France

Taboo words, also known as swear words, curse words, profanities, etc., are words socially forbidden because they are considered as extremely impolite and/or profoundly insulting. These include rude words – known as gros mots (literally “big/rude words”) in French – related to taboo domains (religion, sexuality, body waste) on the one hand, and bigoted words known as slurs on the other hand – those two subcategories overlap with slurs related to sexuality, e.g. faggot or whore. Compared to the rest of the English or French lexicon, taboo words tend to contain significantly more of the least sonorant consonants, i.e. /p/, /t/, /k/, /tʃ/, /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /θ/, /h/, /b/, /d/, /g/ or /dʒ/ (p&lt;0.01). How can we explain this observation?
	Sound symbolism, the notion that sounds may have a meaning (Haiman 2018: 118-119) gives us a possible explanation. There may be an unconscious form-meaning association in the mind of speakers (Bergen 2016: 52-63) between non-sonorant consonants on the one hand, and some common meaning shared by taboo words on the other hand. This meaning is probably not semantic, but rather pragmatic and emotional (Finkelstein 2018: 311, 326), and the association may be iconic: non-sonorant consonants may be iconically appropriate to express the contextual meaning of &quot;&quot;violation of the hearer&#39;s personal space&quot;&quot; (Haiman 2018: 39-59), or the emotion of aggressiveness (Yardy 2010: 12-20; 71-78) – hence this creates a selection bias towards words with such consonants, when speaker communities choose which words they forbid.
	The study of fictional taboo words from English- and French-speaking works of fiction can give us circumstantial evidence: data gathered from a variety of English-speaking films, comic books, novels, and from French-speaking comic books The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé, show a similar tendency to contain more sonorant consonants compared to the regular lexicon (p&lt;0.05 for English, p&lt;0.06 for French). We will present a more systematic, experimental protocol to gather similar data on fictional taboo words: we will prompt English- and French-speaking respondents to playfully invent fictional swear words – and filler words; more precisely, alien/extra-terrestrial swear words, in order to remove as much as possible the influence of real-life taboo words – because some respondents might think, even unconsciously, that a convincing fictional swear word has to be related to and/or sound like some real-life swear word. If these invented words did follow the same phonological tendency, this would give another empirical confirmation of the hypothesised, sound-symbolic association.
	This suggests that a strong, persistent, conscious sociolinguistic convention (which words are taboo and which are not) can be influenced by an unconscious form-meaning association. Moreover, it suggests that sounds may convey meaning and emotion even in the seemingly least poetic words of the lexicon. We will conclude with theoretical considerations on the numerous social implications of this, especially in relation to social class – politeness vs. impoliteness, and the use of swear words are typically influenced by social class – and domination – what does this tell us about slurs and the proposed alternatives to slurs? Can we use this knowledge to prevent or limit the harm done to the dominated groups that are targeted by slurs?

Languaging Diversity 2021

The sound of taboo: investigating a sound-symbolic association in taboo words of English and French

iconicity

sound symbolism

slurs

curse words

profanity

swear words

taboo

systematicity

## **The Linguistic Construction of Emotional Challenges in a Changing Society**


**Languaging Diversity** is the itinerating conference of the [I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre](https://www.unior.it/index2.php?content_id=14038&content_id_start=1&titolo=i-land-research-centre&parLingua=ENG), an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

Following the six successful events hosted by the Universities of Naples (2013), Catania (2014), Macerata (2016), Cagliari (2017), Antwerp (2018) and Teruel (2019), the seventh edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) will be organized by the University of Lille, France. Due to the COVID-19 ongoing pandemic, the event will be held exclusively online via the virtual conference management platform [Underline](https://underline.io/).


**Focus **

The 7th edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) focuses on the emotional challenges that result from the social innovations of the last two decades, and on the way such experiences are expressed in discourse. Conference convenors invite papers and posters that investigate the intersection of emotion, communication and social change, also within the framework of digital communication. The contributions presented at the LD2021 conference will explore the expression of emotion(s) at the different levels of linguistic description (phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, discursive), and in texts and contexts related to traditional and digital genres in different domains, including (but not restricted to) health, medicine and science, media, politics, the law, academia, the world of corporate and institutional work, education and learning. 


