Fighting Words!

FIGHTING WORDS!
Fighting Words! is a critical exploration of all kinds of “bad language” and

how that language shapes, reinforces, or subverts identity, ideology, and
power. Eric Louis Russell expertly investigates facets of taboo language,
drawing on diverse interdisciplinary material to define key concepts and
using them to examine the complex dynamics behind a wide range of
examples from popular culture, from Donald Trump’s controversies to
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP.
What emerges from this analysis is the intersectionality of how language
is performed and how it contributes to the shaping of identity and
simultaneously shapes and is shaped by social attitudes, cultural assumptions,
and systems of power with regard to race, sexuality, and gender.
With fascinating “A Closer Look” boxes and a rich array of pedagogical
features, this is the perfect text for advanced students and researchers in
sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and related fields.
Eric Louis Russell is Professor of French & Italian at the University of

California at Davis, with affiliations in the Linguistics Department and the
Program in Gender, Sexualities & Women’s Studies. He is the author of
Alpha Masculinity: Hegemony in Language and Discourse and The Discursive
Ecology of Homophobia: Unraveling Anti-LGBTQ Speech on the European
Far Right.
In a single accessible, readable, and relevant volume infused with wry humor
and keen insights, Fighting Words! offers readers an indispensable primer on
topics ranging from linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics to political
correctness and cancel culture. Beginning with a focus on “bad” language,
the volume invites the reader to question, reexamine, and reimagine the
very construct of what language is, imploring us to consider language as a
verb: to language. To help his readers question the language that permeates
the contemporary sociopolitical space, Russell skillfully embeds his analysis
of transgressive languaging acts in engaging, relevant contexts: the Trump
years, overheard conversations, rap music, and the ubiquitous “Karens”
who dominate social media. Via these rich and provocative examples, Rus-
sell encourages the reader to examine these linguistic transgressions more
thoughtfully and critically. Discussion questions and suggestions for further
reading are provided at the end of each chapter, providing not simply “food
for thought” but rather provocative and insightful stimuli for difficult con-
versations. Fighting Words! is essential reading for a divided nation of people
struggling, but often failing, to understand each other.
—Thomas Jesús Garza, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
FIGHTING WORDS!
A Critical Approach to
Linguistic Transgression
Eric Louis Russell

Cover image: © Getty Images | drante
First published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 Eric Louis Russell
The right of Eric Louis Russell to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-13054-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13053-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22742-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Prologue – On Never Looking Away ix
1 Rethinking Language: Foundations for Critique 1

If Not Existence, Then What? 4
Implications of Language-as-Verb 6
Tying It Together 7
Discussion Questions 9
Further Reading 9
2 Languaging Transgression: “Grabbing Pussy” and

“Locker Room Talk” 11
Describing Transgressive Languaging 13
Linguistic Signs 16
Beyond Words 21
X-Phemism 23
Structured Languaging 25
Tying It Together 28
Further Reading 31
3 Languaging Meaning: “Rolling Coal” and “Having Balls” 33

Unintended Transgression 34
Languaging Meaning 35
vi Contents
Meaning and Languagers 40

Languaging Culture 42
Languaging Communities and Communities of
Languaging 47
Languaging Context 50
Indexing and Enregisterment 53
Further Reading 58
4 Languaging Worldview: Ideology and Mythology 60

Beliefs and Languaging 61
Languaging Rules 63
Mythology and Ideology 65
Languaging and Race 70
Further Reading 78
5 Languaging Authority and Power: Karens in the Wild 80

Karens (as well as Darrens, Beckys and Warrens) 81
Authority and Power 83
Doing Language and Doing Power 86
Censorship and Self-Censorship 89
Facework and Verbal Hygiene 92
Further Reading 100
6 Languaging Consequence: Linguistic Performativity

and Hate Speech 101
Insults and Hate Speech 102
Languaging in Real Time 106
Speech Act Theory 109
Interpolation and Hailing 114
Further Reading 121
Contents vii
7 Languaging Cancellation: The Ecology of Discourse

and Hegemony 122
Cancel Culture 123
Discourse Two Ways 127
Discursive Power and Hegemony 131
Critical Discourse Studies 134
Further Reading 140
8 Languaging Rebellion: When Pussy Grabs Back 142

