Books by Kristy Beers Fägersten
Language Play in Contemporary Swedish Comic Strips, 2020
This book focuses on the unexplored context of contemporary Swedish comic strips as sites of inno... more This book focuses on the unexplored context of contemporary Swedish comic strips as sites of innovative linguistic practices, where humor is derived from language play and creativity, often drawing from English and other European languages as well as social and regional dialects of Swedish. The overall purpose of the book is to highlight linguistic playfulness in Swedish comic strips, as an example of practices as yet unobserved and unaccounted for in theories of linguistic humor as applied to comics scholarship.
The book familiarizes the reader with the Swedish language and linguistic culture as well as contemporary Swedish comic strips, with chapters focusing on specific strategies of language play and linguistic humor, such as mocking Swedish dialects and Swedish-accented foreign language usage, invoking English language popular culture, swearing in multiple languages, and turn-final code-switching to English to signal the punchline.
The book will appeal to readers interested in humor, comics, or how linguistic innovation, language play, and language contact each can further the modern development of language, exemplified by the case of Swedish.
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Any behavior that arouses, as swearing does, controversy, disagreement, disdain, shock, and indig... more 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.
Advances in Swearing Research. New languages and new contexts
Table of Contents
Introduction: Swearing research as variations on a theme, Kristy Beers Fägersten and Karyn Stapleton, 1 – 16
Chapter 1. Swearing in Danish children’s television series, Marianne Rathje, 17 – 42
Chapter 2. Swearing and instant messaging: Changing norms of social interaction in the Hong Kong workplace context, Bernie Chun Nam Mak and Erika Darics, 43 – 64
Chapter 3. FUCK CANCER, Fucking Åmål, Aldrig fucka upp : The standardisation of fuck in Swedish media, Kristy Beers Fägersten, 65 – 86
Chapter 4. Fuck in French: Evidence of “other-language” swearing in France and Québec, Alexandra Jaffe, 87 – 106
Chapter 5. The borrowability of English swearwords: An exploration of Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch tweets, Eline Zenner, Tom Ruette and Emma Devriendt, 107 – 138
Chapter 6. Gender and age differences in swearing: A corpus study of Twitter, Michael Gauthier and Adrien Guille, 139 – 158
Chapter 7. Swearing in English and Spanish teenage talk, Anna-Brita Stenström, 159 – 184
Chapter 8. Swearing in Italian: A redefinition of the notions of dysphemism and euphemism, Matteo Di Cristofaro and Tony McEnery, 185 – 214
Chapter 9. Swearing in Persian: A new perspective on swearing as a speech act, Tomoko Shimoyama, Fereidoon Shadpayam and Mary Parhizgari, 215 – 232
Chapter 10. Swearing in Finnish: Folk definitions and perceptions, Minna Hjort, 233 – 258
Chapter 11. Epilogue, Jean-Marc Dewaele
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Watching TV with a Linguist is an introduction to the study of English linguistics based on Engli... more Watching TV with a Linguist is an introduction to the study of English linguistics based on English-language television shows. Each of the chapters approaches linguistics as science in action, with comprehensive presentations of linguistic sub-fields, including clear explanations of relevant linguistic terminology, concepts, theory, and method, each of which is illustrated with examples from contextualized dialogues from one or more episodes of a specific drama or comedy series.
By focusing on television as the most accessible form of popular culture, this book aims to raise linguistic awareness among readers by identifying linguistics in action, thereby enabling the readers autonomously to recognize additional examples of linguistic concepts. Particular series or particular episodes illustrate linguistic phenomena, but once awareness is raised, the same phenomena can be observed in other television series and/or episodes. For this reason, each chapter concludes with suggestions for further viewing and analysis, but the reader is also welcome and encouraged to apply any of the linguistic principles or theories beyond the context of television dialogue.
Each of the chapters in Watching TV with a Linguist champions the use of the language of television series to learn about linguistics, and in so doing, the volume is a testament to the relevance and applicability of all linguistic fields to the analysis of television dialogue. In acknowledging its readers as active television viewers, this text has the ultimate goal of initiating them into the world of linguistics and demonstrating its relevance not only to television language, but to any form of language use or interaction.
