SwiSca V: Abstracts

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 the fields of social psychology and pragmatics, swearing can be seen to fulfil set of interpersonal and psycho-social functions that are not easily achieved by other linguistic means (Stapleton, 2010). In all of these cases, the taboo nature of swearing is a central component of its social meaning and effects. However, the specific content and nature of taboo has been shown to vary across cultures, societies, and media types. In addition, the role of context is central to the analysis and understanding of swearing behaviours. This paper, then, will provide an overview of swearing as a linguistic and interpersonal activity, with particular emphasis on its role in social interaction and identity management. It will then consider how these issues are being shaped by changing social and linguistic norms and contexts, including, especially, the growth of digital media and online interaction, as well as the spread and borrowing of swearwords across languages and cultures.     

References
Beers Fägersten, K. (2012). Who’s Swearing Now? The Social Aspects of Conversational Swearing. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers.
Beers Fägersten, K. and Stapleton, K. (2017). Advances in Swearing Research: New Languages and New Contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stapleton, K. (2010). ‘Swearing’. In M.A. Locher and S.L. Graham (eds) Interpersonal Pragmatics. Handbook of Pragmatics 6. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

PRESENTATIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY AUTHOR

Kristy Beers Fägersten, Södertörn University: 

Swear words for sale

Swearing has traditionally been typical of spoken language, and when swear word usage does occur in written language, it is normally censored. However, swear words are appearing more often in print and more often uncensored, for example, as featured in commercial products. In this paper, I consider this development an example of the commodification of English-language swear words, or ‘swear words for sale’. The investigation is initially informed by studies that establish swear word usage as socially beneficial, which in turn can be capitalized on or monetized. After providing a review of swearing in advertising, I focus on swear words themselves as a commodity, or ‘swear words for sale’. Following Heller (2010), I discuss the commodification of English as “providing symbolic added value to industrially produced resources” (p. 103). I conclude, however, that swear words are used not only for added value (see also Johnstone 2009) but that it is the swear words themselves that are being sold, and the commercial product is merely the vehicle of commodification.

Analyses of a selection of examples of English-language swear word products show that the taboo nature of swear words is exploited and capitalized upon for commercial gain. I argue that swear word commodities capitalize on sociolinguistically incongruous aspects of swear word usage, increasing saleability of the swear word products by targeting specific demographics not normally associated with swearing. Specifically, I analyze 1) children’s products for adults or articles targeting parents of young children, 2) women’s attire and accessories, and 3) domestic items and home decor. The swear word products featured not only represent a further development of the commodification of English, but also award a legitimacy to swearing, and with it symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1991). The study concludes with a discussion of whether the popularization of swearing via such commodification may ultimately result in a loss of distinctiveness and devaluation.

Steven Coats, University of Oulu: 
English-language Profanity on Twitter in the Nordics

Online social media such as Twitter are widely used for informal communication. The written language of Twitter messages often exhibits non-standard language features such as orthographical variants, use of emoticons and emoji, and profanity or offensive language. While English is used extensively in the Nordic countries, English-language profanity is also frequently borrowed or code-mixed into utterances in local languages. In this study we examine the use of English-language profanity on Twitter in the Nordics in the context of gender. 

A large corpus of Twitter messages from the Nordic countries was created by accessing the Twitter Streaming API. Individual users were assigned gender based on name probability distributions calculated on the basis of data obtained from Nordic statistical agencies. Use of profanity was assessed using two methods: Firstly, normalized frequency information was derived for a list of offensive terms according to country and gender. Secondly, multi-dimensional word embeddings were used to explore the semantic relationships between some of the terms and how they vary according to country and gender. The analysis may shed light on the different ways English lexical items are integrated into informal online communication in national contexts and by different genders. 

Stephen Coffey, Università di Pisa:

Phonically derived substitutes of potentially offensive lexical items in modern English: two corpus-based studies

This paper presents data regarding the use of English words originally used, euphemistically, for similar sounding words which might offend. Examples of this phenomenon are the word pairs hell-heck, fucking-flipping, christ-crikey, and bloody-blooming. The description will relate to modern British English, and it will be mainly corpus-based.

Data from two largely comparable sets of texts were used in the study. These are the spoken component of the original British National Corpus (BNC), and the Spoken BNC2014.

The study has two main aims. One is to describe the typical lexico-phraseological uses of what might be called the 'heck' words, including comparison with the respective 'hell' words. The other is to investigate whether there has been any significant change in the usage or frequency of such items during the approximately 20-year period between the compilation of the two respective speech corpora.

