This case study examines the usage of swear words among young learners. It aims to find out the most frequently used swear words, the intense emotions that triggered the children to swear, the strategies used to tone down the swear words, and the contributors to learning how to swear. Both quantitative and qualitative tools were used to conduct the study among the 109 children. It concluded that the most frequently used swear words were related to intellectual based terms and religion; anger was the primary reason for the young learners to use the swear words; the use of acronyms was commonly explored to tone down the swear words, and moms were the highest contributors to learn how to swear. Moreover, the findings also revealed that some swear words under study (e.g. OMG, Oh my God, or gosh) were not considered as swear words since they were mainstream words in this particular study.

Maria Fe Suganob-Nicolau has a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. She finished her doctorate degree at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. Currently, she is the head librarian and Extended Essay Coordinator at BINUS School Simprug. Her research interests are sociolinguistics and translation studies.