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"Who’s Swearing Now? represents an investigation of how people actually swear, illustrated by a c... more "Who’s Swearing Now? represents an investigation of how people actually swear, illustrated by a collection of over 500 spontaneous swearing utterances along with their social and linguistic contexts. The book features a focus on the use of eight swear words: ass, bitch, cunt, damn, dick, fuck, hell, shit and their possible inflections or derivations, e.g., asshole or motherfucker, offering a solution to the controversial issue of defining swear words and swearing by limiting the investigation to the core set of words most common to previous swearing studies. The specific focus results in accurate depictions of contextualized swearing utterances. Precise frequency counts are thus enabled which, along with offensiveness ratings of contextualized and non-contextualized swearing, enable a clarification of The Swearing Paradox, referring to the phenomenon of frequently used swear words also being those which traditionally are judged to be the most offensive.
The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who’s Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants’ individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others’ allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who’s Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety."
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Doctoral dissertation, Program in Linguistics, University of Florida, 2000
The methodology of th... more Doctoral dissertation, Program in Linguistics, University of Florida, 2000
The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qualitative data, reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, allowing for an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Swearing utterances and details of the social context in which they were made were recorded discretely and anonymously with the use of field notes within the University of Florida undergraduate student speech community. Sixty members of this speech community also participated in a six-part questionnaire which elicited information regarding use of and attitudes towards swear words. Eleven of the questionnaire participants furthermore participated in an ethnographic interview to discuss the questionnaire and the subject of swearing in greater depth. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community (Cameron, 1969; Jay, 1986; Nerbonne and Hipskind, 1972) as...
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Papers by Kristy Beers Fägersten
Comic Art and Feminism in the Baltic Sea Region
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In this poster presentation, I present an analysis of a 100,000 word corpus consisting of message... more In this poster presentation, I present an analysis of a 100,000 word corpus consisting of message board entries on hip-hop music and culture. This sample corpus clearly shows that the contributors ...
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Service for Cyber Physical Service Composition Yajing Zhao, Jing Dong, Jian Huang, Yansheng Zhang... more Service for Cyber Physical Service Composition Yajing Zhao, Jing Dong, Jian Huang, Yansheng Zhang, I-Ling Yen and Farokh Bastani (2014). Cyber Behavior: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 2056-2076). www.irma-international.org/chapter/abstract-service-for-cyber-physical-servicecomposition/107832/
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1. Introduction Much of the support that students have in a traditional classroom is absent in a ... more 1. Introduction Much of the support that students have in a traditional classroom is absent in a distance learning course. In the traditional classroom, the learner is together with his or her cl ...
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In this paper I present, analyze and consider the implications of the use of English swear words ... more In this paper I present, analyze and consider the implications of the use of English swear words in Swedish media. First, I investigate the relationship between language and the media, focusing on ...
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The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qua... more The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qualitative data, reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, allowing for an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community and a highly offensive one. The resulting 'swearing paradox'; represents the question of how frequency and offensiveness can be directly related. The results of the present study explicate the swearing paradox by providing evidence of a discrepancy between the type of swearing that is most characteristic of social interaction within the university speech community and the type of swearing which is typically presented in offensiveness ratings tasks.
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This book focuses on the unexplored context of contemporary Swedish comic strips as sites of inno... more This book focuses on the unexplored context of contemporary Swedish comic strips as sites of innovative linguistic practices, where humor is derived from language play and creativity, often drawing from English and other European languages as well as social and regional dialects of Swedish. The overall purpose of the book is to highlight linguistic playfulness in Swedish comic strips, as an example of practices as yet unobserved and unaccounted for in theories of linguistic humor as applied to comics scholarship. The book familiarizes the reader with the Swedish language and linguistic culture as well as contemporary Swedish comic strips, with chapters focusing on specific strategies of language play and linguistic humor, such as mocking Swedish dialects and Swedish-accented foreign language usage, invoking English language popular culture, swearing in multiple languages, and turn-final code-switching to English to signal the punchline. The book will appeal to readers interested in humor, comics, or how linguistic innovation, language play, and language contact each can further the modern development of language, exemplified by the case of Swedish.
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In this paper, I analyze conversations among family members whose appropriation of media texts re... more In this paper, I analyze conversations among family members whose appropriation of media texts represents conversational strategies whereby common ground is exploited for different purposes. In particular, intertextual quotation is shown to 1) allow participants to take evaluative stances towards ongoing conversation, 2) reflect interactive alignment and 3) serve as pragmatic moves to rekey or reframe interaction as strategies for conflict resolution. The data come from recorded conversations among members of a four-person, SwedishAmerican family. Within the case-study family, the intertextual quotation of media texts is primarily established by the parents as a playful act, ratified by repetition and laughter. The association of intertextual quotation and playfulness is subsequently exploited both by parents and children to reframe and rekey potentially contentious interactions.
