From xenophobia to bodily effluvia: Monsters as anthropomorphized swearwords.

Swearwords typically reference one of five subjects: the supernatural ('Jesus Christ!'), sex ('fuck'), bodily effluvia ('shit'), disease ('poxy') or disfavoured social groups (insert your own). Monsters typically embody some or all of these characteristics and, this article argues, capture attention involuntarily in the same way swearwords do. Monsters can thus profitably be theorized as anthropomorphized swearwords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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