Comics, Activism, Feminisms explores from both historical and contemporary perspectives how comic art, activism, and feminisms are intertwined, and how comic art itself can be a form of activism. Feminist comic art emerged with the second-wave feminist movements. Today, there are comics connected to social activist movements working for change in a variety of areas. Comics artists often respond quickly to political events, making comics on topical issues that take a critical or satirical stance and highlighting the need for change. Comic art can point to problems, present alternatives, and give hope. Comics artists from all parts of the world engage issues pertaining to feminisms and LGBTQIA+ issues, war and political conflict, climate crisis, the global migrant and refugee situation, and other societal problems. The chapters of this anthology illuminate the aesthetic and thematic aspects of comics, activism, and feminisms globally. Particular attention is given to the work of comics collectives, where Do-it-Ourselves is a strategy among activism-oriented artists, which use a great variety of media, such as fanzines, albums, webcomics, and exhibitions to communicate and disseminate activist comic art. Comics, Activism, Feminisms is an essential anthology for scholars and students of comics studies, literary studies, art history, media studies, and gender studies. 

The sitcom Superstore aired on NBC from 2015 to 2021. In its sixth and final season (ending March 2021), the series explicitly addressed how the coronavirus pandemic affected the working conditions of the staff and management of “Cloud 9”—a fictional big-box store based in Saint Louis, Missouri. This chapter examines the ways in which the character interaction serves two distinct functions: first, to provide the viewing audience with general information about the coronavirus and the pandemic; and second, to depict the difficulties of dealing with the pandemic as an essential worker. The series uses humor to problematize the essential worker status of the Cloud 9 employees as superordinate to their status of individuals with a right to protect their health and minimize exposure to the virus.

Feminism and the City (FATC, 2021) is a Ukrainian comic book based on a series of online feminist blog posts authored by Emma Antoniuk, a columnist for the website Gender in Detail. FATC promotes an awareness of gender discrimination, thematizes critical feminist concerns, and suggests ready-made strategies for activism in the pursuit of gender justice. The comic book comprises ten free-standing stories, each of which depicts Emma's experiences or observations of life from a feminist perspective. Common to each of the stories is Emma's enthusiastic advocacy for gender justice in Ukraine that has characterised her life and career path. The present chapter represents a brief and targeted analysis of FATC as an example of feminist activism in the Ukrainian context. We approach FATC as a feminist activist field guide, focusing on two stories that explicitly engage with language usage and thus showcase the interplay of image and text, taking advantage of the comics medium both to depict potential scenarios and to model linguistic strategies of feminist activism. This chapter specifically highlights two critical aspects of promoting feminist activism: gender-fair language and discourse strategies of advocacy.

This chapter explores the status of English-language popular culture throughout the Nordic countries with regard to its relation to attitudes toward English and its effect on everyday discourse. The traditions and contemporary developments of English as an academic subject in the Nordic countries reveal an important shift in the symbolic capital of English. While English as a linguistic system and Anglophone literature and culture once symbolized erudition and high intellectual pursuits, the abstract idea and concrete manifestations of English in the Nordic countries are now more likely to invoke Anglophone popular culture and media artifacts. However, the close association between popular culture and the English language has fostered a Nordic-wide relationship to English that deviates from native Anglophone norms, whereby the filtering of English through popular culture encourages the use of English as a language of play and imbues a distance to its affective properties. The chapter presents a pan-Nordic overview of the rise of Anglophone popular culture and the effects of the stronghold that the English language enjoys in the Nordic countries as a result of the wholesale adoption of English-language popular culture. 

This article introduces broad strands of research on swearing as a foundation for an interpersonal pragmatics (IP) approach to the nature and effects of swearing in interaction and relationships. The main tenets of interpersonal pragmatics are presented, and swearing as a distinct research focus within IP is outlined. The article invokes pragmatic perspectives in addressing both negative and positive functions of swearing. The central focus on IP is developed by considering the mutual interplay between language and relationships in swearing activity. With respect to communicative context, it is noted that swearing both emerges within interpersonal relationships, and simultaneously provides a context for different types of interpersonal relationships to unfold (endogenous vs. exogenous IP perspectives). By way of introducing the special issue on swearing and interpersonal pragmatics and the constituent articles, it asserts the need to account for swearing as an interpersonal pragmatic strategy and to analyse the causes and effects of swearing in different contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of future research directions, including, in particular, swearing in mediated settings. 

This chapter provides an overview of the volume’s background, contents, and structure, explaining the foundational theoretical underpinnings, premises, and organizing principles. In addition to defining and delineating the nation-states encompassed by the term “Nordic countries,” the chapter also explicitly discusses and contextualizes the similarities and the differences between the languages and societies of the Nordic countries. The main focus, however, is on identifying what makes these countries a cohesive and coherent unit of study - in general, but especially with regard to shared social, cultural, and linguistic aspects as unifying themes among the Nordic countries. Importantly, this introductory chapter critically addresses the common narrative of the “rise” or “triumph” of English and the frequent framing of the spread of English in the Nordics as a success story. 

The final chapter of the volume draws together the main strings of the preceding chapters into three themes: English in relation to the languages of the Nordic countries; 2) changes in research approaches of language and language use; 3) Nordic exceptionalism; the Nordic countries as a model. In addition to commentary from the volume’s editors, ten eminent scholars of the language situation in the Nordic countries have been consulted to supply their viewpoints. Their response to two questions, one having to do with the history of English studies in the Nordic countries, and the other having to do with the future of English studies, round out the volume by offering a complement to themes raised in the previous eleven chapters.

People in the Nordic states – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland – rank as among the most proficient speakers of English in the world. In this unique volume, international experts explore how this came to be, what English usage and integration looks like in different spheres of society and the economy in these countries, and the implications of this linguistic phenomenon for language attitudes and identity, for the region at large, and for English in Europe and around the world. Led by Elizabeth Peterson and Kristy Beers Fägersten, contributors provide a historical overview to the subject, synthesize the latest research, illustrate the roles of English with original case studies from diverse communities and everyday settings, and offer transnational insights critically and in conversation with the situation in other Nordic states. This comprehensive text is the first book of its kind and will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of World/Global Englishes and English as a lingua franca, language contact and dialect studies/language varieties, language policy, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, and Nordic/Scandinavian and European studies.

Swearing fulfils a range of interpersonal pragmatic functions and also acts as a distinguishing feature of speakers and contexts. In broadcast media, swearing has traditionally been censored or at least limited in its deployment; although when used, it serves characterization, interactional, and narrative functions. In this article, we consider the Disney+ television series Only Murders in the Building (OMITB, 2021–), in which swearing is not subject to standard media constraints, due to its provision on a streaming service. Freed from such constraints, OMITB is distinctive in its unusually high frequency and dispersion of swearing across characters and contexts. Compared with both real-life and media-based analyses of language use, the swearing in OMITB reflects neither real-life nor standard broadcast patterns. In this paper, we investigate how swearing is used by the characters, and what it is ‘doing’ in the series. In particular, we highlight the role of swearing in affiliation and relationship-building, both between characters in the story world, and between the series and its viewers. Our analysis contributes to understanding the pragmatic functions of media swearing.