Description
Swearing has been linked to “bad behaviour” and profanity in both online and face-to-face interactions (Jay 2018) and associated with lower social registers (Tartamella 2016). Sciubba & Calabria (2023) found that in face-to-face interactions participants achieve sanctioning not only by framing a turn as “sanctionable” but also by co-constructing a shared jocular dimension involving teasing. A “problematic” element is then reframed as “laughable”. Therefore, swearing can serve more positive social purposes, i.e., building intersubjectivity and affiliation, or facilitating emotional management (Calabria & Sciubba 2022).Ethnomethodology (EM) and Conversation Analysis (CA) (Sacks 1992) have largely examined swearing's transgressive status (Sacks 1992) and face-to-face interactional restriction around improprieties that may positively affect intimacy (Butler & Fitzgerald 2011). Literature on online swearing has centred hate speech and aggression (Jay 2018). However, EMCA research is missing on swearing on online platforms, considering the use of swearwords to reach intersubjectivity (Sidnell 2014) and affiliation (Stivers 2008).
Using EMCA, we analyse a corpus of 89 WhatsApp chats (Fiorentini 2024) from 194 Italian gamers, to explore how swearing contributes to “playfulness.” This practice, which seems particularly relevant in gamers' settings, is implemented by using fuck and derivatives, in English. We argue that non-translating the swearwords into Italian favours the construction of a shared intersubjective playfulness, that takes as common ground gaming culture and gamers' language (Ensslin 2017). We are also interested in how the affordances of instant messaging apps constrain interactional practices already analysed in face-to-face interactions (Calabria & Sciubba 2022). Analysing Fucking-swearing reveals its complexity as a social phenomenon, that serves various intersubjective interactional purposes and facilitates connection beyond face-to-face interactions.
| Period | 24 Sept 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Profanity: Redefining the Limits: The F-word across Linguistics, Translation and the Arts |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Arras, FranceShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Keywords
- Swearing
- Language Contact
- Italian language
- Gamers
- Intersubjectivity
- Digital Conversation Analysis
- Interactional Linguistics
- English language