Transgression at the Top of the Charts 143
Linguistic Rebellion 144
Transgression as Liberation 150
Further Reading 157
Works Cited 159

Index 175
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work would not have seen the light of day were it not for several people
who deserve a heartfelt shout-out. Foremost are my editor at Routledge,
Amy Laurens, and assistant Bex Hume, as well as Ze’ev Sudry, who first
approached me with a (what appeared at the time) crazy invitation to take
up this project. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge colleagues at the
University of California, Davis (Departments of French & Italian and Lin-
guistics), and at the Università degli Studi di Trieste (Dipartimento di Studi
Umanistici): thank you e grazie mille for listening to my ideas, for providing
your own thoughts and for your support. Students in two decades of HUM
15 have been a source of inspiration and much needed challenges, keeping
me on my toes and making me question my own preconceived notions.
A huge thanks to my wonderful teaching assistants over the years, especially
Chloe Brotherton and Mirna Reyna. Finally, I am eternally grateful to my
friends, family and, especially, husband Sam: there are no fucking words to
express my gratitude.
PROLOGUE – ON NEVER
LOOKING AWAY
A decade and a half ago, the University of California, like other public insti-
tutions of higher learning, found itself in the grip of an existential crisis, one
that reshaped the humanities and human sciences and indirectly led to the
writing of these pages. An overheated housing market had crashed, sending
government finances into a tailspin and provoking a sharp economic decline,
all of which squeezed campus budgets to an extent not seen in decades. This
was a watershed moment for many disciplines and fields, especially those like
languages, whose position has long been precarious in the neoliberalized,
ever more STEM-centred world of US higher education.1 With the goal
of, in the words of an erstwhile dean, “paying our way” (see Chapter 2 for
more on euphemisms), I and my colleagues were encouraged to develop
large-enrolment classes, conduits for putting butts in seats and placating
administrative bean counters, even if student learning was to suffer.
“Fuck me,” I recall thinking, almost certainly using this or a similar expres-
sion, “there’s no fucking way that many students could ever give even half a
fuck about what I do.” My area of scholarly expertise being largely theoreti-
cal, I was at a loss to respond to the dean’s imperative. Bitching about this
mandate with friends and colleagues – and again undoubtedly using a fair
dash of profanity while also raising a few eyebrows (I was younger and very
much too sure of myself in those years) – it occurred to me that the very
form of my reaction, in all its blundering, non-academic vulgarity, might
make for a compelling undergraduate course. At least, I found the prospect
inspiring. Call it swearing, cursing or cussing, I really fucking love doing
language in this way. I always have relished the shape and weight of so-
called bad language, from my co-primary English and German, to French
x Prologue – On Never Looking Away
and Dutch (languages of my academic formation), to Italian (encompass-

