ABSTRACTS KEYNOTE SPEECH Karyn Stapleton, Ulster University: Swearing, social interaction, and identity: Current and future research directions Although swearing has historically occupied a distinctive place across languages and cultures, until relatively recently, it was not the target of serious scholarship. In the last few decades, however, scholars from a range of disciplines have begun to systematically study swearing as a psychological, social, and linguistic phenomenon. The present paper aims to provide an overview of this field as well as highlighting future directions for swearing research. There will be a central focus on the functional nature of swearing, as drawn from social and linguistic analyses. From a sociolinguistic perspective, analysts have focused on key themes of frequency and perceived offensiveness of swearing, often associating these with social categories such as age or gender (Beers Fägersten and Stapleton, 2017; Beers Fägersten, 2012). In