I agree with you. Bloody is used pretty much an expressive term used for emphasis these days and can be used to heighten an expression. Is ‘bloody’ a meaningless, linguistic hiccup? I don’t think so. I think there’s a lot of meaning behind the word bloody that it warrants a 43 page reading (much to our eternal suffering). It can be used to express a lot of different things, and it seems there’s an art in telling when it’s actually offensive. I tend to think only Australian’s have this super power.
I found it interesting that Wierzbicka finds OED reads (granted, this is in 1989 but…) “now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered ‘a horrid word’’ Both Wierzbicka and myself disagree - unless we could classify Australia as the lowest class in terms of the world’s country hierarchy, but that seems a mite extreme. You're right, it’s a word found in our media and given relatively little reprimanding, though I do find that its use is a little thrilling for some (or maybe I just know some innocent ears) – but mostly I find it goes unnoticed.
What I also found interesting was the fact that, according to Wierzbicka, ‘Bloody’ is considered damn near blasphemous in the UK, but it is from this culture that I feel I picked up the word bloody, feeling it was the “proper” way to curse. I felt and continue to feel like a bloody Gentleman! You’re probably thinking The Sex Pistols (and where you would think I would have picked it up), but – and this is to my eternal shame – I came to use the word bloody a whole lot more when I got into the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I was about ten or twelve. The vampire Spike (or as he had been known in his time as “William the Bloody” for his “bloody awful poetry”) said it routinely, and it got me into the habit fairly quickly as a child. Though, when I come to think about it, I probably imposed my pre-existing (albeit unconscious) understanding of my cultural script onto the television show, accepting bloody as an intensifier rather than a foul expression. I was also met by no resistance when I began using it, so that probably helped.
As for it not being offensive, I can’t decide, as a frequent user of it I find myself up against all sorts and have thus received a lot of different responses. I mainly use it to downplay a serious comment, for instance, I find “you’re an idiot” to be more direct than “you’re a bloody idiot/you bloody idiot” because with a huge selection of curse words at my disposal, why on Earth would I choose bloody to insult someone? I use it with twat, prat, wanker or bastard. It seems the most forgivable of the swear words, especially when accompanied with little else (aka: not a rant but a single statement). I find its repetition in a single event will do one of two things: 1) be really bloody offensive or 2) be really bloody humorous and people may not take you seriously. Overall, I find its use is fairly indoctrinated in Australian language, and its place in the Australian cultural script is a permanent one.
References:
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2002. “Australian cultural scripts – bloody revisited.” Journal of Pragmatics 34: pp. 1167-1209.
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