ing much of my present scholarly and personal life) and even to Spanish
and Slovenian (in which I continually struggle to gain a toehold). In all
spaces I have inhabited, at times for years, at times for brief sojourns, I have
relished deploying different mechanisms of being vulgar or crass, observ-
ing how people insult each other and how these insults are received, and
attending to expressions injected into moments of humour, frustration or
pain. (My go-to in English is an off-the-cuff fuckballs, in French puuuutain,
drawing out the first syllable, in Dutch a stern but dull verdomme, and in
Italian the omnipresent cazzo.2) What is not to love about the richness that
raw communicative moments demonstrate about linguistic and cultural set-
tings, let alone the people who inhabit them? And what is not fascinating
about the aperture that these acts give into the inner working of different
communities, our own included?
As the preceding should make clear, this is not just the stuff of distant,
removed-from-daily life academia. I am a participant in these moments,
spaces and contexts; I am a member of these communities; and I am affected
by what happens in these semiotic spaces, as much as I affect them in turn.
I confess to using so-called bad language on a daily basis, often as I wake
up (who among us hasn’t faced the first moments of a Monday with the
thought, articulated or not, “goddamnit, here the fuck we go again!”).
I continue these practices throughout the day, responding to the little
things (dense traffic or forgotten items on a grocery list, which merit at
minimum an “oh for fuckssake”) and to far more important ones (abrasive
colleagues or the state of current politics, often worthy of something much
stronger, such as “fuckmenightly”). My languaging isn’t limited to so-called
swears, either: I am fascinated by offensive humour, even as I am frequently
repelled by it; I am riveted by profanity and blasphemy, even if I confess to
having little of the faith requisite to truly experience these concepts; and
I cannot help but perk up when I hear insults being thrown about, even
when I, a friend or members of my communities are the object of hate and
animus (being an openly gay, unabashedly progressive, European-American
academic in the early twenty-first century means such moments are far from
exceptional). It is not necessarily the shock or provocation of such ways of
interacting that appeal to me – although I would be dishonest in saying that
isn’t part of it – it is the efficiency, power and impact of such naked practices,
the richness and variability of their form and structure, and the embodied
results that they produce. Languaging in such a high-impact manner – and
few semiotic modalities are more impactful than those that are “not sup-
posed to be done” – is akin to swinging a communicative hammer: it might
not always be pretty and make a bit of a mess, but it works and leaves little
room for confusion. In other words, it gets shit done.
Prologue – On Never Looking Away xi
Thus, it was perhaps inevitable that I began to seriously consider the

question, “Why the fuck should I not construct class around this fucking
shit?” Why not approach so-called bad language with the same methods and
stances that I and other linguists use in our more traditional teaching assign-
ments? Why not use this practice to guide students toward better questions
concerning that which they are told shouldn’t be done in the first place,
spurring critical thinking habits and intellectual postures?
It seemed like a fucking great idea then, and it sure as fuck still does now.
Studying This Shit