**Conference convenors**

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France

 
**Scientific Committee**

* Giuseppe Balirano, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Henry Hernandez Bayter, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stéphanie Caët, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Bert Cappelle, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Paola Catenaccio, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Emmanuelle Canut, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stefania D’Avanzo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Ilse Depraetere, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Emilia Di Martino, Università degli Studi ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’, Italy
* Antonio Fruttaldo, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Dariusz Galasiński, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland
* Kim Grego, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Siria Guzzo, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
* Geert Jacobs, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
* Samantha Laporte, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Jeannette Littlemore, University of Birmingham, UK
* Julien Longhi, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
* Corinne Oster, Université de Lille & CECILLE, France
* Paolo Mairano, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Antonella Napolitano, Università del Sannio, Italy
* Maria Cristina Nisco, Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’, Italy
* Annick Rivens Mompean, Université de Lille & STL, France 
* Margaret Rasulo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Catherine Ruchon,Université Sorbonne Paris Nord -Pléiade, France
* Hans-Jörg Schmid, LMU München, Germany
* Jerome Tessuto, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy


[**Organizing Committee**](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/)

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Justin Duquesnoy, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Océane Foubert, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Lola Marinato, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Sayf-Eddine Mohamed, Université de Lille & STL, France

**Keynote Speakers**

**Maïa Ponsonnet**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbGV6Kgz" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**Jeannette Littlemore**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cr6i2TVX2d0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**Andrea Scarantino**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbEV6KgI" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

To access the **Languaging Diversity 2021** conference, please remember to [register.](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/registration) 

Languaging Diversity  is the itinerating conference of the I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre, an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

Taboo words, also known as swear words, curse words, profanities, etc., are words socially forbidden because they are considered as extremely impolite and/or profoundly insulting. These include rude words – known as gros mots (literally “big/rude words”) in French – related to taboo domains (religion, sexuality, body waste) on the one hand, and bigoted words known as slurs on the other hand – those two subcategories overlap with slurs related to sexuality, e.g. faggot or whore. Compared to the rest of the English or French lexicon, taboo words tend to contain significantly more of the least sonorant consonants, i.e. /p/, /t/, /k/, /tʃ/, /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /θ/, /h/, /b/, /d/, /g/ or /dʒ/ (p<0.01). How can we explain this observation?
	Sound symbolism, the notion that sounds may have a meaning (Haiman 2018: 118-119) gives us a possible explanation. There may be an unconscious form-meaning association in the mind of speakers (Bergen 2016: 52-63) between non-sonorant consonants on the one hand, and some common meaning shared by taboo words on the other hand. This meaning is probably not semantic, but rather pragmatic and emotional (Finkelstein 2018: 311, 326), and the association may be iconic: non-sonorant consonants may be iconically appropriate to express the contextual meaning of ""violation of the hearer's personal space"" (Haiman 2018: 39-59), or the emotion of aggressiveness (Yardy 2010: 12-20; 71-78) – hence this creates a selection bias towards words with such consonants, when speaker communities choose which words they forbid.
	The study of fictional taboo words from English- and French-speaking works of fiction can give us circumstantial evidence: data gathered from a variety of English-speaking films, comic books, novels, and from French-speaking comic books The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé, show a similar tendency to contain more sonorant consonants compared to the regular lexicon (p<0.05 for English, p<0.06 for French). We will present a more systematic, experimental protocol to gather similar data on fictional taboo words: we will prompt English- and French-speaking respondents to playfully invent fictional swear words – and filler words; more precisely, alien/extra-terrestrial swear words, in order to remove as much as possible the influence of real-life taboo words – because some respondents might think, even unconsciously, that a convincing fictional swear word has to be related to and/or sound like some real-life swear word. If these invented words did follow the same phonological tendency, this would give another empirical confirmation of the hypothesised, sound-symbolic association.
	This suggests that a strong, persistent, conscious sociolinguistic convention (which words are taboo and which are not) can be influenced by an unconscious form-meaning association. Moreover, it suggests that sounds may convey meaning and emotion even in the seemingly least poetic words of the lexicon. We will conclude with theoretical considerations on the numerous social implications of this, especially in relation to social class – politeness vs. impoliteness, and the use of swear words are typically influenced by social class – and domination – what does this tell us about slurs and the proposed alternatives to slurs? Can we use this knowledge to prevent or limit the harm done to the dominated groups that are targeted by slurs?

technical paper

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa directed a movie entitled “Rashomon”, depicting contradicting viewpoints of a single death event. In this study we argue that the Rashomon effect hypothesis can increase our understanding of the role emotions play in knowledge-building communication. Our goal is to understand the gaps between emotional intentions and the emotional interpretations of other participants, and their relation to civic conversations. Additionally, we explore the intersubjective ways in which recognition of expressions of emotions are made in digital, written, contentious conversations. Findings from this study offer new insights into the emotional components, expressive, and interpretive practice in such conversations and reemphasize the value and challenges of understanding emotional presence in digital discussions on civic issues.

