’’ to ‘‘unori-
ginal’’, or from ‘‘funny’’ to ‘‘not funny’’), whereas in the case of irony this is not
necessarily the case.
Furthermore, a sarcastic utterance is meant to offend the addressee, to make them
‘‘feel something bad’’ (not for a long time but when they hear the utterance). This is
not necessary in the case of irony, which can be directed at someone other than the
addressee.
Haiman (1998: 20) states that ‘‘what is essential to sarcasm is that it is overt irony
intentionally used by the speaker as a form of verbal aggression’’, and I think this is
essentially right. Translated into simple and universal concepts this observation can
be formulated as follows:
I think when you hear this you will feel something bad
I want this
A sarcastic utterance shows also that the speaker ‘‘feels something bad’’, which
again is not necessary in the case of irony. In fact, irony often seems ‘‘cool’’, and this
is part of its effect: a negative judgment is implied (‘‘I think something bad about
something’’) but the speaker seems in full control of his/her feelings and may even
sound unpleasantly smug and superior in not ‘‘deigning’’ to combine the bad
thought with a bad feeling. By contrast, a sarcastic utterance sounds cruder (no
subtle mental gymnastics are required, although a certain verbal ‘‘cleverness’’ is
implied, in so far as one thing is being said with words, and another, with one’s
tone); but it is certainly not ‘‘cool’’. It clearly expresses a ‘‘bad feeling’’ and at the
same time it directly (and aggressively) engages the addressee. But the aggression
involved in sarcasm is short-lived: it appears to find a release, pleasurable for the
speaker, in the very act of ‘‘clever’’ verbal expression. This can be portrayed as fol-
lows:
I say this because I feel something bad

at the same time I feel something good because I can say this
The phrase ‘‘I can say this’’ is vague; it can refer to the freedom of expression and
22
Sperber and Wilson (1995) say that ‘‘genuine irony is echoic, and is primarily designed to ridicule the
opinion echoed’’ (p. 241), and that ‘‘irony plays on the relationship between the speaker’s thought and a
thought of someone other than the speaker’’ (p. 243). In my view, an ironic utterance like ‘‘he is a fine
friend’’ (Grice, 1975: 53) does not have to echo somebody else’s presumed thought. I agree with Haiman
(1998), however, that such an ‘echoing’ relationship between the speaker’s words and someone else’s (the
addressee’s) presumed thought exists in the case of sarcasm.
also to one’s (supposed) cleverness or wit. An ironic utterance like Grice’s (1975:
53.)
He is a fine friend
depends on the context for its ironic interpretation. By switching from the third
person to the second, and by signalling with clear prosodic clues that one doesn’t
mean what one says and that one ‘‘feels something’’ one could easily convey a sar-
castic attitude:
Oh, you’re such a fine friend. . .
Part of the sarcasm here consists in an obvious intention to sting the addressee.
Finally, a sarcastic utterance appears to attribute to the addressee the good
thought which one is mockingly formulating as one’s own. For example, if I say to
someone, sarcastically, ‘‘My heart bleeds for you.’’ I am attributing to this person
the thought that I must be sorry for him or her—and I am clearly showing that I am
not.22 This brings us to the following formula:
sarcasm
(a) I say something good about something
(b) I don’t think this
(c) I think you think this good thing about it
(d) I think something else about it
(e) I think something bad about it
(f) I don’t want to say with words what I think
(g) I think when you hear this you will know what I think
(h) when I say this I feel something bad
(i) at the same time I feel something good because I can say this
(j) I think when you hear this you will feel something bad
(k) I want this
Haiman (1998: 24) sums up his discussion of sarcasm as follows: ‘‘to sum up,
sarcasm is characterized by the intentional production of an overt and separate mes-
sage ‘I don’t mean this’ in which the speaker expresses hostility or ridicule of
another speaker, who presumably does ‘mean this’ in uttering an ostensibly positive
message’’. This is largely consistent with the formula proposed here, except for one
detail: in the formula proposed here the speaker’s ‘‘verbal aggression’’ (Haiman’s
term) is directed specifically against the addressee, ‘‘you’’.
Bloody is useful as a tool of sarcasm, because when it is combined with a word of
positive evaluation, it highlights the fact that the speaker doesn’t mean what he or
she says but rather seeks to convey a ‘‘bad thought’’ which is easy to reconstruct. At
the same time, it conveys a ‘‘bad feeling’’ which cannot be mistaken for a good
feeling. For example, without bloody a sentence like
How bloody original. (Sydney Morning Herald, 1993)
could conceivably be taken (and mistaken) for an expression of genuine apprecia-

