Kristy Beers Fägersten

Kristy Beers Fägersten is Professor of English Linguistics at Södertörn University. She received her PhD in Linguistics in 2000 at the University of Florida with the dissertation A descriptive analysis of the social functions of swearing in American English. She has taught at universities in the US, Germany and Sweden, and she has been a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University, Bremen University, and Villa San Michele. 

The project

Title: The ecosystem of swearing: How intra- and interpersonal variability sustains the power of offensive language

"Having recourse to language that conveys negative feelings and sensations is essential for self expression, self-preservation, and interpersonal communication; this is particularly evident in an increasingly polarized society. Swearing, a form of linguistic expression which involves invoking taboos that are culturally and socially recognized as likely to cause offence, fulfills such expressive functions. But swearing is also characteristic of informal social interaction among friends and intimates, symbolizing solidarity and minimizing social distance, and acclaimed as a marker of intelligence, honesty, integrity, and even high social status. The use of swear words thus has positive as well as negative connotations and functions, such that the benefits of swearing now rival its stigma as bad behavior, and swearers are just as likely to be cheered as they are chastised. Essential to swearing as a complex social phenomenon is its inherent ‘power’ – widely recognized if not always equally experienced. Indeed, the power of swearing as offensive language is not absolute; it is simply the tension resulting from the potential to offend, which is in turn maintained by both intrapersonal and interpersonal variability, that allows swear words to retain their inherent force. The power of swearing is thus sustained by – but also vulnerable to – variation in individual relationships to swear word usage. This seminar series thusly proposes an “ecosystem of swearing”."

Hosting institution: Labex Empirical Foundations of Linguistics (EFL)

Selective Bibliography

• Beers Fägersten, K., Stapleton, K., and Hjort, M. 2024. Censorship and taboo maintenance in L1 and LX swearing. Languages.
• Beers Fägersten, K. 2023. Anglicization of the languages of the Nordic countries: Popular culture and everyday discourse. In E. Peterson and K. Beers Fägersten (eds.), English in the Nordic Countries: Connections, tensions, and everyday realities, pp. 65-83. London: Routledge.
• Stapleton, K., and Beers Fägersten, K. 2023. Swearing and interpersonal pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 218: 147-152.
• Beers Fägersten, K., and Stapleton, K. 2023. Everybody swears on Only Murders in the Building: The interpersonal functions of scripted television swearing. Journal of Pragmatics 216: 93-105.
• Stapleton, K., Beers Fägersten, K., Stephens, R., and Loveday, C. 2022. The power of swearing: What we know and what we don’t. Lingua 277: 103476.