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Part of
Advances in Swearing Research: New languages and new contexts
Edited by Kristy Beers Fägersten and Karyn Stapleton
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 282] 2017
► pp. 107–136

Chapter 5
The borrowability of English swearwords

An exploration of Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch tweets

| University of Leuven
| University of Leuven
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.English swearwords in Dutch tweets
    • 2.1Swearing and pluricentricity: The Low Countries
    • 2.2Contact-induced variation and change: Borrowing swearwords
    • 2.3Swearing and social media
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Data and method
    • 4.1Set of source-language swearwords and insults: Online swearword inventories
    • 4.2Verification in a receptor language corpus: Twitter in the Low Countries
  • 5.Pluricentric variation in the borrowability of English swearwords in Dutch
    • 5.1Which words borrowed are borrowed, and why? Factors influencing borrowability
      • 5.1.1Denotational category
      • 5.1.2Offensiveness
      • 5.1.3Speech economy
      • 5.1.4Foreignness
      • 5.1.5Exposure to the source language form
    • 5.2Discussion of the quantitative findings
  • 6.Qualitative exploration of Dutch tweeps’ creativity with English swearwords
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.282.06zen
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[no author supplied]
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