Swearing and Cursing : Contexts and Practices in a Critical Linguistic Perspective / Nico Nassenstein, Anne Storch.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nassenstein, Nico, Editor.

Storch, Anne, Editor.

Series:

Language and social life (Mouton de Gruyter) ; Volume 22.

Language and Social Life [LSL] ; 22

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anthropological linguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (346 pages).

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe –including individuals' creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

1. “I will kill you today” – Reading “bad language” and swearing through Otherness, mimesis, abjection and camp

2. Ten issues facing taboo word scholars

3. “Damn your eyes!” (Not really): Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands

4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania

5. Aesthetics of the obscure: Swearing as horrible play

6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa)

7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations

8. ‘Don’t say it in public’: Contestations and negotiations in northern Nigerian Muslim cyberspace

9. Mock Chinese in Kinshasa: On Lingala speakers’ offensive language use and verbal hostility

10. The name of the wild man: Colonial arbiru in East Timor

11. Found and lost paradise: Bad language at a beach in Diani, Kenya

12. The sexy banana – artifacts of gendered language in tourism

13. English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers’ use of rude vocatives

14. “He shall not be buried in the West” – Cursing in Ancient Egypt

Afterword

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 05. Mai 2020)

ISBN:

9781501511080

1501511084

9781501511202

1501511203

OCLC:

1153458444