Impoliteness of taboo words in Manggaraian language: intercultural pragmatics lens

Taboo words are considered offensive language. In any language, taboo words convey a rude meaning that threatens interlocutors' face in interaction. In particular, the Manggaraian language employs several words referring to taboo sense. Those taboo words have form, meaning, and reference. However, exploiting taboo words in interaction violates social norms and culture. This research aims to explore the impoliteness of taboo words in the Manggaraian language from a pragmatic intercultural perspective. The qualitative research method was entirely applied to account for taboo words in the Manggaraian language, whereas the primary data were naturally obtained through field observation and recording. The data were qualitatively analyzed through three procedures: condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. The interpretation of data was based on three main theories: impoliteness, taboo, and intercultural pragmatics. The study results reveal that taboo words in the Manggaraian language are generally classified into profanity, obscenity, epithet, and scatology. These taboo words serve some functions such as expressing feeling/emotion, cursing, swearing, closeness and humor, group identity/ethnicity and drawing attention. The matters of the taboo words refer to sex, physical appearance, animal, waste, and metaphysical things. The
impoliteness strategies were bald-on strategy, positive impoliteness strategy, and negative impoliteness strategy. The use of the impoliteness strategies has flouted some maxims of politeness, particularly the maxim of tact, the maxim of approbation, the maxim of modesty, the maxim of generosity, and the maxim of agreement. Socio-culturally, taboo words are considered deviant behavior of social norms and impolite words for Manggaraian speakers in social interaction.