This shit – swearing, cursing, insults, offensive jokes, crass speech and all else
that we are told time and again is somehow decadent, defective, unwor-
thy or insidious – is not a trivial or marginal matter. This shit is, in fact,
everywhere: it is part and parcel of our human experience, love or loathe
it, run from or toward it, embrace or ignore it. Hardly a day goes by that
most of us don’t utter something that we have been told we ought not to,
and we regularly do language in a manner we have learned is best avoided,
even if such communication is directed only to ourselves (after all, we also
think through language). And it’s hardly just ourselves or our close contacts
who do this – we constantly hear of one or another famous person uttering
words not meant for public consumption, provoking forced apologies and
even prompt resignations. With the omnipresence of social media and new
means of instantaneous communication, it doesn’t take an astute observer
to see that so-called bad language and the people who do it are never far to
hand, nor are the consequences for such linguistic action lacking.
And yet, we spend very little time and energy attending to any of these
actions and the contexts in which they occur, save perhaps to offer admo-
nition and pretend that this is marginal or can be marginalized. This is a
true shame, as such shit is as much the stuff of our human existence as is
the economics of wealth and poverty or the biology of cancer and sexually
transmitted disease, subjects of serious and dedicated study at any university
worthy of such a moniker. “Why the fuck shouldn’t this shit be studied,”
I reasoned, as the shape and form of a dedicated course began to evolve,
“especially since it’s fucking everywhere and everyone is so fucking up in
arms about it all.” I reasoned that, if my colleagues in other departments can
offer classes on a wide variety of topics deemed sensitive or controversial,
ranging from the history of genocide to the mechanisms of environmental
poisoning, I could offer a course that looks at communicative moments that
engender shock, offense and anger.
So began my adventure as a scholar-teacher of bad language. I first waded
into these pedagogical waters timidly, confining discussion to a handful of
xii Prologue – On Never Looking Away
lectures in a course entitled Language and Identity. (Fun fact: the course
is still offered under this title, as our campus registrar has understandably
balked at the unofficial course title “Fuck This Shit,” although I do include
it prominently on syllabi and in the curricular portal). Over the next sev-
eral years, it evolved into a dedicated course that looks solidly and squarely
at this shit, tackling new and newly controversial shit far beyond swearing
or expletives. Year after year, students have responded positively to the
offering – a fact that has, no doubt, pleased various administrators (the same
ones who have also either not cared to look more deeply at the class and its
content or who have simply turned their heads, satisfied with enrolments
and a lack of scandal . . . fingers crossed!). And this is not just an adminis-
trative success but also a pedagogical one – at least, I hope – mostly thanks
to the undergraduates who make up the course community. Students may
be young and are often inexperienced, but they are hardly stupid. When it
comes to linguistic life, they are quite far from naïve. In fact, they are curi-
ous and even eager to examine experiences that have long been relegated to
the shadows, especially when this is something about which they have been
made ashamed or embarrassed.
My own trajectory has been exciting, humbling, frustrating and instruc-
tive. The class participants – students who are typically in the early years of
undergraduate study, very often in their first term – are ever changing, which
has meant that the object of our work together has evolved continuously,
even surprisingly. Although I provide structure and scaffolding, they teach
me as much, if not more than I am able to teach them as it concerns con-
temporary languaging practices and perspectives. This has not always been
smooth sailing, by any means: there have been many moments that chal-
lenged me – as an intellectual, as an instructor and as a human being. Discus-
sions of forms referring to genitalia and masturbation have made me turn
crimson with embarrassment; a unit examining offensive humour left me with
a profound sense of discomfort, especially when it became clear that so-called
rape jokes had supplanted antecedent forms of sexist humour (this was in the
early 2010s, before the #MeToo movement come into its current salience);
and issues of racism and xenophobia, particularly in the Trumpist era, have
required a great deal of empathy and patience, not to mention pulse-checking
from all sides. Time and again, year after year, class after class, I return to the
fundamental ethical consideration of this work; I have attempted to do the
same in the pages that follow. As I try to make it clear to students, I do not
believe that it is intellectually honest or ethical to ignore uncomfortable reali-
ties, particularly those that are part and parcel of our daily lives, and especially
when this material is highly impactful. We may wish that no one were insulted
because of race, gender, sexuality or another identity characteristic; we may
hope for a world in which humour is not a weapon wielded by the powerful
Prologue – On Never Looking Away xiii
to further ensmall the powerless; and we may try to avoid speaking, writing or
tweeting in ways that are considered crass and uncivilized in order to present
a positive social persona. These aspirations are normal and may even reflect
many of our better selves. However, any attempt to control languaging and
languagers ultimately amounts to a Sisyphean enterprise: no matter how hard
we toil, pushing the boulder of “bad language” up a hill, we will inevitably
find that gravity has pushed it back down upon us time and again. (I would
suggest that our efforts are doomed to failure because, in this analogy, we are
both the mountain and the rock, both Sisyphus and Zeus, both creator and
created – more on this in the chapters that follow.)
Which leads me to ask again, perhaps to the point of pedantry, why the
fuck shouldn’t we study this shit?
I believe that we should and that we must. We must do this systemati-
cally, calling upon theoretical and applied work in various fields – linguistics
and sociolinguistics, of course, but also discourse analysis, philosophy, his-
tory, sociology, anthropology and much more. We must do this bravely,
refusing to shy away from uncomfortable truths or indelicate realities. And
we must do this from a critical perspective, maintaining a careful balance
between interrogation and open-mindedness, scepticism and wonder. We
must do this because those who do language also cause injury and harm
through their actions, just as they shock and offend with their actions, and
because we judge such people, just as we are judged ourselves. Perhaps
more than all else, we should do this because we are capable of this type of
inquiry – and capable of carrying it out thoughtfully and openly.
This is, in effect, my invitation: to step into the careful, critical and
uncomfortable studying of the shit. And, for fuckssake, to do it well.
What This Book Is (and What It Is Not)