Stanley Donahoo, University of Arizona: 

Dirty Minds: Language comprehension insights from lexical decision tasks

Expressives are speaker-oriented, not-at-issue content.  How is the expressive dimension (Potts, 2007; McCready, 2010) of language processed and represented? The present study focusses on the most clearly expressive items, swear words (damn, shit, hell, etc.).  The study of swear words is important to linguistics and cognition in general, but has been a neglected area experimentally.  We have some insight from patient populations; those with aphasia or who have had stroke can often recite lengthy chunks of memorized material, such as prayers, song lyrics, or greetings; in many cases, these automatic chunks include swearing (Van Lancker & Cummings, 1999).  Infamously, pathological use of swear words is a defining characteristic of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (Shapiro & Shapiro, 1982).  Still, we have little insight as to how this body of language is processed in neuro-typical populations.

We have begun to explore the mental underpinnings of swearing, from a behavioural and electrophysiological perspective, influenced by an account which is rooted squarely in pragmatic theory.

I will present some recent findings examining swearing in a lexical decision task.  Stimuli included 30 swear words (e.g. shit, damn), 30 negatively valenced but non-swear words (kill, sick), 30 open class neutral words (e.g. wood, lend), 30 closed class neutral words, as swear words are a closed class as well (e.g. while, whom), and 120 pseudowords, for a total of 240 items.  Norms for valence and other dimensions controlled for were obtained from recent corpus work (Warriner, Kuperman, & Brysbaert, 2013; Balota et al., 2007).  Behavioural results of 34 participants show that swear words behave similarly to other word types along certain grammatical dimensions, but behave differently compared to other emotionally-valenced word types. I will also discuss some preliminary findings from the EEG data of 18 participants.

Minna Hjort, University of Helsinki:

Taboo in the Tabloids: Swearing celebrities and translating journalists  

In this study, I combine two research interests of mine: translation of swearing and swearing in the media. This is a continuation study to a swearing in the tabloid media analysis I published in 2011. In the 2011 study, I focused on a selection of case studies and viewed them from a moral panic discourse perspective. Here, I take a more systematic approach and aim to identify common patters in news stories about swearing in the two major tabloids in Finland, Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti. 

I am interested, firstly, in whose swearing makes the headlines, which sections contain reporting on swearing, and how the swearing incidents are framed. Secondly, I am interested in how the swearwords used are presented – if they are presented – are they masked by means of deviant spelling, for example with asterisks, or written as is, and what these orthographic choices signify. Thirdly, I will pay special interest on news stories where the swearing takes place in another language than Finnish. I will examine how the foreign-language origin is indicated in the text, and whether and how the swearing utterances are translated into Finnish. This third perspective relates to what is called news translation, or journalistic translation (Valdeón 2015) or transediting (e.g. Schäffner 2012), something which has both raised a lot of debate in the translation community and inspired a fair amount of research in Translation Studies (see Valdeón 2015, Van Doorslaer 2010/2016 for overviews).

While research into journalistic translation has increased in popularity, swearwords in the news print media seems to be a less explored area (see, however, for example Beers Fägersten 2014 and Clarks 2013), and the specific question of journalistic translation of swearing is, to my knowledge, an almost uncharted territory. This study aims to show that this narrow perspective into swearing is worth exploring, as it sheds interesting light on both swearword usage and newsmaking in general.

Katariina Kaski, University of Turku: 

Different forms of swearing in discussion forums in Sweden and Finland

Democracy and equality have long been a matter of course in the Nordic countries. One of the cornerstones of democracy is freedom of expression: everyone should be free to express their opinions without fear of consequences. When the Internet became available to everyone in the 1990s, most people assumed that this would increase the opportunity to express themselves and their opinions, as was the case. For the past twenty years, the Internet has opened many doors and created many new opportunities. At the same time, however, new problems have also arisen: hate, threats, and insults on the net. (See, for example, Wadbring & Mølster 2015, Hawdon, Oksanen & Räsänen 2015.)

In my presentation, I analyze different forms of swearing and harassment at discussion forums in Finland and Sweden. In discussion forums, you can share knowledge about varied topics easily, quickly and anonymously, regardless of time and place (Collin 2005). I am particularly interested in the discursive processes that swearing and harassment occur in and how these processes express themselves in language. According to Löfgren Nilsson (2015) harassment involves various types of disturbing or threatening actions, such as insulting someone, violating someone or wishing someone to die. I will give examples of some typical constructions of swearing and harassment on the web as well as discuss what function they have in the web forums I'm investigating.