tion; with bloody, however, it is clearly sarcastic. Even more obviously, the sentence
‘‘ha-bloody-ha’’ could not be mistaken for an expression of genuine mirth.
Thus, sarcasm by itself is an expressive device conveying a feeling (a bad feeling);
and the use of bloody (itself an expressive device capable of conveying a bad feeling)
facilitates the expression of sarcasm in Australian discourse.
Although these generalizations of course require further study and documenta-
tion, it would appear that in British English discourse, irony is valued more highly
than sarcasm, whereas American cultural scripts appear to value ‘‘openness’’ (cf.
Carbaugh, 1988) and ‘‘friendliness’’ (cf. Hochshild, 1983; Renwick, 1980; Bellah et
al., 1985) rather than either irony or sarcasm. The relatively wide use of sarcasm in
Australian English—apparently wider than in either British or American English (cf.
e.g. Renwick, 1980)—suggests a cultural script along the following lines:
(a) when I feel something bad because I think that someone thinks something
good about something, I can say something to this person because of this
(b) I don’t have to say with words that I don’t think the same
(c) I don’t have to say with words that I feel something bad
(d) I can say something else with words
(e) when this person hears this this person will know what I think
(f) at the same time this person will know what I feel
Why is a relatively free use of sarcasm allowed in Australian culture? Perhaps this
liberal view of sarcasm is consistent with the assumption that when one feels some-
thing like anger one can show it by saying something. If sarcasm is a form of verbal
aggression, then certain forms of verbal aggression are accepted in traditional Aus-
tralian culture—but only certain forms: brief, to the point, and preferably linked
with some wit. (The brevity is implied in the component: ‘‘when i say this I feel
something bad’’—not ‘‘when I think about it’’, which could go on for a long time,
but only ‘‘when I say this’’.)
Different cultures suggest different ‘‘cultural scripts’’ for dealing with anger-like
feelings. For example, in Chinese culture there is a script for ‘‘swallowing one’s
anger’’ (cf. Ye, 2000). In Malay culture, there is a script suggesting a silent with-
drawal from interaction (cf. Goddard, 1996). Jewish-Yiddish culture offered an
outlet in the form of a rich tapestry of curses (often verbally inventive and witty),
such as, for example, the following two (cf. Matisoff, 1979):
May a fiery pain meet her, the way she talks! (p. 65)
My wife—must she live?—gave it away to him for nothing. (p. 68)
Australian culture has its own favourite strategies. Saying some brief ‘‘bad words’’
(such as bastard, bugger, and also bullshit) is one of them. Saying something sarcas-
tic is another.
As mentioned earlier, bloody is a convenient tool for expressing not only sarcasm,
but also various other attitudes which are valued in Australian culture. To give just
one example:
‘Everyone is so bloody obliging’, he grumbled. (Rodney Hall, 1987.)
Here the speaker is not being sarcastic, but he is still being deliberately ‘‘prickly’’,
deliberately ‘‘not nice’’. Without ‘‘bloody’’, the sentence ‘‘everyone is so obliging’’
could be taken to imply that ‘‘I feel something good (because everyone wants to do
good things for me)’’. By using bloody, the speaker can convey the message that ‘‘I
don’t think this’’ and in fact ‘‘I feel something bad’’; he can show that he doesn’t
want people to think that he feels something good, and also that he doesn’t want to
say anything that would make them feel something good.
10.7. A summary of cultural scripts involving ‘bloody’
The cultural scripts relevant to bloody which have been discussed here can be
summarized as follows:
1. when I feel something because I think something good about something

it is not bad to say that I feel something
2. it is bad to say that I feel something bad because I think:

