#pragmatics — Public Fediverse posts

What kind of profanity is this?

Regular readers will be familiar with Strong Language, a group blog about swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck in 2014. If you’re interested in swearing as a linguistic or cultural phenomenon, I recommend bookmarking or subscribing to it.

New posts by our excellent contributors are less frequent now, but that makes it easier to catch up if you haven’t visited before or feel like browsing the archives. The blog has over 400 posts: fascinating and colourful explorations of profanity for readers not averse to such material.

I also contribute to Strong Language now and then, and this post on Sentence first introduces the last few that I wrote. What follows below is not very sweary – there’s one reference to a strong swear – but if this type of language freaks you out like it does Ned Flanders, or just plain doesn’t interest you, you may prefer to bail out here.

From “Be-bop-a-Lisa” in Simpsons Comics no. 6 (1994). Script & pencils: Bill Morrison; Inks: Tim Bavington; Colours: Cindy Vance. Editor: Steve Vance

I’m interested in how people refer to swearing: as bad language, explicit language, dirty language, adult language, and so on. The adjectives form an intriguing set. ‘Strong bad mature filthy language’ examines the patterns that emerge and explains why I proposed Strong Language as the name for the blog.

The title of the present post, you may have twigged, alludes to Amy Winehouse and her song ‘Me & Mr Jones’, which contains a line I borrowed more directly for ‘What kind of “fuckery” is this?’. The post delves into that word’s meanings and use, originally literal but now usually (and variously) figurative.

Also in a pop-cultural vein, John Boorman’s 1987 drama film Hope and Glory has a scene that depicts swearing as a rite of passage for a group of boys in London during World War II. My short post puts the scene in context and discusses its effects.

Most recently, I wrote about a remarkably successful euphemism in ‘Another freaking f-word’. This use of freaking first appeared in 1928, as far as we know, so its centenary is just around the corner. In the post I look at why and where it has become so freaking popular.

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

Book recommendation! 📖

Earlier this year, Vassiliki Geka published an excellent book on Imperative-Based Dialogic Constructions and Discourse Units: https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027244918

Later this year, Journal of Pragmatics published my review of the book, which you can access freely for 50 days (now 49 days!) via this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1mDE41L-nhbDYW

I'm very passionate about #ConstructionGrammar taking #dialogicity seriously and this book does exactly that! 👍

#AcademicPublishing #Linguistics #Pragmatics #Philosophy

I wrote a little about Agatha Christie – as a verb
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/to-agatha-christie-v-tr/

#language #AlienEarth #AgathaChristie #slang #writing #blog #verbs #verbing #LanguageChange #pragmatics

Your personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing / The Conversation

Un bell'aticolo sul Principio di Relatività Linguistica, formulato da Whorf negli anni '30.

Languages don’t just allow us to communicate – they also shape our perception of what surrounds us, and ourselves.

https://theconversation.com/your-personality-changes-when-you-speak-another-language-but-thats-not-always-a-bad-thing-245079

#Whorf #Sapir
#languages #linguistics #sociolinguistics #pragmatics #languageLearning

Constraints and Indications • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/07/04/constraints-and-indications-2-a/

Coping with collaboration, communication, context, integration, interoperability, perspective, purpose, and the reality of the information dimension demands a transition from conceptual environments bounded by dyadic relations to those informed by triadic relations, especially the variety of triadic sign relations employed by pragmatic semiotics.

Along the lines of my first post on this topic I am presently concerned with the logical and mathematical requirements of dealing with constraints but when it comes to the constraints involved in communicating across cultural and disciplinary barriers I could recommend a paper Susan Awbrey and I wrote for a conference devoted to those very issues.

Conference Presentation —

Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (1999), “Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century”, Second International Conference of the Journal ‘Organization’, Re‑Organizing Knowledge, Trans‑Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
• https://cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm

Published Paper —

Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, 269–284.
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508401082013
• https://www.academia.edu/1266492/Conceptual_Barriers_to_Creating_Integrative_Universities

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Indication #Inference #Information #Inquiry
#Ashby #Cybernetics #Constraint #Control #Regulation #RequisiteVariety
#AdaptiveSystems #IntelligentSystems #InquiryDrivenSystems #Pragmatics

The Guardian did a write-up on #sarcasm detection research in our Speech Tech Lab at the University of Groningen. @universityofgroningen

Read all about it!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/16/researchers-build-ai-driven-sarcasm-detector

#SpeechTechnology #AutomaticSpeechRecognition #sarcasm #pragmatics

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Interpretive Frameworks —

Iterations of the recombinatorial process generate alternative hierarchies of categories for controlling the explosion of parts in the domain under inquiry. If by some piece of luck an alternative framework is uniquely suited to the natural ontology of the domain in question, it becomes advisable to reorganize the inquiry along the lines of the new topic headings.