Jarkko Kauppinen, Finnish Institute for the Languages of Finland:

Swearing in Old Literary Finnish

Old Literary Finnish denotes the Finnish literary tradition that spans from 1540s to 1810. As a rule it is thought that the tradition begins with Mikael Agricola publishing his primer, Abckiria, in 1543 and with his partial translation of the Bible as well as other Christian texts thereafter. Due to this tradition, it is common to think the Old Literary Finnish does not contain swearing per se. Yet in the span of almost three centuries the trend of ideas changed and the genres printed grew, thus giving way even to profanities.

Nearing the end of the era chaplain Christfrid Ganander was ambitiously tasked to compile an extensive dictionary that in addition to listing of Finnish words would frame them scientifically with etymological and cultural information. Ganander completed his work with the manuscript of Nytt Finskt Lexicon in 1786–1787. The dictionary contains around 31000 lemmas. It is the first Finnish dictionary to illustrate how the words were actually used in e.g. runes, phrases and literature. The manuscript was first put into print in 1937–1938.

In addition to contextual information, Nytt Finskt Lexicon contains numerous lemmas that are described as invective. One of the motives for gathering profanities could be that, as slander was a common cause of litigation, a dictionary containing such material could be of use for officials judging such matters. Another motive could lie with Ganander’s interest in Finnish folklore or perhaps even with the will to represent the language as he observed it.

In any event, the profanities in Nytt Finskt Lexicon serve as an initial point of entry into exploration of swearwords used during the era of Old Literary Finnish.

Anne Ketola, University of Tampere:

From foul English to foul Finnish: Examining the translation of Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep

The study compares Adam Mansbach’s picturebook Go the Fuck to Sleep (2011) and its Finnish translation Nyt vittu nukkumaan (2012) by Kaj Lipponen. The book has been described as a “children’s book for adults”: it is a nursery rhyme by a desperate, exhausted parent whose child will simply not sleep. The appeal of the book, I argue, is based on the use of offensive language, and its contrast with a beautiful, serene illustration. 

The focus of my analysis is on the translation of swearwords, especially the word fuck which appears on each page of the book. I analyze the results of an e-survey enquiring which of the language versions sounded more offensive to a group of test readers who master both English and Finnish. The survey was distributed to a social media community of Finnish translators and it received 149 replies. I reflect on these results against the concept of dynamic equivalence (Nida 1964) which refers to a circumstance in which the responses of the readers of a translation and the responses of the readers of the original should be essentially alike.

References

Nida, Eugene A. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Hanna Lantto, University of Eastern Finland:

Why do the Basques swear in Spanish? Swearing and language contact in the Basque Country?

“We do not want to contaminate our beautiful language.” “Swear words in Basque are lame, the Spanish swear words have more power.” These are some of the most typical explanations that the Basques offer when asked about their use of Spanish swear words. Why are swear words so easily code-switched and borrowed? Who uses Spanish swear words and does anyone swear in Basque? This paper discusses the relationship of swearing and code-switching based on data obtained in a Basque-Spanish language contact situation in the urban area of Greater Bilbao. The study is based on 22 hours of recorded material of 22 Basque bilinguals, both L1 and L2 Basque speakers, and on 10 hours of metalinguistic commentary on code-switching. In Greater Bilbao, even the bilinguals who do not frequently code-switch switch to Spanish to introduce swear words in an otherwise Basque discourse. Swearwords are generally easy to process. They are used as side remarks and pragmatic markers in otherwise Basque-medium conversations. Spanish swear words seem to have become part of spoken Basque in the Basque Country, and swearing in Basque is not an option. The susceptibility of these elements to switching is examined from structural, discursive and sociolinguistic points of view.

Robert Moncrief, University of Helsinki: 

'Do you have any other comments? Fuck this!' An Overview of a Questionnaire on the Perception and Use of Swearing and Other Types of “Bad Language”

In my talk I will outline the results of a study I am conducting as part of my PhD research on public attitudes toward the use of “demotic” language in English, (i.e. swearing/curses, stigmatized dialects and “non-standard” forms). My study focuses on attitudes towards the use of swearing and “bad” language in English in two control groups (approximately 400 people from over 40 countries) comprised of English and EFL Teachers and Students. The questionnaire examines participants personal beliefs, attitudes and judgments towards the use and perception of demotic language including:

1.     How the monitoring of personal, situational, functional, and social aspects of the use of the swearing  are perceived.

2.     How does the use of such language reflect the linguistic, cultural and social norms in the minds of respondents.

3.     Do language teachers pass on their personal, cultural, societal norms or beliefs regarding the use of “non-standard” English to students?