Before reviewing the different components of this book and what it is
intended to be, it is important to clarify what it is not. First and foremost,
this is not another book about swearing, vulgarity or even more generally
about so-called bad words, regardless of how they might be labelled. Of
course, profanity and vulgarity are a part of what is examined in the follow-
ing pages, if only because it would be impossible to attend to such a topic
otherwise (although the astute reader should already be prepared to call the
very notion of word into question, a topic taken up more in Chapter 2). It is
not that such matters are uninteresting or trivial but that there have already
been many insightful and interesting works looking at bad words, many of
which are listed at the close of this prologue.
Rather than the nebulous concept of bad language, this book exam-
ines transgressive languaging and transgressive languagers, moments of
xiv Prologue – On Never Looking Away
boundary crossing and the human actors who author them (see Chapter 1
for clarity on these unconventional terms). These are actions that shape not
only what we think of others but how we understand ourselves and our place
in communities both narrow and broad. Transgression involves who said or
wrote or tweeted or posted what; it also involves the people hearing or read-
ing or retweeting or reposting in response. And the nature of transgression
arises not merely or even primarily from isolated individuals, emerging
instead from a sociolinguistic and discursive ecosystem (Russell, 2019).
These considerations and their inclusion in the description, interpretation
and analysis of transgressive linguistic events visibilize that which is often
invisible: concepts such as authority and who grants, accepts and/or con-
tests it; ideas such as power and who holds it, how they attain and deploy
it, as well as those who dispute it; and theories concerning the systems of
structured relation, notably those emerging from or cogent to the Frankfurt
School and its primary catalysts, such as Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse
and Adorno, all of whom sought to peel back the layers of social reality and
apprehend the structures and dynamics underlying them, this with (admit-
tedly fraught) emancipatory goals. In effect, the concept of transgressive
languaging is always about more than what it appears on the surface and
studying it carefully offers a means to better understand the hidden forces
operating across communities and cultures.
To return to the example that frames this prologue, swearing is certainly
one type of transgressive linguistic activity. When I write sentences such as
“Why the fuck shouldn’t we study this shit?” I am crossing a border that
separates two arenas of action: one that might allow me to language in ways
considered fit for private consumption, for instance among close friends at a
bar, and one that requires me to adhere to strict norms of collective linguis-
tic behaviour, in this instance cogent to academic writing and publishing.
People like me, guardians of all that is erudite and sacred about academia
and its trappings, are not supposed to publicly language in this way. The
transgression inherent to such an act is not simply a matter of the words
I choose. It also arises from a host of other factors that are not readily appar-
ent but whose import is far deeper. These include questions of authority and
hygiene, power and hegemony, ideology and mythology: all are bound up
in this example. Crossing the boundary separating “acceptable in private”
from “unacceptable in public” testifies to my own attempt to claim power,
notably the power to challenge and provoke the readership of these pages,
as well as the power of my editors and publishers (who will no doubt have
had much to say about this prologue!) to control how far across such a
boundary I may wander with impunity.
These and many other transgressions are the focus of this book. The
foundational interrogation of the following pages is thus not only one of
Prologue – On Never Looking Away xv
taboo or of labelling, not simply one of defining boundaries and describing