‘‘something bad happened to me
I can’t do anything’’
3. it is not bad to say that I feel something bad

if I say at the same time: ‘‘I want to do something because of this’’
4. when I want to say that I feel something bad
it will be good to do something else at the same time
it will be good if I say something like this at the same time
5. it will be bad if I say often that I feel something very good
when I want to say that I feel something very good
it will be good if I do something else at the same time
it will be good if I say something like this at the same time
23
Similarly, conversations in Singapore English are liberally sprinkled with the sentence-final particle
lah (roughly, ‘‘I think you can know what I mean’’ or ‘‘I think you know what I want to say’’). Again, far
from being meaningless, or ‘‘bleached’’, lah differs in meaning from other Singapore English particles, and
its frequent use is as culturally revealing as the frequent use of bloody in Australia, or of ne in Japan. (For
detailed discussion see Besemeres and Wierzbicka, submitted.)
Generally speaking, an exploration of the use of bloody in Australian discourse

leads to the conclusion that there is in Australian English (as compared with British
English) evidence of heightened emotional expressivity (cf. scripts 1 and 3 above).
The frequent use of bloody in Australian speech amounts to a frequent expression of
two messages: ‘‘when I say this I feel something bad’’ (bloody1) and ‘‘when I say this
I feel something’’ (bloody2). The frequent use of bloody, I have argued, is not a
meaningless reflex, but rather a meaningful pattern of behaviour, sending repeatedly
the message ‘‘I feel something’’, or more specifically, ‘‘I feel something bad’’ (plus,
roughly speaking, ‘‘I’m tough, I’m rough, I’m dinkum’’).
Of course, some people inject bloody into their speech more often than others, and
for some, injecting it may become a habit. But habitual linguistic behaviour is not
necessarily meaningless. For example, in Japanese, a very frequently used discourse
marker is ne, which means, roughly, ‘‘won’t you agree’’ or ‘‘I think you and I think
the same’’ (cf. Minegishi Cook, 1992; Kamio, 1994, 1995; Itani, 1996), and many
Japanese pepper (or rather sugar) their speech with ne as liberally and as habitually
as many Australians pepper theirs with bloody. This does not show that either ne or
bloody are meaningless; on the contrary, it shows that different messages tend to be
habitually sent in Japanese and Australian culture.23
11. Conclusion
Bloody continues to be an important, if diminished, cultural symbol in Australia.

To be correctly interpreted, it needs to be seen in relation to other cultural sym-
bols—both those whose importance in Australian life has declined and those which
are still flourishing. It furnishes an important clue to both the changes and con-
tinuity in Australian culture, society, and speech. It also offers us a vantage point
from which to investigate a whole network of Australian attitudes and values—some
changing and some remarkably resistant to change.
In addition to its importance for understanding Australian culture and society, the
Australian use of bloody also illuminates some important theoretical issues. It shows
that frequently used and apparently ‘‘bleached’’ discourse markers do in fact have
their own precise meaning, and that this meaning can be revealed by means of the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on empirically established universal human
concepts. Furthermore, it shows that once the precise meaning of such discourse
markers is accurately portrayed, it can provide important clues to the values, atti-
tudes, and modes of interaction characteristic of a given society or speech commu-
nity.
The exploration of bloody presented here highlights the fact—still often ignored in
the literature on pragmatics—that language use depends not only on universal
implicatures or ‘‘principles of politeness’’ of one kind or another, but also on norms
and assumptions which are largely culture-specific. It demonstrates that, on the one
hand, pragmatics is closely related to culture and on the other, that culture is
embedded in meanings; and that to understand culture as it is reflected in language
use, we must understand the meaning of all linguistic expressions, including the most
‘‘pragmatic’’ ones among them: discourse markers, terms of address, conversational

