The English Department at Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden, participates in a distance-learning program with the Faculty of Education at Vietnam National University. Students who enroll in this program are teachers of English at secondary or tertiary institutions, and will study half time for two years to complete a Master’s degree in English Linguistics. The distance program, adapted specifically to accommodate the Vietnamese students in terms of cultural differences as well as inexperience with distance methodology, is characterized by three design features: testing, technical training, and fostering a community of learners. The design of the courses also reflects a learner-centered approach that addresses common problem areas in distance education by promoting interactivity. Central to the overall program is the maintenance of different channels of communication, reflecting an effort to support the students academically and socially, both as individuals and members of a learning community. In this way, the effects of physical and cultural distances are minimized.

This chapter focuses on a selection of single-panel comics by two Swedish comics artists, seeking to explicate how gender norms are invoked and subverted in depicted talk-in-interaction. Informing the analyses are theories of positioning and framing, which aim to help us make sense of interactions as taking place in different sorts of occasions, how these differences are signalled, and how we behave according to social conventions and moral commitments. The female perspective on these conventions and commitments is expressed in the comics of Hemmingsson and Sjöberg, in which frames and positions are made particularly salient in the single-panel format. Of particular significance is the use of humour to reveal absurdities of gender roles, gender inequality, and sexism. The chapter thus also investigates how linguistic resistance to positioning, framing, and conversational script represents a feminist act of subversion and solidarity.

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. 

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 comics and humor. I propose that swear word usage and the comic strip framework contribute to a mutual feedback loop, whereby the comic strip derives its humor from the use of English swear words, while at the same time the comic strip context, by invoking a play frame, primes the swear word usage for humorous interpretation. Modeling Siegel (1995), I then consider how a code-switch to English serves as a framing device or contextualization cue for humor in Swedish-language contexts. The analysis of a selection of Swedish comic strips draws from the Encryption Theory of Humor (Flamson and Barrett, 2008), and suggests that humor created via the Swedish practice of swearing in English is a function of shared background knowledge that capitalizes on the fundamental incongruity of two discourse systems operating under different norms of appropriateness.

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. 

This chapter presents an analysis of intranet postings generated within a Swedish web consultancy during its pursuit of a tobacco company as client. Drawing from theories of crisis management, Beers Fägersten focuses on the emergent conflict and debate between employees who are in favor of having a tobacco company as a client, and those who are against it. The intranet thread reflects the use of discursive strategies typical of conflict management, but also strategies specific to the digital environment. A recurring theme in the debate is the navigation, negotiation and distinction of personal vs. corporate identities and interests.

In this chapter, examples from classroom interaction are presented to illustrate how languagefunctions in and is influenced by the sociocultural setting of the EFL classroom. The chapterfeatures two distinct focal points: First, the predominant use of English by the teacher and theminimal use of English by the students are proposed as instrumental activities where English canbe considered a mediating semiotic tool. I suggest that English-language interaction in the EFLclassroom represents Vygotsky‘s concept of a social semiotic tool that is specifically related to aninstitutional context (Wertsch 1998). Conversely, the second focus of the chapter is on theinverse use of Swedish, which mainly features as the students‘ language of social speech and theteacher‘s language of regulatory, disciplinary discourse. The teacher‘s code choice and theestablished practice of code-switching thus serve to redirect the students‘ focus, either toengaging in the learning of English, or to behaving according to the institutional context.

In this paper, the Internet message board forum is proposed as an example of a community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992) in which contributors exhibit common linguistic conventions and forms of participation. The emergence of individual identities in interaction is examined in the genre-specific context of hip-hop Internet message boards. A corpus analysis of message board postings clearly shows that contributors systematically exploit the spoken and written qualities of the language of message boards, the " third medium" (Crystal, 2001) to identify themselves linguistically. Linguistic conventions or practices reveal a tendency among contributors to discursively construction their identities via a "social positioning of self and other" (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005) as experts or non-experts in the hip-hop community. Contributors' identities as experts or simply in-group members are further corraborated or established by the codification not only of non-standard pronunciations and grammar characteristic of speech, but also of non-standard orthography, which demands a written forum to be appreciated, as it is neutralized and unremarkable in speech. Because of the written and spoken qualities of message board discourse, both the content and the form of postings can be manipulated to showcase familiarity with hip-hop discursive practices. Internet message boards therefore represent the ideal forum for discursively constructing a hip-hop identity.