how these are crossed, but one that interrogates the very notion of bound-
ary and of crossing, one that calls into question the forces that establish
and enforce boundaries and the inheritances that lead us to understand one
or another act and actor as transgressive, not to mention the extent of any
transgression. This concerns all that makes up a linguistic community, from
its members to the powers that unite and divide them, from the knowledge
that allows them to perform and accomplish things with languaging to the
ways in which others interpret and react to such moments. In short, it is
about humanity in a fundamentally human way, as all humans are languag-
ers and the vast majority of human interaction involves some sort of lan-
guaging. And these languagings are also very, very frequently transgressive.
This book is intended to serve as both a reference and a guide for stu-
dents and scholars at various levels of study, ranging from advanced under-
graduates to professional researchers, and is hopefully of interest to a wider,
curious audience beyond academia. It brings together antecedent scholar-
ship, some of which is not usually applied to linguistic transgression, and
is divided into eight chapters, each of which centres on a specific theme,
illustrated by a real-life example. Chapter 1 serves as the foundation of the
book, advancing several concepts and terminological conventions that frame
discussion throughout, most notably the refutation of language-as-thing
and the assertion of language-as-verb. Chapter 2 introduces key ideas and
vocabulary involved in transgressive languaging and enlanguagement, using
former president Trump’s assertions (namely, that he could “grab women
by the pussy”) as descriptive and interpretive examples. Chapter 3 moves to
the question of meaning and its social construction, examining a hot mic
moment and asking how languagers make and remake different aspects of
their reality. Chapter 4 takes on questions of linguistic mythology and ideol-
ogy, considering how languagers contend with, promote and rebel against
Academic English. Chapter 5 tackles issues of authority and power, offering
a closer look at so-called Karens and their linguistic activity, as well as com-
munity reaction to this. Chapter 6 turns to performativity and speech act
theory, building on the ways in which languaging and enlanguagement are
framed in Chapter 1 by re-examining several instances in which the n-word
was deployed and issues relevant to hate speech or linguistically manifested
animus. Chapter 7 turns to the notion of discourse and hegemony as real-
ized through languaging, interrogating examples of so-called cancel cul-
ture. In closing, Chapter 8 takes up acts of linguistic rebellion, including
rehabilitation and resignification, reverting to many of the formal foci of
Chapter 2 through an examination of Cardi B’s hit song “Wet Ass Pussy.”
Each chapter begins with a story taken from recent years, real-life
moments used to focus readers while serving as a basis for the application
xvi Prologue – On Never Looking Away
of pertinent concepts and terms. Of course, these are not the only examples
that might be evoked in reference to the themes and ideas under discus-
sion, and each chapter includes several additional illustrative points that are
intended to frame debate, whether in a formal classroom or in other, less
traditional settings, as well as a series of questions for subsequent discussion.
Also included are suggestions for further reading. As will be obvious from
the very beginning, the division between different chapters and their order-
ing are, for the most part, a matter of authorial choice. With the exception
of Chapter 1, which challenges many of the ingrained ways of talking about
language and linguistic activity, and Chapter 2, which should prove useful
to readers who are less familiar with linguistics, all others are relatively
interchangeable and can be read in any order.
Author Positionality
It will be obvious to any reader that this book does not pretend to be
comprehensive in its scope or treatment of linguistic transgression, a task
that would prove impossible for even the most talented author. Much of
this limitation is self-imposed, deriving from the choice to focus on Eng-
lish linguistic and North American cultural themes and data. Other notable
biases include the selection of thematic foci and the real-life examples used
to illustrate them. In other words, there is already a tremendous amount
of interpretation that precedes all description and analysis in these pages, if
only through the narrowing of intellectual lenses. For this reason, I feel it
is best to depart from the seemingly objective rhetoric and posturing and
openly acknowledge who I am, my own experience, and how these facts
have shaped this book.
Nearly all examples and source material in this book emerge from Anglo-
phone, US cultural contexts, to the exclusion of others. This highly nar-
rowed focus should not be understood to imply that there is something
unique or magnanimous about this backdrop – or that other linguacultures
have nothing to offer by way of compelling examples – but arises from two
practical motivations. Firstly, this book is being written by a scholar who
has spent the vast majority of his professional life in the above-mentioned
settings, although I must also confess that many of the examples are not
part of my repertoire. I do, however, believe that it is important to use for
illustrations examples for which I have intuitions and lived experience, as
well as ones that are accessible and legible to the greatest number of readers.
As I have argued in Russell (2019, 2021, 2024) and in Knisely and Rus-
sell (2024), the type of careful, critical scholarship that is exemplified and
modelled in the following pages can only be done from an emic perspective,
implicating a view from within and denying any mythological objectivity.
Prologue – On Never Looking Away xvii
Secondly, and acknowledging that this is the result of myriad forces that
are hardly equanimous – and might even be qualified as oppressively neo-
colonial – US cultural and linguistic practices are one of, if not the point of
reference in an ever more interconnected world (see critique in Ives, 2009).
For good or for bad (and let me be clear: I believe the scales tilt undeniably
in the latter direction), the United States is the source of much globalized
and globalizing discourse, including that pertinent to transgression. To see
examples of this powerful force one need only look at the ways in which
popular acts of disruption, such as the #MeToo movement and wokeness,
have spread from this sociolinguistic and sociocultural base to nearly all
corners of the globe. Thus, while the example descriptions, interpretations
and analyses might come from this backdrop, they stand to be at least some-
what legible to others – and hopefully the intellectual, critical work applied
here can serve as a template for the study of transgressions in many more
linguacultural contexts.
Finally, a brief mention truly must be made of the examples that were
selected themselves. They are all cases of transgression that are disconcert-
ing, sometimes to me personally. I have wrestled a great deal with questions
about which of the many – far too many – examples of linguistic transgres-
sions in the news might best serve the objectives of this work, without being
overly difficult for readers to contend with or inadvertently propagating the
types of animus, privilege and violence that are critically examined. I hope
that these illustrations and the discussions that flow from them, shocking or
banal as they might appear to different readers, will inspire more questions
than answers, and that any conclusions offered will be understood as both
unstable and destabilizing, especially for those (like me and, I suspect, most
readers) who enjoy the privileges of academic life.
A Final Word of (and Before) Beginning