But a complex domain seldom falls out that neatly. The new interpretive framework will not preserve all the information in the object domain but typically capture only another aspect of it. To take the maximal advantage of all the different frameworks that might be devised it is best to quit depending on any one of them exclusively. Thus, a rigid reliance on a single hierarchy to define the ontology of a given domain passes over into a flexible application of interpretive frameworks to make contact with particular aspects of one's object domain.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Paradigms #Pragmatics
#Aristotle #Categories #Complexity #InterpretiveFrameworks

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Conceptual Extensions —

The second use of the formal apology is to permit the tentative extension of concepts to novel areas, giving them experimental trial beyond the cases and domains where their use is already established in the precedents of accustomed habit and successful application.

This works to dispel the “in principle” objection that any category distinction puts a prior constraint on the recognition of similar structure between materially dissimilar domains. It leaves the issue a matter to be settled by after the fact judgment, a matter of what fits best “in practice”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Paradigms #Pragmatics

New open access publication: Schauer, G.A. (2024). #Intercultural competence and #pragmatics. Palgrave. #InterculturalCompetence , #MFL , #ModernForeignLanguages
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-44472-2

#Stellenausschreibung: Wissenschaftliche:r Mitarbeiter:in (w/m/d) an der Professur für #Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft mit dem Schwerpunkt #Englisch ( (bevorzugt: Projekte zur #Sprechaktforschung im Bereich interlanguage /
second language #pragmatics), 50% Stelle, #befristet, mit Ziel der Promotion im Fachgebiet, Deadline: 28.12.2023, Link: https://jobs.uni-erfurt.de/jobposting/e2058a5db357d2cb7727c4fab3348f0148f4e5ca0

#Semiositis • 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/10/semiositis-1/

There is a deep and pervasive #Analogy between systems of #Commerce and systems of #Communication, turning on their near-universal use of #Symbola (images, media, proxies, signs, symbols, tokens, etc.) to stand for #Pragmata (objects, objective values, the things we really care about, or would really care about if we examined our values in practice thoroughly enough).

#Peirce #Pragmatics #Semiotics #Semeiotics #SignRelations #Triadicity

Zeroth Law Of Semiotics

Meaning is a privilege not a right.
Not all pictures depict.
Not all signs denote.

Never confuse a property of a sign,
just for instance, existence,
with a sign of a property,
for instance, existence.

Taking a property of a sign
for a sign of a property
is the zeroth sign of
nominal thinking
and the first
mistake.

Also Sprach 0*
9 October 2002

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog Forum • Structural Modeling • Systems Science
cc: FB | Semeiotics • Laws of Form (1) (2) • Peirce List (1) (2) (3)

#CSPeirce #Denotation #Extension #InformationComprehensionExtension #LiarParadox #Logic #Nominalism #Peirce #Pragmatics #Rhetoric #Semantics #Semiositis #Semiotics #SignRelations #Syntax #ZerothLawOfSemiotics

And I’m like, Quotative ‘like’ isn’t just for quoting

One of the most noticeable changes in modern everyday English usage is the ascent of like in its various guises. Last week Michael Rundell at Macmillan Dictionary Blog briefly surveyed the development, noting that the word’s relatively recent use in reporting direct speech – known as quotative like – is “widely disliked by traditionalists”.

There are various reasons for the aversion. Any usage that becomes suddenly popular will attract criticism. Frequent use of like is also perceived as lazy, or associated with triviality. Facebook likes, filler likes (So, like, OK), and hedging or approximating likes (He was like six feet) serve only to underline how ubiquitous the word has become.

Some, like the Acadamy of Linguistic Awarness [sic], revile this state of affairs:

Others take pride in it:

Like is like soooo divisive, and quotative like in particular is often misunderstood. If you search online for hate the word like or some such string, you’ll find plenty of knee-jerk antipathy to it that largely assumes its synonymity with said. That is, there’s a common misconception that I was like, [X] = I said, [X]. But often this is not the case, about which more shortly.

