Full Description
Any behavior that arouses, as swearing does, controversy, disagreement, disdain, shock, and indignation as often as it imbues passion, sincerity, intimacy, solidarity, and jocularity should be an obvious target of in-depth scholarship. Rigorous, scholarly investigation of the practice of swearing acknowledges its social and cultural significance, and allows us to discover and better understand the historical, psychological, sociological, and linguistic aspects (among others) of swearwords and swearword usage. The present volume brings together a range of themes and issues central to the existing knowledge of swearing and considers these in two key 'new' arenas, that is, in languages other than English, and/or in contexts and media other than spoken interaction. Many of the chapters analysed are based on large and robust collections of data, such as corpora or questionnaire responses, which allow for patterns of swearing to emerge. In other chapters, personally observed instances of swearing comprise the focus, allowing for a close analysis of the relationship between sociolinguistic context and pragmatic function. In each chapter, the cultural aspects of swearing are considered, ultimately affirming the importance of the study of swearing, and further establishing the legitimacy of swearing as a target of research.
Contents
1. Introduction: Swearing research as variations on a theme (by Beers Fagersten, Kristy); 2. Chapter 1. Swearing in Danish children's television series (by Rathje, Marianne); 3. Chapter 2. Swearing and instant messaging: Changing norms of social interaction in the Hong Kong workplace context (by Mak, Bernie Chun Nam); 4. Chapter 3. FUCK CANCER, Fucking Amal, Aldrig fucka upp: The standardisation of fuck in Swedish media (by Beers Fagersten, Kristy); 5. Chapter 4. Fuck in French: Evidence of "other-language" swearing in France and Quebec (by Jaffe, Alexandra); 6. Chapter 5. The borrowability of English swearwords: An exploration of Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch tweets (by Zenner, Eline); 7. Chapter 6. Gender and age differences in swearing: A corpus study of Twitter (by Gauthier, Michael); 8. Chapter 7. Swearing in English and Spanish teenage talk (by Stenstrom, Anna-Brita); 9. Chapter 8. Swearing in Italian: A redefinition of the notions of dysphemism and euphemism (by Di Cristofaro, Matteo); 10. Chapter 9. Swearing in Persian: A new perspective on swearing as a speech act (by Shimoyama, Tomoko); 11. Chapter 10. Swearing in Finnish: Folk definitions and perceptions (by Hjort, Minna); 12. Chapter 11. Epilogue (by Dewaele, Jean-Marc)