Emotion recognition in digital discussions and civic learning processes

As is known, “[t]he word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek roots: νόστος, nóstos (“return home”) and ἄλγος, álgos (“longing”) (Boym, 2001). The word was invented in the 17th century by Johannes Hofer and soon it became very popular.
Nostalgia is an ambiguous phenomenon: it could be seen negatively, as it “fuelled populism and nationalist identity politics” (Menke, Schwarzenegger, 2016: 2), or “as a creative and progressive resource, a tool for commodification, or an agent for identity and community building to articulate cultural or generational belonging” (ibid., p. 2). Nostalgia may be seen also as an emotion. According to Havlena and Holak (1991: 323), it refers back to an earlier period in the individual's life and draws on biased or selective recall of past experiences. Nostalgia may be described as ""a painful yearning to return home” and it is broadly used in advertising, marketing and PR.
It is not only a manipulative technique, which is popular among PR specialists, politicians, journalists, etc. Nostalgia is also a means of overcoming the psychological consequences of the isolation, anxiety and trauma during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria since March 2020 because of its potential to bond with others (Niemeyer, Wentz, 2014: 129), to increase optimism and to mobilise people for action (FioRito and Routledge, 2020).
The aim of the study is to present nostalgia as a strategy for dealing with the state of emergency at the time of the first lockdown in Bulgaria during the COVID-19 crisis when nostalgic winds, memories of the past and literary reminiscences proved to be a successful strategy for dealing with physical isolation. The research questions include 1) a presentation of the nostalgic modes in Facebook and Twitter and a thematic classification of the initiatives, communication strategies and topics in the public space, oriented towards the past; 2) a quantitative analysis within the classified groups aiming to reveal the most frequent model; 3) revealing the reasons for their success as communicative and social messages through their meaning in social media during the emergency situation.
In order to achieve the above goals, a set of methods and approaches is used in the analysis and classification, as well as in the explanation of the reasons for the nostalgic convertibility in the public space, especially intensified during the COVID-19 crisis. Such a complicated phenomenon insists on using an interdisciplinary approach, especially the apparatuses of discourse analysis and content analysis. To investigate the cultural shaping of the nostalgic posts, to explain their social use in an emergency situation and to conceptualize the research data the multimodal analysis theories are also applied (Jovanovic, van Leeuwen, 2018, Ben Moussa et al., 2020, etc.).
The data includes public posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter), published in the period from 15.03.2020, when the state of emergency in connection with COVID-19 was declared in Bulgaria, until 13.05.2020, when it was terminated. We have collected multimodal posts with a nostalgic nuance, representing the longing for the previous lifestyle. We divide them into thematic groups, including historical memories, personal memories, nostalgic games, literary reminiscences, etc. A quantitative analysis within the groups is made aiming to reveal the most frequent model. As the combinations between different groups have been observed they are also presented.  We discuss as well the linguistic and visual characteristics of these messages to find the reasons for their popularity.
The results so far indicate that nostalgia through its diverse manifestation on social media manages to unite people in the presence of physical isolation, to remind them of past experiences and thus to save them from emotional stress which the COVID-19 constrictions and fears may cause. Social media and modern technologies make it possible to create new products based on old, forgotten stories or memories that live a new meaningful life in the specific COVID-19 situation.

References: 
Ben Moussa, M., Benmessaoud, S., Douai, A. (2020) Internet memes as “tactical” social action: A multimodal critical discourse analysis approach. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5920–5940. 
Boym, Sv. (2001) Adoptation and elaboration from Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, NY 2001. Retrieved July 15, 2021, from: http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/n/nostalgia/nostalgia-svetlana-boym.html
FioRito, TA, Routledge, C. (2020) Is nostalgia a past or future-oriented experience? Affective, behavioral, social cognitive, and neuroscientific evidence. Front. Psychol, 11, 1133. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01133
Havlena, W., Holak, S. (1991) “The Good Old Days”: Observations on nostalgia and its role in consumer behavior. In R. Holman, M. Solomon, (eds.). NA - Advances in Consumer Research (Vol. 18, pp.323–329). Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research. 
Jovanovic, D., van Leeuwen, T. (2018) Multimodal dialogue on social media, Social Semiotics, 28:5, 683–699, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2018.1504732
Menke, M., Schwarzenegger, C. (2016) Media, communication and nostalgia. Finding a better tomorrow in the yesterday? Editorial. Medien & Zeit, 4, 2–5.
Niemeyer, K., Wentz, D. (2014) Nostalgia is not what it used to be: serial nostalgia and nostalgic television series. In: Niemeyer, K. (ed). Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, the Present and the Future (pp. 129–138). London: Palgrave McMillan.