First, it’s worth noting that those of us who use quotative like use it in a range of tenses, for example past (She was like, “Let me know”), historical present (So last week he’s like, “Are we ready yet?” and we’re all like, “Yes!”), and future (If that happens I’ll be like, “Uh-oh.”).

This use of like, reporting direct speech more or less, became very popular in recent times with young people especially, though far from exclusively, establishing itself as a normal usage – even a dominant one in some groups. But with quotative like we can do more than simply report speech: we may convey an interaction with expansive social and performative detail.

As Jessica Love observed in the American Scholar a couple of years ago, quotative like

encourages a speaker to embody the participants in a conversation. Thus, the speaker vocalizes the contents of participants’ utterances, but also her attitudes toward those utterances. She can dramatize multiple viewpoints, one after another, making it perfectly clear all the while which views she sympathizes with and which she does not.

Quotative like has also undergone striking developments on the internet. Some users of social media are typing “I’m like” (or “I’m all like”, etc.) and following it with an image or image macro. It’s a meme-friendly playground of creativity in which the images themselves are being embedded in the syntax.

Here are some examples with text:

And some without text:

Offline we might say I’m like and make a caricatured facial expression; online, we use images instead to communicate those staged reactions. These funny, often self-deprecating tweets use instantly interpretable images to substitute for (and expand upon) those physical gestures, expressions, and body language that accompany ordinary speech but are difficult or impossible to replicate online.

Last month the NY Times quoted Robin Kelsey, a professor of photography at Harvard, who believes

This is a watershed time where we are moving away from photography as a way of recording and storing a past moment . . . [and] turning photography into a communication medium.

And not just photography but image macros, TV and film stills, comics, animated gifs, the whole gamut of shortform visual data we’ve been incorporating into online discourse. (Jessica Love has also pondered the possibilities of a language based on real-time images.) Who’s to say what will emerge from this hybrid domain?

Quotative like can set up a whole miniature drama, with visual content contributing to a richer vocabulary than words alone could license. Online and off, used with images or micro-performances, quotative like is not a lazy crutch of semi-literate teens but a handy and highly functional addition to our lexicon – and to our paralinguistic repertoire. No wonder it has caught on.

And I’m all like

Updates:

In ‘The Internet is a James Joyce Novel‘, Jessica Love at the American Scholar picks up on this post and ponders the spread of captioned images qua memes and their communicative uses:

[L]ike it or not, memes are playing an increasingly prominent role in public discourse. . . . The increasing ease with which we can combine language and pictures will only lead to further innovations.

From an excellent post by Arnold Zwicky on Language Log, December 2006:

[T]eenagers have been fond of discourse-particle uses of like for quite some time, at least 50 years; some people now in their 50s and 60s still use like this way. Meanwhile, quotative like has risen in 25 or 30 years to become the dominant quotative in the speech of young people (and some older speakers use it too). The result is that some young people are indeed heavy users of like in functions that some of their elders do not use it in. And many of these older speakers are annoyed as hell about that.

Zwicky further explores the sociolinguistic aspects of like, confirming its usefulness and examining why exactly some people dislike it so much. He finds that:

discourse-particle and quotative like have both linguistic value (they can be used to convey nuances of meaning) and social value (they’re part of the way personas and social-group memberships are projected).

Steven Poole reminded me of his post at Unspeak a few years ago taking Christopher Hitchens to task for a shallow denigration of quotative like:

he was like and he said do not actually mean the same thing; and Hitchens is like, I do not approve of this youthspeak that I have not made sufficient efforts to understand?

Mercedes Durham told me of research she and colleagues did on the “Constant linguistic effects in the diffusion of ‘be like’” (PDF).

They report on two studies of “change in social and linguistic effects on be like usage and acceptability”, and find “no evidence of change in linguistic constraints on be like [e.g., speaker age, tense, quote content] as it has diffused into U.K. and U.S. Englishes”.

Another development: ‘Like’ is an infix now, which is un-like-believably innovative.

#electronicCommunication #grammar #imageMacros #internet #internetCulture #language #languageChange #like #linguistics #memes #photography #pragmatics #slang #speech #syntax #twitter #wordplay #words