Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 441

Part of Session 102: Swearing and linguistic impoliteness in social interaction (Other abstracts in this session)

Swearing, representation and working class culture: An analysis of Shameless

Authors: Stapleton, Karyn
Submitted by: Stapleton, Karyn (University of Ulster, United Kingdom)

Swearing has traditionally been linked with the vernacular and hence carries strong connotations of ‘working class’ culture and speech (Hughes 1992, Romaine 1999, Chad 2006). In addition, swearing is a highly gendered activity in the sense that it is conventionally and strongly associated with a ‘male’ and/or ‘aggressive’ speech form (Coates 1993, 2003, Murphy 2010). Taken together, these features mean that swearing offers a potent linguistic resource for constructing identity, community and solidarity along gendered and socioeconomic dimensions. (Of course, swearing may also be used to construct and present other identities and communities [e.g. Hughes 1992, Stapleton 2003]; however, these constructions derive their meaning within the core associations of masculinity and vernacular speech). In this paper, I consider how swearing is used in a scripted version of working class culture within the UK television series Shameless. Set in a fictional council estate in Manchester, Shameless is a comedy drama which centres on the idea of a dysfunctional underclass and routinely features alcohol, drug-taking, sex, swearing and interpersonal aggression. Here, swearing, which in many other environments is seen as offensive or ‘anti-social’, is presented as a routine, accepted and, indeed, a socially approved form of expression (see also Beers Fagersten, 2007). Within this context, I examine the use of swearing as a key linguistic marker of community, culture and identity. Specifically, I focus on: (a) the interpersonal functions of swearing displayed in the character interactions, including variously aggression/emotion, solidarity, humour, and identity display (see Stapleton 2010); (b) the forms and contexts of expletives used by the different characters; (c) the extent to which swearing is (ever) treated as offensive or impolite; and (d) the distribution of different expletives and swearing forms across male and female characters. In light of this analysis, I discuss the role of swearing as a commonly accepted marker of working class identity/culture and hence as a resource for the scripting and presentation of this context. I further consider how such scripted and mediated representations contribute to and reinforce the association between swearing and vernacular, working-class speech varieties, including versions of gendered identities and speech styles.

References:

Beers Fagersten, K.A. (2007). ‘A sociolinguistic analysis of swearword offensiveness’. Saarland Working Papers in Linguistics (SWPL) 1: 14–37.

Coates, J. (1993). Men, Women and Language (2^nd edition). London: Longman.

Coates, J. (2003). Men Talk: Stories in the making of masculinities. Oxford: Blackwell.

Chad, G. (2006). ‘Among the dockhands: Another look at working-class male culture’. Men and Masculinities 9: 252–260.

Hughes, S.E. (1992). ‘Expletives of lower working-class women’. Language in Society 21: 291–303.

Murphy, B. (2010). Corpus and Sociolinguistics: Investigating age and gender in female talk. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Romaine, S. (1999). Communciating Gender. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Stapleton, K. (2003). ‘Gender and swearing: A community practice’. Women and Language 26: 22-33.

Stapleton, K. (2010). ‘Swearing’. In M. Locher and S.L. Graham (eds). Interpersonal Pragmatics (The Handbook of Pragmatics, Vol. 6) (pp. 289-305)Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Swearing, representation and working class culture: An analysis of Shameless