Swearing has traditionally been associated with spoken language; however, swear words are appearing more often in print and, notably, explicitly featured in commercial products. In this paper, we consider this development an example of the commodification of swear words, or ‘swear words for… read more
In this paper, I analyze conversations among family members whose appropriation of media texts represents conversational strategies whereby common ground is exploited for different purposes. In particular, intertextual quotation is shown to (1) allow participants to take evaluative stances towards… read more
This chapter is an analysis of a 100,000-word corpus consisting of message-board postings on hip-hop websites. A discourse analysis of this corpus reveals three strategies employed by the posters to identify themselves as members of the hip-hop community in the otherwise anonymous setting of the… read more