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4 - Grammatical Gender and Offensiveness in Modern Greek Slang Vocabulary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2022

By
Katerina Christopoulou ,
George J. Xydopoulos  and
Anastasios Tsangalidis
Edited by
Natalia Knoblock
Natalia Knoblock
Affiliation:
Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan
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Summary

The derogatory meaning of slang words in Modern Greek can be reduced or increased with the use of diminutive or augmentative affixes respectively. The use of evaluative affixes often brings about a change in the grammatical gender of the derived word. A change of gender with or without the use of evaluative suffixes shows, among other things, the speaker’s attitude towards the referent. In general, diminutive words and derived words that keep the gender of the base are used with a less derogatory meaning than the word-base. On the other hand, derivative words that do not maintain the base gender are used with a more insulting/pejorative meaning than the word-base.

Keywords

slang vocabularygrammatical-natural genderdiminutionaugmentationevaluative morphologyoffensiveness
Type
Chapter
Information
The Grammar of Hate
Morphosyntactic Features of Hateful, Aggressive, and Dehumanizing Discourse
 , pp. 82 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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