4.      Can specific changes in the use or perception of swearing be tracked and categorized? Which parameters correlate? (e.g. teachers vs. students. youth vs. aged, native English speakers vs. non-natives)

My study is both qualitative and quantitative and is based on cluster analysis and profiling. Access to prototypical cases will allow further analysis and more complete understanding of attitudes towards the use of demotic language. I will also cover how these attitudes are reflected in common beliefs, value judgments and the teaching and learning of “bad” language.

Elizabeth Peterson, Saija Havukunnas, University of Helsinki, Johanna Vaattovaara, University of Tampere:

Social meanings/acceptability of English-sourced swearing in Finnish

Our initial investigation into the swearing habits of native speakers of Finnish (Peterson and Biri, 2017) showed a surprisingly high level of integration of English-sourced swear words into Finnish discourse, indicated for example by their incorporation into Finnish morphology. Our interpretation of the data, gained from the Suomi24 corpus (https://www.kielipankki.fi/language-bank/), led us to hypothesize that English-sourced swear words in Finnish discourse offer a user an opportunity to gain the social advantages of swearing, but with a reduction in pragmatic risk and potential threat to public face.

With the current study, we test hypotheses involving the basic variables age and gender of the speaker. Moreover, we test whether a (rural) dialect form or an (urban) slang word included affects the result involving the pragmatic function of English-sourced swear words. This is accomplished by asking native Finnish speakers to listen to audio samples containing the following sets of swear words: 

vittu/cunt/fuck, fucking

saatana/perkele/damn   

paska/shit

The test utterances are based on authentic samples pulled from the Suomi24 corpus. The sets of swear words are considered to be the nearest possible semantic and pragmatic equivalents between English and Finnish.

In addition to the audio portion of the test, we ask Finnish speakers to complete a short grammatical acceptability test to assess their acceptance of English-sourced words versus heritage Finnish forms in particle, nominal and adjectival functions.

The data for the study are currently being collected, with the results presented at SwiSca 5 representing our initial investigations into the topic.

 Peterson, Elizabeth and Ylva Biri (2017). ‘“New norms” of swearing behavior in online
Finnish discourse: the use and function of English pragmatic borrowings.’ Presented at the
15th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 9-15
July.

Marianne Rathje, University of Southern Denmark: 
Attitudes to Danish swearwords and abusive terms in two generations

This paper presents results from a study of attitudes toward swearwords of two generations of Danes. The data consist of 844 questionnaires completed by young (13–14 years old) and elderly Danes (between 65–93 years of age) from 19 different cities throughout Denmark. The study of Danish conscious attitudes toward swearwords provides evidence to suggest that celestial swearwords (Stroh-Wollin 2008) such as gud “God”, the disease-related expression for pokker “damn it”, and the paraphrased expression for søren “for Pete’s sake” are no longer considered swearwords by young and elderly Danes alike. On the other hand, the content of diabolical expressions is still taboo in words like for fanden “oh hell”, in the disease-related expression kraftedeme “cancer eat me” and the swearwords related to the body’s lower functions such as fuck and pis “shit”. The well-known development of swearword usage in Scandinavia from religious expressions with an often celestial content to swearwords with a sexual or excretory content (e.g. Rathje 2014, Hasund 2005) is reflected in the difference between young and elderly Danes’ attitudes toward swearwords in this study. Another result from the study is the differences in how the two generations of Danes perceive swearword usage: most elderly people disapprove of swearwords, claiming they “destroy” the language, while half of the participating young Danes do not regard swearwords as problematic, asserting that they are part of the language. The study is thus confirming a shift in attitudes toward swearwords also found in Swedish studies (Andersson 1979, Stroh-Wollin 2010).

Jutta Rosenberg & Oscar Winberg, Åbo Akademi: 

Inflammable language and insults in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign 

The 2016 presidential election in the United States was plagued by vulgar, inflammatory, and insulting language. The Republican Party selected as its standard bearer a reality television personality known for uncivil discourse and outrageous, often racist and sexist, remarks. Indeed, the insults and inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump was understood and described as taboo-breaking and new, perhaps marking a paradigm shift in the American political culture. Even as a major party candidate for the highest office in the country, Trump mocked his opponents, deployed schoolyard insults, and regularly used foul language.

This presentation analyses the incendiary language of the campaign, focusing on the linguistic devices and patterns employed by Trump. We then position these remarks and devices in a historical context to illustrate how Trump, rather than being something new and groundbreaking, was a culmination of shifts in political discourse decades in the making. We posit Trump built his campaign on outrageous and norm-breaking language explicitly to position himself politically, utilizing patterns constant in American political history. By situating himself in a long tradition of uncivil discourse, Trump relied on the surprising political benefits of taboo language.