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 sale’. Our analyses of English-language swear word products show that the taboo nature of swear words is
exploited and capitalized upon for commercial gain. We argue that swear word commodities trade on sociolinguistically incongruous aspects of
swear word usage, increasing salability of the swear word products by targeting specific demographics. Specifically, we analyze (1) women’s
apparel and accessories, (2) domestic items and home décor, and (3) children’s products for adults or articles targeting parents of young
children. The study concludes with a discussion of whether the popularization of swearing via such commodification may ultimately result in
a loss of distinctiveness and devaluation.
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Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Beers Fägersten, Kristy, Karyn Stapleton & Minna Hjort
2024. Censorship and Taboo Maintenance in L1 and LX Swearing. Languages 9:4 ► pp. 128 ff.
Beers Fägersten, Kristy & Karyn Stapleton
2023. Everybody swears on Only Murders in the Building: The interpersonal functions of scripted television swearing. Journal of Pragmatics 216 ► pp. 93 ff.
Dynel, Marta
2023. Hashtag swearing: Pragmatic polysemy and polyfunctionality of #FuckPutin as solidary flaming. Journal of Pragmatics 209 ► pp. 108 ff.
2022. The power of swearing: What we know and what we don’t. Lingua 277 ► pp. 103406 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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