Nostalgia as a means of dealing with emotional challenges during the first part of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria Cultural Studies

If countless researchers in the most disparate fields have been investigating Covid-19 from different perspectives, that is because it brought about one of the biggest societal revolution of the 21st century. Through lockdown restrictions, curfews and social distancing, not only it compromised our daily lives, but also the economy and communication sectors at large. In order to contribute to the understanding of this global phenomenon, this research tries to analyse how Covid impacted the advertising industry in the UK by analysing from a multimodal and social semiotic perspective the #StayHomeHeroes digital ad and hashtag created by Iris and the Heroes charity to economically support the NHS in the fight against Covid-19. This presentation raises three points: how both Covid and the media revolution changed societies and communication; the emotional challenges that Covid brought about and the linguistic and semiotic manifestations of this sensitive time, all through a focus on advertising.

#StayHomeHeroes: Hilarious yet bonding print advertising strategies to fight against COVID-19

Numerous studies have been conducted to bolster the role that wink face emoticon (; )) and tongue face emoticon (: P) play in indicating ironic intention in computer-mediated communication (CMC). By contrast, meagre research has been channeled in the direction of emoji-based ironic markers, particularly in cultures other than English, such as Chinese culture. The present study attempts to explore emoji-based comments in WeChat app among Chinese teenagers from both the perspectives of language production and language comprehension. Two experiments are carried out in order to look at what emojis are ironic in signaling speaker’s intention and to what extent these ironic markers will affect the perceived sarcasm as well as the emotional impact of the comments respectively. The first experiment conducts a free response task among 238 native Chinese high school students in order to sort out the emojis that can indicate ironic intention. The results show that wink face emoji and tongue face emoji are less preferable for Chinese teenagers in emoji-based CMC, nor do the two emojis show any significant effect on marking ironic intention; instead, smile face emoji and tears-of-joy emoji  are more likely to be included in sarcastic comments to indicate ironic intention among Chinese teens. Experiment 2 is a rating task set among a new sample of 253 high school students for the purpose of detecting the role the two emojis play in the comprehension and emotional impact of sarcastic and literal comments, for both praise and criticism conditions. The results reveal that 1) emojis are not only compensatory to ironic meaning when accompany the text, but contributory to the conversation in CMC as well, revealing that a stand-alone emoji could function as a response sentence on its own and work out the intended meaning of the recipient; and 2) The emojis exert influence on both the comprehension and emotional impact depending on the surrounding text they appear in. For the degree of sarcasm of the two emojis, both smile face emoji and tear-of- joy emoji exert significant influence on literal texts, making the literal comments more sarcastic in meaning; as for the influences on sarcastic texts, smile face makes sarcastic comments more sarcastic in meaning, whereas tear-of-joy emoji relieves text’s degree of sarcasm and makes sarcastic comments less sarcastic. In regard to the positivity of the two emojis, smile face emoji makes all literal utterances and sarcastic criticism texts less positive but makes sarcastic praise more positive; while tear-of-joy emoji makes all types of texts more positive but makes literal praise less positive. Overall, our findings reveal that different from Western cultures in which positive emoticons ( ; ), : P ; (EMO+) ) tend to be clues for irony, negatively labelled smile face emoji and neutral tear-of-joy emoji are indicators of ironic intention among Chinese teenagers. Compared with emoticons, Emojis are nuanced and visually-detailed graphics that may be more open to interpretation.