“Never look away,” beckons the English title of Werk ohne Autor,3 a loosely
historic film recounting the trajectory of post-war German artist Gerhard
Richter (2018, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and pro-
duced by Buena Vista International). Through a shifting, challenging opus,
Richter dared look solidly at the some of the most uncomfortable civic and
cultural realities of the twentieth century, including many that affected him
personally. The film, loosely based on his life, beckons its audience toward
the recognition of discomfort and unease in the face of that which, despite
all attempts at denial or dissimulation, transpired and transpires among
humans. Viewers of both Richter’s art and von Donnersmarck’s film are
put in a position where they cannot fully look away, if only because they are
henceforth participants in the very object that they might have otherwise
xviii Prologue – On Never Looking Away
abjected. In a similar vein, when it comes to language and to that which

transpires in and through linguistic activity, I assert that we should never
look away, even and especially in moments of extreme discomfort, but strive
to look ever deeper and closer.
With that in mind, I invite readers of these pages to adopt a similar pos-
ture, one that never looks away, but always stands in critical examination.
This is a posture of curiosity and empathy, courage and concern, criticism
and introspection in the face of languaging facts and facets that are usually
not part of polite society and civil exchange. It is all the more important to
maintain this in the face of linguistic moments that provoke anger, resent-
ment, fear and any number of additional unpleasant feelings. I invite you
all to reconsider linguistic transgressions and transgressive languaging acts,
questioning them more and more deeply, with greater care and insight. To
build a wall around the uncomfortable moments of our linguistic existences
only gives rise to more entrenched power dynamics and imbalances, as it
nourishes those who would rather not have their actions or reactions called
into question, instead allowing them to persist in the unexamined belief that
this is the only or best or inevitable way of being and doing.
To develop a critical posture vis-à-vis languaging and languagers is noth-
ing short of – to put it in a register that leaves little doubt as to how this
book will proceed – fucking with that which the privileged (call it patriarchy,
hegemony, the man or something else) would rather leave un-fucked-with.
This fucking with is not just a question of academic flair or an intellectual
exercise but a liberating act, one that is designed to break down boundaries
and augur participation (see Halberstam, 2021, 2022; Knisely & Russell,
2024; Russell, 2021). And it is done not simply because it is enjoyable or
amusing but because, to quote one of the lectures I regularly give to under-
graduate students, “we fuck with the patriarchy, because the patriarchy isn’t
going to fuck itself.”
Further Reading
There are dozens of works available focusing on taboo or bad language,
most often focusing on words. One of the most accessible of these is Ruth
Wajnryb’s Expletive Deleted, which does a tremendous job of describing such
language and does so in a way that avoids superfluous academic posturing.
Similarly, John McWhorter’s Nine Nasty Words provides a comprehensible
foundation for any who are interested in taboo language. Tony McEnery’s
Swearing in English offers compelling examples from the past and attends
to their resonance in the present, and Benjamin Bergen’s inciteful primer
What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains
and Ourselves is a brilliant book that makes neuro- and psycholinguistic
Prologue – On Never Looking Away xix
fundamentals legible to readers at nearly any level of experience. For those