speech formulae, interjections, ‘‘response signals’’, and so on.
As I argued many years ago (Wierzbicka, 1985), pragmatics cannot be divorced
from semantics; and if it is not to fall into the ethnocentric trap of absolutizing the
linguistic practices of one society as universal principles of conversational behaviour
(or ‘politeness’) it must rest on a firm cross-linguistic and cross-cultural basis. Para-
doxically perhaps, only universal human concepts can give us a reliable foundation
for studying language use across cultures in a way which can faithfully reveal cul-
ture-specific norms of human communication and human ‘cognition’. Ways of
speaking depend on ways of thinking, and ways of thinking are reflected in the
meaning of linguistic expressions. To be fruitful, the study of a society’s or com-
munity’s ‘‘cultural scripts’’ must go hand in hand with the study of meaning. Cross-
cultural pragmatics needs semantics, and semantics needs a theory and a methodol-
ogy. This article aims to show how the NSM semantic theory can fulfil these needs.
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Australian Cultural Scripts-Bloody Revisited: Anna Wierzbicka

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Australian Cultural Scripts-Bloody Revisited: Anna Wierzbicka

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Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1167–1209

Australian cultural scripts—bloody revisited§

Received 5 August 2000; received in revised form 16 January 2001

1. Introduction: ‘‘cognitive ethnopragmatics’’1,2

Common expressions and common speech routines involving those expressions

To penetrate this ‘‘covert richness of meaning’’ we need an adequate methodol-

I do not see the ‘‘ethnography of thinking’’ as an alternative to the ‘‘ethnography

2. Australian cultural scripts: a preliminary discussion

In commenting on his current reluctance to discuss Australian attitudes the dis-

I think about some people like this:

3. The importance of ‘bloody’ in Australian discourse

Second, Hawke reminiscing about his University years:

And ﬁnally, Hawke on education:

Another Australian politician, Peter Wong, born in China and brought up in

UK Books: 322 in 5.4 million (60 per million)

4. ‘Bloody’ in parliamentary debates

When an apology for the use of bloody is oﬀered, it tends to be perfunctory or

that, or even more strongly. (6/12/1995.)

I feel something (very bad) now

6. The two meanings of ‘bloody’

when I say this I feel something (bad)

This expressive function of bloody is highlighted in the following example from a

And bloody Ralph! (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)

when I say this I feel something bad

Of course, bloody used as an adverb (or, more generally, non-adjectival discourse

A bloody marvel! (Frank Hardy, 1950)

Extremely positive expressions like ‘‘wonderful place’’ or ‘‘marvellous bloke’’ can

The exact conditions under which a bloody preceding a noun functions as a

7. The nature of the feeling expressed by ‘bloody’

some people think that some words are bad words

when I say this I feel something

8. ‘Bloody’ as a sign of truth and sincerity

The Australian National Dictionary glosses dinkum as ‘‘reliable, genuine; honest,

He was a real dinkum bloke. (T. Shepherd, 1976.)

He was rough, but he was dinkum. (G. Wilmott, 1944.)

I’m losing my bloody patience. (James MacQuinn, 1984.)

Get it your bloody self. (Wal Watkins, 1971)

I’m pulling out in the bloody mornin’. (Nino Culotta, 1962.)

In all such sentences bloody seems to emphasize the speaker’s determination:

when I say this [that I will do it] I say something true

More generally speaking, whenever bloody cannot be understood as vouching for

Gets bloody cold these nights. (David Malouf, 1984.)

My bloody oath. (Nevil Shute, 1952.)

‘This is bloody marvellous’, was an often-repeated comment. (A. Fisher, 1986.)

Examples with bloody great:

This is bloody great. (Bluey, 1975)

Examples with bloody beautiful, bloody beaut and bloody beauty:

You bloody beaut! (Lawson Glassop, 1944)

Examples with bloody wonderful:

It is remarkable that in the British corpora of English (COBUILD’s ‘‘Spoken

This is a bloody good story. (Blanche d’Alpuget, 1981)

I say this because I want to say something true

To describe somebody else’s words as ‘‘bullshit’’ means to express something

By calling something ‘‘bloody good’’ or even ‘‘bloody marvellous’’ I am signalling

This could be a textbook illustration of one familiar Australian ‘‘cultural script’’

10. ‘Bloody’ and cultural scripts

10.1. ‘Bloody’ as a sign of belonging

it is good if other people can think about a person:

it is bad if a person thinks:

it is bad if a person thinks:

I want other people to think about me like this:

’Orrible country, there isn’t no doubt of it.