Cursing Practice In Ethiopia

1.4 The purpose of the study

The dynamic nature of culture coupled with globalization put cursing practice in Ethiopia in general and Amhara ethnic group in particular in risky situation and cursing like other components of culture start to lose its local grounds.

There is a growing body of evidence which indicates the types, contents and styles of cursing are changing from time to time due to the effect of globalization. Cultural change is common effect of globalization; Ethiopia is not an exception. For instance, the major Christian sects Orthodox and Protestants forbids consuming alcohol, smoking and free sex in Ethiopia. However, due to globalization people recognize them as fashion and doing all those evils. Wearing regulations of the

It has basic research objectives for which researchers often use qualitative data and also aimed at exploring all sources of information based on range of evidences and by discovering new ideas.

This study is therefore designed to employee a qualitative research paradigm. The reason why I choose to employ qualitative approach is that in qualitative research, the outcomes are not results of statistical processes or other quantitative methods. Qualitative approach offers experiences into social, emotional and experimental phenomena. (SBU, 2014:6) The aim is to gain an impression, to achieve an understanding, to explore characteristics of various environments and cultures and to understand the relationship between various processes. Most qualitative studies focus on a single characteristic or a small number of characteristics. The studies yield very detailed, in-depth knowledge which can give increased understanding of phenomena from a perspective that is not appropriate to quantitative methods (SBU, 2014:6, Dawson,

In the society, a curse is generally regarded as something which is feared by everybody. No one ever want to be cursed and people always want even their relatives not to be cursed, since the effect of the curse believed to go beyond the cursed himself and encompass his relatives. Additionally there is a common belief about cursing practice and curse words which says that “individuals consistently say curse words when they are forced to say and when they are annoyed”. However, sometimes people also curse and say curse words even when they feel good and not irritated. Hence, the practice of cursing is part or the daily life of the society. Unfortunately, large portions of the curses of the Amhara ethnic group are found in auxiliary stories, legends, tales and societal conventions transmitted from generation to generation orally. There is no an established culture of investigation and documentation of curses and transmitting them to the next generation in written forms so that to make the contents and the changes known to different generations. Additionally because of lack of documentation there is distortion and misunderstanding about the meaning of curses and cursing practice of the old generation. The Researcher therefore, believes documentation is very