What emojis are ironic markers? A survey on Chinese teenagers in WeChat app

This talk investigates the intersection of emotion, communication, and social change in the artistic work and biography of Karima 2G, a cross-cultural identity voicing social exclusion, discrimination, and inequality in contemporary Italy. A second-generation migrant whose language is “feelingfully harnessed” in the task of questioning a white-only view of Italianness. 
From a methodological point of view, the focus is primarily the social and discursive construction of emotion in Karima’s songs and the pragmatic meaning of this ‘emotion talk’. We will not, however, be evaluating Karima’s artistic output; instead, we will use and collect Karima’s biographical data so that her songs make sense within her personal life story. Our investigation relies on an “anthropology of the person” that focuses on the subject rather than on socio/anthropological categories, classes, and ethnicities.

Emotion, communication and social change in Italian second-generation migrants: Karima 2G

Migration and languaging emotions

This paper takes shape from the debate on the role of human rights in maternity care, following several emerging cases of obstetric violence and aggressive and intolerant treatment permeating care during labour and delivery (Freedman et al. 2014). In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement directed at preventing and eliminating disrespectful, non-dignified and abusive behaviour by health professionals during childbirth, highlighting a physical as well as emotional and psychological violence. Early in 2019, a UN report warned against obstetric violence as being still widespread and systematic in nature, acknowledging it has not been fully addressed from a human rights perspective so far.
Despite the fact that the phenomenon is gaining increasing recognition worldwide and at institutional level, there seems to be a lack of theoretical engagement on the issue (Dixon 2015). This study, therefore, explores how women’s experiences are discursively construed, specifically taking into account the stories shared on social media in English-speaking contexts (Canada, the US, the UK)—more specifically, on the websites of charities and advocacy groups, such as the Obstetric Justice Project, Birth Monopoly, Birth Trauma Association, working to expose obstetric violence and raise awareness on the issue. Indeed, social media are being increasingly used as a platform for exchanging views, writing testimonies, thus creating a (safe) site for the production of meanings. In contrast with the current little academic and scientific attention, birth stories have become increasingly common on the Internet, providing detailed descriptions of emotions, psychological states, decisions, relationships. Especially after traumatic experiences, mothers/parents seek healing by speaking up, writing, telling their stories, for a wide range of complex motivations: as a way to re-work the trauma, disrupt and resist against surveillance and abuse of their choices and bodies, re-negotiate power after a disempowering medical experience, unburden themselves, find relief. While projecting the image of suffering bodies in labour facing abuse, humiliation and unconsented medical procedures in what should be, instead, an intimate and joyful moment, these narratives allow a critical thought on practices of discrimination which heavily affect women’s agency and act like a prism reflecting dominant dynamics in society. As some critics have noted (Wolf 2013; Cohen Shabot 2016), obstetric violence is different from other forms of medical violence because labouring/birthing bodies are suffering, unruly and noisy, but they are not ill. They face a structural kind of gender violence, a form of subtler normative oppression aiming at a diminishment of women’s agency, which forces them in the cycle of silence and shame precluding social change and political action.
The stories shared online (and collected over a time-span raging from 2018 to 2020) are analysed following Halliday’s (1981, 1985, 2001) systemic functional approach to discourse, which theorises language as a systemic resource for meaning-making, in combination with a feminist post-structuralist theoretical framework influenced by Michel Foucault’s work (Foucault 1977, 1980, 1989; Butler 1990; Grosz 1994; Allen 2014). Additionally drawing on a discourse analysis perspective, the article investigates emerging and recurrent patterns and themes in women’s narratives, questioning not merely power dynamics in the health-care system during childbirth but also existing power relations in society. In particular, the article addresses three research questions: 1) how women’s emotion patterns and states are discursively construed; 2) what are the most recurrent plot units or topics through which the phenomenon of obstetric violence is framed; 3) what are the underlying questions of power and gender relations and to what extent these dynamics of abuse convey covert forms of subjugation enacting practices of discrimination which represent the expression of historical, social and cultural values that are buried and disguised in the naturalised order of things. 

Bibliographic references

Allen, Amy. “Feminist Perspectives on Power.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Phylosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2014. plato.stanford.edu/entries/feministpower/.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
Cohen Shabot, Sara. “Making Loud Bodies ‘Feminine’: A Feminist-Phenomenological Analysis of Obstetric Violence.” Human Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1-17.
Dixon, Lydia. “Obstetrics in a Time of Violence.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 29, 2015, pp. 437-454.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Penguin Books, 1977.
---. “Body/Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon, translated by Colin Gordon, Pantheon, 1980, pp. 55-62.
---. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Routledge, 1989.
Freedman, Lynn, et al. “Defining Disrespect and Abuse of Women in Childbirth.” Bulletin of World Health Organization, no. 92, 2014, pp. 915-17.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana UP, 1994.
Halliday, M.A.K. Explorations in the Function of Language. Edward Arnold, 1981.
---. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Edward Arnold, 1985.
---. “On the Grammatical Foundations of Discourse.” Grammar and Discourse: Proceedings of the International Conference on Discourse Analysis, edited by Ren Shaozeng et al., University of Macau Publication Centre, 2001, pp. 47-57.
Wolf, Allison B. “Metaphysical Violence and Medicalised Childbirth.” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 27, no.1, 2013, pp. 101-11.