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Beers Fägersten, K. 2016. What’s the deal with morphemes? Doing morphology with Seinfeld. In K. B... more Beers Fägersten, K. 2016. What’s the deal with morphemes? Doing morphology with Seinfeld. In K. Beers Fägersten (ed.) Watching TV with a Linguist, pp. 181-201. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
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Journal of Pragmatics
In this paper, I investigate the Swedish, non-native use of English swear words in Swedish-langua... more In this paper, I investigate the Swedish, non-native use of English swear words in Swedish-language comic strips. I first consider the established relationships between both swearing and humor, and ...
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Discourse, Context & Media, 2017
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Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 2017
Any behavior that arouses, as swearing does, controversy, disagreement, disdain, shock, and indig... more 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 o ...
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Language Structures and Social Interaction, 2010
This chapter presents an analysis of recordings of workplace interactions conducted with videocon... more This chapter presents an analysis of recordings of workplace interactions conducted with videoconferencing software. Video-conferencing offers users the widest variety of channels, or modes, of interaction, combining video with voice chat, text chat, whiteboard capabilities and collaborative document manipulation. The video-conferencing environment is therefore conducive to multimodal communication, defined in this chapter as the collaborative use of any one of these modes or combination of modes within one communicative event. The standard form of multimodal communication is a combination of video, voice chat and whiteboard application. The use of other modes is shown to reflect distinct communicative functions. Communicating via multiple modes can be technologically demanding and consequently affect usability, potentially necessitating the use of meta-modal language among video-conference participants. Overtly attending to the modes of communication during online interaction is th...
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Books by Kristy Beers Fägersten
The book familiarizes the reader with the Swedish language and linguistic culture as well as contemporary Swedish comic strips, with chapters focusing on specific strategies of language play and linguistic humor, such as mocking Swedish dialects and Swedish-accented foreign language usage, invoking English language popular culture, swearing in multiple languages, and turn-final code-switching to English to signal the punchline.
The book will appeal to readers interested in humor, comics, or how linguistic innovation, language play, and language contact each can further the modern development of language, exemplified by the case of Swedish.
Advances in Swearing Research. New languages and new contexts
Table of Contents
Introduction: Swearing research as variations on a theme, Kristy Beers Fägersten and Karyn Stapleton, 1 – 16
Chapter 1. Swearing in Danish children’s television series, Marianne Rathje, 17 – 42
Chapter 2. Swearing and instant messaging: Changing norms of social interaction in the Hong Kong workplace context, Bernie Chun Nam Mak and Erika Darics, 43 – 64
Chapter 3. FUCK CANCER, Fucking Åmål, Aldrig fucka upp : The standardisation of fuck in Swedish media, Kristy Beers Fägersten, 65 – 86
Chapter 4. Fuck in French: Evidence of “other-language” swearing in France and Québec, Alexandra Jaffe, 87 – 106
Chapter 5. The borrowability of English swearwords: An exploration of Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch tweets, Eline Zenner, Tom Ruette and Emma Devriendt, 107 – 138
Chapter 6. Gender and age differences in swearing: A corpus study of Twitter, Michael Gauthier and Adrien Guille, 139 – 158
Chapter 7. Swearing in English and Spanish teenage talk, Anna-Brita Stenström, 159 – 184
Chapter 8. Swearing in Italian: A redefinition of the notions of dysphemism and euphemism, Matteo Di Cristofaro and Tony McEnery, 185 – 214
Chapter 9. Swearing in Persian: A new perspective on swearing as a speech act, Tomoko Shimoyama, Fereidoon Shadpayam and Mary Parhizgari, 215 – 232
Chapter 10. Swearing in Finnish: Folk definitions and perceptions, Minna Hjort, 233 – 258
Chapter 11. Epilogue, Jean-Marc Dewaele
By focusing on television as the most accessible form of popular culture, this book aims to raise linguistic awareness among readers by identifying linguistics in action, thereby enabling the readers autonomously to recognize additional examples of linguistic concepts. Particular series or particular episodes illustrate linguistic phenomena, but once awareness is raised, the same phenomena can be observed in other television series and/or episodes. For this reason, each chapter concludes with suggestions for further viewing and analysis, but the reader is also welcome and encouraged to apply any of the linguistic principles or theories beyond the context of television dialogue.
Each of the chapters in Watching TV with a Linguist champions the use of the language of television series to learn about linguistics, and in so doing, the volume is a testament to the relevance and applicability of all linguistic fields to the analysis of television dialogue. In acknowledging its readers as active television viewers, this text has the ultimate goal of initiating them into the world of linguistics and demonstrating its relevance not only to television language, but to any form of language use or interaction.
