Authors:

Gargi Dowarah, Sweta Sinha

Abstract:

Multifunctionality of the Assamese swear word kela is examined focusing on its syntactic fluidity and pragmatic significance. The first aim is to explore how kela functions across different sentence structures and conversational contexts, and how its placement within a sentence alters its meaning and reflects the speaker’s emotional stance. The second aim is to analyze how kela contributes to verbal aggression and (im)politeness, drawing on Culpeper’s (im)politeness framework and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to uncover underlying cognitive motivations that leads to its intensification of (im)politeness. The findings show that kela is pragmatically versatile and though it has different syntactic positions in different sentences to contextually mean different things but is grammar neutral which means it does not have any grammatical role to play within the sentence. It frequently functions as a vocative intensifier, adding emotional force rather than referential meaning and causes intensification

Keywords:

Assamese, context, (im)polite, pragmatics, swear word

Vol & Issue:

VOL.18, ISSUE No.1, March 2026