Preliminary results of interactional functions of expletives and swearing in the Italian instant messaging corpus WhaP!

Activity: Talk or presentation typesOral presentationScientific

Description

Swearing has often been connected to “bad behavior” and incivility in both online and face- to-face interactions and considered restricted to particular settings and categories of users, generally toward the lower end of register and class. Expletives have been found to sanction noncooperation in interaction, but participants can achieve sanctioning not only by framing a turn as “sanctionable” but also by co-constructing a shared jocular dimension where teasing is involved, and a problematic element becomes a “laughable”.

Therefore, swearing might serve a more positive social purpose of building intersubjectivity and affiliation in interaction or emotional management, and may also favorably affect hearer’s perceptions of the speakers proffering profanities. Studies in EMCA have mostly focused on the transgressive status and face-to-face interactional restriction around improprieties that may, or may not, positively affect intimacy.

Previous studies on swearing online have mostly focused on hate speech and a
Period16 Dec 2024
Event titleConversation Analysis Day
Event typeConference
LocationLoughborough , United KingdomShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Digital Conversation Analysis
  • digital interactions
  • swearing
  • instant messaging
  • WhatsApp
  • Italian language
  • Conversation Analysis
  • Ethnomethodology
  • Interactional Linguistics