The worldwide use and meaning of the f-word

• Published in: Intercultural pragmatics 2019, Vol.16 (1), p.85-111
• Main Authors: Vatvedt Fjeld, Ruth E., Kristiansen, Elsa, Rathje, Marianne, Oskarsson, Veturlidi, Konstaninovskaia, Natalia, Gill, Inayat, Menuta, Fekede
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African languages; Alphabets; Amharic; cursing; Danish; Danish language; English language; Globalization; Heritage language; Hindi; Hindi language; Icelandic; Icelandic language; Indian English; Linguistics; Lingvistik; Loanwords; Meaning; Nordiska språk; Norwegian; Norwegian language; Obscenities; Russian; Russian language; Scandinavian Languages; Semitic languages; Social groups; Sociolinguistics; swearing; Syntax; Taboos; Word meaning
• ISSN: 1612-295X; 1613-365X; 1613-365X
• DOI: 10.1515/ip-2019-0004

This article documents the increasing use of the English curse word worldwide, as well as its degree of adaption into the host language, its syntactic function, and its meaning and its strength as taboo. Comparing the use of with a special focus on the Nordic countries ( , and ) with its use in Eurasia and Africa (with different alphabets, namely Cyrillic in , Devanāgarī in and Ge’ez script in ), we found some similar developmental patterns, but also differences, for example to what degree the English loan word has replaced local curses and in what ways among social groups within a country. Comparing the terms used for the same concept was challenging because some countries have better text corpora and more research on written languages and especially on taboos, and those without such resources required additional minor investigations for a baseline. Findings revealed that has spread worldwide from English, and it is commonly used in Nordic languages today. In Russian is also adopted into the heritage language to a relatively high degree, and it has further gained importance in the vocabulary of India, where English has become the most used language by the higher and middle classes, but less so by lower classes. In contrast, the study of Amharic language in Ethiopia shows that the word is rarely used at all, and only by youngsters. We found a pattern starting from the outer North with Icelandic having adapted and adopted the word the most, a slight decline in use in Norwegian and Danish, with less adaption and use in Russian, even less in Indian-English or Hindi, and being more or less absent in the African language Amharic. Formally though it is used conceptually both in Hindi and Amharic.