The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who’s Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants’ individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others’ allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who’s Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety."
The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qualitative data, reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, allowing for an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Swearing utterances and details of the social context in which they were made were recorded discretely and anonymously with the use of field notes within the University of Florida undergraduate student speech community. Sixty members of this speech community also participated in a six-part questionnaire which elicited information regarding use of and attitudes towards swear words. Eleven of the questionnaire participants furthermore participated in an ethnographic interview to discuss the questionnaire and the subject of swearing in greater depth. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community (Cameron, 1969; Jay, 1986; Nerbonne and Hipskind, 1972) as...
Papers by Kristy Beers Fägersten
The book familiarizes the reader with the Swedish language and linguistic culture as well as contemporary Swedish comic strips, with chapters focusing on specific strategies of language play and linguistic humor, such as mocking Swedish dialects and Swedish-accented foreign language usage, invoking English language popular culture, swearing in multiple languages, and turn-final code-switching to English to signal the punchline.
The book will appeal to readers interested in humor, comics, or how linguistic innovation, language play, and language contact each can further the modern development of language, exemplified by the case of Swedish.
Advances in Swearing Research. New languages and new contexts
Table of Contents
Introduction: Swearing research as variations on a theme, Kristy Beers Fägersten and Karyn Stapleton, 1 – 16
Chapter 1. Swearing in Danish children’s television series, Marianne Rathje, 17 – 42
Chapter 2. Swearing and instant messaging: Changing norms of social interaction in the Hong Kong workplace context, Bernie Chun Nam Mak and Erika Darics, 43 – 64
Chapter 3. FUCK CANCER, Fucking Åmål, Aldrig fucka upp : The standardisation of fuck in Swedish media, Kristy Beers Fägersten, 65 – 86
Chapter 4. Fuck in French: Evidence of “other-language” swearing in France and Québec, Alexandra Jaffe, 87 – 106
Chapter 5. The borrowability of English swearwords: An exploration of Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch tweets, Eline Zenner, Tom Ruette and Emma Devriendt, 107 – 138
Chapter 6. Gender and age differences in swearing: A corpus study of Twitter, Michael Gauthier and Adrien Guille, 139 – 158
Chapter 7. Swearing in English and Spanish teenage talk, Anna-Brita Stenström, 159 – 184
Chapter 8. Swearing in Italian: A redefinition of the notions of dysphemism and euphemism, Matteo Di Cristofaro and Tony McEnery, 185 – 214
Chapter 9. Swearing in Persian: A new perspective on swearing as a speech act, Tomoko Shimoyama, Fereidoon Shadpayam and Mary Parhizgari, 215 – 232
Chapter 10. Swearing in Finnish: Folk definitions and perceptions, Minna Hjort, 233 – 258
Chapter 11. Epilogue, Jean-Marc Dewaele
By focusing on television as the most accessible form of popular culture, this book aims to raise linguistic awareness among readers by identifying linguistics in action, thereby enabling the readers autonomously to recognize additional examples of linguistic concepts. Particular series or particular episodes illustrate linguistic phenomena, but once awareness is raised, the same phenomena can be observed in other television series and/or episodes. For this reason, each chapter concludes with suggestions for further viewing and analysis, but the reader is also welcome and encouraged to apply any of the linguistic principles or theories beyond the context of television dialogue.
Each of the chapters in Watching TV with a Linguist champions the use of the language of television series to learn about linguistics, and in so doing, the volume is a testament to the relevance and applicability of all linguistic fields to the analysis of television dialogue. In acknowledging its readers as active television viewers, this text has the ultimate goal of initiating them into the world of linguistics and demonstrating its relevance not only to television language, but to any form of language use or interaction.
The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who’s Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants’ individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others’ allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who’s Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety."
The methodology of the present study, designed for the purpose of collecting quantitative and qualitative data, reflects a sociolinguistic approach to swearing, allowing for an investigation of the relationship between swear word usage and social context. Swearing utterances and details of the social context in which they were made were recorded discretely and anonymously with the use of field notes within the University of Florida undergraduate student speech community. Sixty members of this speech community also participated in a six-part questionnaire which elicited information regarding use of and attitudes towards swear words. Eleven of the questionnaire participants furthermore participated in an ethnographic interview to discuss the questionnaire and the subject of swearing in greater depth. Previous research had established swearing as both a frequently occurring speech behavior within the university speech community (Cameron, 1969; Jay, 1986; Nerbonne and Hipskind, 1972) as...