Publications

Publication details [#59810]

Archakis, Argiris and Rania Karachaliou. 2015. Identity construction patterns via swearing: Evidence from Greek teenage storytelling. Pragmatics and Society 6 (3) : 421–443.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/ps

Annotation

This paper analyzes the use of swearwords in Greek teenage storytelling. The research is based on the analysis of conversational narratives that occurred in two conversations between male adolescents who belong to different social groups. The analysis shows that the use of swearing in the story performances enables the narrators (1) to construct for themselves the identity of the powerful members of a group who share strong friendship bonds and challenge authorities in the first conversation, and (2) to project the identity of individuals who conform to mainstream values in the second conversation. Therefore, this paper suggests that swearing can be an effective linguistic tool for the construction and negotiation of diverse youth identities, i.e. the acceptance of or the departure from social norms, in the unfolding of narrative speech.