Voicing labouring bodies: women's narratives and gender violence

The purpose of this paper is to study how and through which strategies individuals defend their ‘personas’ in discourse from online communication of hate.
I studied, in particular, the case of the Hollywood actor Robert Downey Jr. in relation to his controversial blackface role in the action comedy Tropic Thunder (2009) and how he defended his ‘persona’ from the backlash that his role caused. In movie, in fact, Robert Downey Jr. plays an extravagant and pretentious Australian actor who decides to undergo a controversial pigmentation alteration surgery to darken his skin in order to play an African American character.
Although the movie was intended to be a metanarrative satire of the Hollywood cinema, the audience accused Robert Downey Jr. of blackface.
I studied, through a sociolinguistic analysis, how Robert Downey Jr. defended himself from such accusations of racism. The analysis was conducted on a corpus of four manually transcribed interviews, to which the American actor participated between 2008 and 2009 (for the release of the movie) and again in 2020 when the he is being asked if he “could do Tropic Thunder today”. I noticed how, in all interviews, the actor used three main strategies to protect his persona from the racist backlash:
• Abundant use of narration: the actor talks about both his private life and 'cinematic life' in order to create his own personal identity through narration [This strategy refers to Gergen's theory of a ‘Narrative Approach to Personal Identity’, according to which the sense of who we are is related to the ability to create a coherent story about ourselves];
• Use of direct speech to quote friends and relatives who had defended his role in blackface, in order to make his speech sound more authentic and sincere. [This strategy can be traced back to Davies and Harré's 'Positioning Theory', according to which individuals have the
power to place - metaphorically - themselves and others within 'positions' (or social roles) in
everyday conversations depending on the context].
• Abundant use of the first person singular, in order to clarify his own point of view,
thus minimizing any possible political intent of his blackface.
Right after the 2020 interview, the actor was criticised on Twitter and further became a victim of ‘cancel culture’ (the act of publicly humiliating individuals who acted a cancellable offence, typified by racist, sexist or homophobic remarks): photos of the actor in blackface appeared on all socia media, angering thousands of users from all over the world: as a result, the hashtag #Cancelrdj appeared in the global trends of Twitter.
Robert Downey Jr. did not respond to the attempted cancellation of his persona on Twitter: the 2020 interview remains his last and definitive statement on his participation in Tropic Thunder.

"Personas in discourse": defending cinematic Identities from online communication of hate

This study investigates the use of gender-inclusive language among Italian non-binary individuals. In English-speaking countries, the epicene pronoun ‘they’ and neo-pronouns such as ‘xe’ and ‘zim’ have been adopted by non-binary individuals and LGBTQA+ allies alike. In this debate, Romance languages are a very interesting case, since they are inflectional languages characterised by gender markers for all variable parts of speech. In Italy, activists are trying to spread language awareness to dismantle gender discrimination conveyed through language. Projects such as ‘Italiano Inclusivo’, ‘Progetto Genderqueer’, and scholars such as Gheno (2019a and 2019b) are involved in the analysis and promotion of inclusive language, while one of the most important research institutions, the Accademia della Crusca (2020), refuses to accept any alternative. It is against this background that this study analyses the state of the use of inclusive language among the Italian non-binary community. Through a survey submitted to several Italian LGBTQA+ online groups, the study investigates non-binary individuals’ preferred pronouns, their selection of suffixes when writing or speaking about themselves or other non-binary individuals, how they refer to a group of mixed binary and non-binary people, and further proposals of inclusive forms. Gender-inclusive language is more than a matter of political correctness. Understanding the mechanisms behind its use is important because interpersonal communication contributes to gender stereotyping and misgendering. 

