Taboo subjects as insult intensifiers in Egyptian Arabic

The chapter aims at analysing the conceptual basis underlying insult intensifiers in Egyptian Arabic, with the focus on three domains: family, sexuality and religion, all of which are strongly tabooed in the community in question. Additionally, two other aspects of the problem are discussed; first the level of intensity provided by a reference to the three domains is examined by means of questionnaire, where educational (sociolinguistic) differences among speakers are taken into account, and then the phenomenon of grammaticalization of the words (primarily nouns) used as intensifiers is discussed with reference to Bolinger’s (1972) theoretical perspective. The study reveals that insult intensifiers are diverse in terms of conceptual background and that references to various domains provide different levels of intensity. Also, in terms of grammaticalization, the analysed words tend to present different levels