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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 665

Part of Session 128: Sociofuckinglinguistics (Other abstracts in this session)

"Fuck alors": Stance and taboo in French and francophone online contexts

Authors: Jaffe, Alexandra Mystra
Submitted by: Jaffe, Alexandra Mystra (California State University Long Beach, France)

This paper looks at the use of fuck in French and francophone online expressive contexts. The word fuck is a taboo word that has acquired broad (perhaps world wide) circulation. This circulation situates fuck in an expanded set of semantic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic fields and in turn, turns fuck into a polyvocal stance object, subject to creative deployment and uptake in a variety of communicative contexts. The global circulation of fuck makes it available as a resource that can invoke the English language and/or taboo words in general. It can thus be used as a marked, 'other language' resource in languages other than English, variably acting as a taboo intensifier or mitigator. It is also available as a resource through which speakers/writers/taggers may take up a stance towards English and/or taboo more generally. At the same time, its reentextualization in non-English language communicative and cultural contexts can background, replace or superimpose these indexical ties with local ones. In this respect, fuck can be anchored in and constitutive of particular discourses and communities of practice. This paper examines the use of fuck by speakers, writers and artists who communicate primarily in French, and position themselves as non-native speakers of English. Data is drawn primarily from blogs, online forums and adolescents' Facebook pages and  includes graphic displays on t-shirts, virtual stickers/graphics and other semiotic forms that circulate on the web. It examines the performative and illocutionary functions and force of fuck in its relation to French, and French usage of similar (but not equivalent) terms, which act as 'shadow' stance objects. Secondly, the analysis maps patterns of use of and stancetaking towards fuck onto category memberships as evoked in French and francophone blogs and Facebook pages (including, but not limited to esthetic communities, generation, ethnicity and class).