Gender-inclusive language among Italian non-binary individuals: a survey

After being accused of sexual assault in 2018, judge Kavanaugh received support from Donald Trump who offered him his sympathy as he explained “I feel so badly for him. This is not a man who deserves this”. This kind of inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of misogynistic behaviour is what the philosopher Kate Manne (2017, 2018) calls himpathy. English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours have accompanied accounts of sexual and sexist violence from the last few years, amplified by social media and the #MeToo movement. As for these stories, these neologisms aim at raising awareness by making the designated behaviours more visible.
A similar linguistic phenomenon occurred in the 1970s with the emergence of feminist linguistics. Based on the observation of the androcentric nature of language, feminists suggested strategies to counter this male bias, among which: (i) neutral or feminised forms to replace male generics (e.g. fire fighter instead of fireman), also known as “gender-fair language”, and (ii) linguistic innovations to name experiences from women’s perspective (e.g. sexual harassment; Spender 1990: 182–190). While there is a large body of language and gender research on the former, the latter has received little attention.
Among the few studies, Ehrlich and King (1994) show how these linguistic innovations lost their intended feminist meanings as they became institutionalised. The authors identify strategies depoliticising these forms, such as the expansion of the definition arguing that it is originally the feminist meaning in order to ridicule the phenomenon. For example, sexual abuse is redefined as overhearing a sibling discussing sexual experimentation. The authors (1994: 73) argue: “while feminist and nonsexist linguistic innovations […] attempt to reshape the dominant social structures and attitudes, they are at the same time being shaped by these very structures”. In their study, the social structure reshaping these meanings is the press media defined as a “dominant elite” (1994: 65) in which they observe the linguistic innovations. The reappropriation of feminist-driven language change has also been observed for gender-fair forms (Baker 2010, Pauwels 2003).
The linguistic innovations from the 1970s and the recent English gendered neologisms share the same motives – increasing the visibility of specific behaviours through names. However, Ehrlich and King’s (1994) findings seem to suggest that this is a lost cause. To become more visible, these neologisms have to be used outside of the linguistic community from which they originated. In other words, they have to be diffused. Yet, their study shows that a higher degree of diffusion means a higher risk of losing the intended feminist meaning.
Drawing from these results, this paper presents a sociopragmatic analysis (Schmid 2016: 82) of English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours coined in the current feminist movement. The study is guided by the following questions: (i) what is the degree of diffusion of the recent English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours? and (ii) did their intended feminist meaning change as they became diffused and does it differ depending on the type of source in which they occur? The neologisms will be analysed adopting a quantitative and qualitative corpus-based approach
using the NOW (News on the Web) corpus. More specifically, the degree of diffusion will be measured in terms of frequency, number of countries in which a neologism occurs, types of sources (i.e. is it in a journal specialised in gender matters or in general media?), and domains (i.e. the topic of the article). As mentioned above, Ehrlich and King’s (1994) findings are based on the study of innovations in the press media defined as a “dominant elite”. The digital nature of the NOW corpus offers a diversity of sources as it contains web-based newspapers and magazines from 20 countries since 2010. Both mainstream media such as The Guardian or The New York Times, and alternative media such as Big Gay Picture Show and Feminism in India are present in the corpus. This diversity will not only be used to observe whether a neologism is used outside of the linguistic community in which it originated but also to compare usage throughout source types. The media plurality is essential to provide a comprehensive account of the usage of these gendered neologisms.

References
Baker, P. (2010). Will Ms ever be as frequent as Mr? A corpus-based comparison of gendered terms across four diachronic corpora of British English. Gender and Language, 4(1), 125–149.
Ehrlich, S., & King, R. (1994). Feminist meanings and the (de)politicization of the lexicon. Language in Society, 23(1), 59–76.
Manne, K. (2018, September 26). Brett Kavanaugh and America’s ‘himpathy’ reckoning. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-himpathy.html; accessed 20/03/2021
Manne, K. (2017). Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford University Press.
Pauwels, A. (2003). Linguistic sexism and feminist linguistic activism. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender (pp. 550–570). Wiley-Blackwell.
Schmid, H-J. (2016 [2005]). English morphology and word-formation: An introduction (3rd ed.). Erich Schmidt.
Spender, D. (1990 [1980]). Man made language (2nd ed.). Pandora Press.
Corpus
Davies, M. (2016-). Corpus of News on the Web (NOW). https://www.english-corpora.org/now/

The sound of taboo: investigating a sound-symbolic association in taboo words of English and French

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The sound of taboo: investigating a sound-symbolic association in taboo words of English and French

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