This article is an investigation of the use of English-language swear words by Swedish, non-native speaker PewDiePie in the context of self-recorded, Let’s Play horror videos uploaded to the video-sharing website, YouTube. Situating PewDiePie within the greater media landscape to establish both his success and notoriety, this article addresses the local interpretation of the globalization of English and the use of English swear words in Swedish media. The practice of swearing in the gaming context is discussed, and swearing instances in a selection of three of PewDiePie’s horror game videos are analyzed. The article puts forth the argument that the use of English swear words contributes to the performance of PewDiePie as a specific, online persona, one that is both in line with the context of video gaming and conducive to a para-social relationship, allowing PewDiePie to achieve the overall goals of communicating with his viewers as peers and reducing the social distance between them. The article concludes that PewDiePie’s practice of social swearing not only simulates casual conversation between friends, but actively reduces social distance, creates the illusion of intimacy, and contributes to his unprecedented success on YouTube.

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 the role of standard language forms in media discourse. I continue by exploring, within an Anglophone context, the use of swear words in the media. Next I present a brief survey of the use of English in Swedish. Finally, I present examples of the use of English-language swear words in Swedish media, showing how English-language swear words are appropriated by speakers of Swedish and suggesting that the use of English swear words in the media ratifies this appropriation, in turn establishing this practice as standard. I discuss the implications of this development in terms of the use of English swear words within a non-native speaker speech community, how usage may be in conflict with English native-speaker norms, and how the use of English swear words might come to characterize modern Swedish as well as a Swedish variety of English.

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.

Catchphrases have long been a hallmark of US-American sit-coms and dramas, as well as reality, game and variety show programming. Because the phenomenon of the television catchphrase developed throughout the era of network, commercial broadcasting under Federal Communications Commission guidelines regulating profanity in network television, catchphrases traditionally have not included swear words. Nevertheless, certain past television catchphrases can be regarded as euphemistic alternatives of swearing expressions (e.g. ‘Kiss my grits!’), while contemporary catchphrases from cable or streaming series do include explicit swearing (e.g. ‘Don’t fuck it up!’). We examine a database of 168 popular catchphrases from a 70-year period of US-American television programming according to categories for bad language and impoliteness formulae. We identify three categories of catchphrases based on structural-functional similarities to swearing expressions, and we trace the distribution of these categories over time and across networks. The data reveal a trend towards explicit swearing in catchphrases over time, not only in series on cable and streaming services, but across networks. We conclude that the expressive nature of catchphrases and their structural-functional properties render the inclusion of swear words both more palatable to a television audience and more compatible with television norms, thus propagating catchphrase swearing on cable and streaming television services, and mitigating the use of swear words on network television. Due to appropriation phenomena, swearing catchphrases may serve to blur the lines between actually swearing and simply invoking a swearing catchphrase, thereby potentially increasing tolerance for swearing both on television and off.

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.

This edited collection explores how the relationship between comic art and feminism has been shaped by global, transnational, and local trends, curating analyses of multinational comic art that encompass themes of gender, sexuality, power, vulnerability, assault, abuse, taboo, and trauma. The chapters illuminate in turn the defining features of the aesthetics, materiality, and thematic content of their source material - often expressed with humorous undertones of self-reflection or social criticism - as well as recurring strategies of visualising and narrating female experiences. Broadening the research perspective of feminist comics to include national comics cultures peripheral to the cultural centers of Anglo-American, Franco-Belgian, and Japanese comics, the anthology explores how the dominant narrative or history of canonical works can be challenged or deconstructed by local histories of comics and feminism and their transnational connections, and how local histories complement or challenge the current understanding of the relationship between feminism and comic art. This is an essential collection for scholars and students in comics studies, women and gender studies, media studies, and literature.

Swearing has traditionally been associated with spoken language; however, swear words are appearing more often in print and, notably, explicitly featured in commercial products. In this paper, we consider this development an example of the commodification of swear words, or 'swear words for sale'. Our analyses of English-language swear word products show that the taboo nature of swear words is exploited and capitalized upon for commercial gain. We argue that swear word commodities trade on sociolinguistically incongruous aspects of swear word usage, increasing salability of the swear word products by targeting specific demographics. Specifically, we analyze (1) women's apparel and accessories, (2) domestic items and home décor, and (3) children's products for adults or articles targeting parents of young children. 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.

The first chapter of the anthology Comic Art and Feminism in the Baltic Sea Region: Transnational Perspectives introduces the reader to the field of feminist comic art and graphic narrative in the Baltic Sea region. Acknowledging the contributions of Anglo-American feminist comics artists of the 1970s who laid the groundwork for continued production and progress transnationally, the authors highlight parallel developments in Sweden and Finland, which have resulted in the current era of comic art dominated by each country’s growing cadre of feminist comics artists. The success and momentum of Swedish and Finnish feminist comic art warrant an exploration of transnational reverberations, in order to highlight practices and characteristics which have mobilised to extend across national boundaries. Exploring a wide range of work by comics artists from the Baltic Sea region, the anthology’s 12 chapters both illuminate the defining features of aesthetics, materiality, and thematic content of feminist comic art, and analyse the recurring strategies of visualising and narrating female, non-binary, or queer experiences.

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.

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.