who require an introduction to the fields of linguistics and sociolinguistics,
Randall Eggert’s This Book is Taboo will prove useful and enlightening. At
the same time, for those curious about swearing in languages other than
English, additional sources are not hard to find, although these are often
(and quite rightly) published in their respective languages, rendering them
less accessible to many. An excellent point of departure for Anglophone
readers is Magnus Ljung’s Swearing: A Cross-Cultural Linguistic Study; for
those simply curious about how to get by in other contexts, Jay Sacher’s
highly approachable How to Swear Around the World is a terrific introduc-
tion to many linguacultural contexts, also including helpful phonetic hints
and even a few illustrations. For a more academically grounded view of
humour, taboo and otherwise, Attardo’s The Linguistics of Humor offers a
solid foundation.
Notes
1 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is frequently evoked as a
catch-all for those disciplines that are understood to truly matter in public dis-
course, putatively because they “produce” (note the agentive denotative content
of this verb) future neoliberal citizens who are employable, having demonstrable
“skills,” thus reifying the vocational turn of higher education in the United States
(and not only). STEM coexists in a difficult tension with the humanities, which
are often considered luxuries as they put forth less-quantifiable “products” of
knowledge (see McComas & Burgin, 2020).
2 This already suggests a great deal about linguacultural differences, especially
if each form’s literal meaning is considered: French (translatable as “whore”),
Dutch (“goddam”) and Italian (“dick”). I suspect it also says something about
me that I don’t really default to taboo language in German.
3 The original title, directly translatable as “Work without an Author,” does not
quite capture the spirit of its English title.
1
RETHINKING LANGUAGE
Foundations for Critique
Key Concepts
• Language-as-noun
• Language-as-verb
• Languaging, languagers, enlanguagement
This is a book about language, so it may come as a surprise to begin with a

relatively controversial assertion: language does not exist.1
Let me be more specific: human language does not exist.2 Individual lan-
guages, from Albanian to Zulu, do not exist. Dialects, sociolects, registers,
accents and all of the other titles given to the systems of structured com-
munication, from Ebonics to street slang to Spanglish to the French of the
Académie Française, do not exist.
These have never existed in any manner normally ascribed to other sub-
stantives, and they never will.
Any reader who has made it this far without automatically discounting
the preceding is probably aware that these assertions are intended as prov-
ocation. Good; a bit of goading is merited and even needed for any critical
approach to the subject at hand. Besides, the discipline of linguistics could
use a healthy jolt out of its blinkered pretence of objectivity. For too long,
those of us in academic fields from theoretical to applied, from language
pedagogy to neurolinguistics, have reflexively but not reflectively referred
to the objects of intellectual work using metaphors that envision these
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-1
2 Rethinking Language
as speciated beings, living entities, anthropomorphized personae or even

genetic lineages. We conceive of languages as if they could be separated
from their human authors, using nominal forms and verbal semantics that
give them agency and transitivity, for example, English doesn’t express
grammatical gender, the Slovenian genitive shows possession. We also
talk and write about them as if they actively retain qualities and forms,
for example, Cantonese has nine tones, French nouns are canonically
marked by binary gender. And we treat them as if they were ontologically
speciated, with inherited traits and phylogenetic markings, for example,
Modern Russian descends from Old East Slavonic, Creoles inherit their
lexicons from the languages of European colonizers (see, e.g., Harris,
1981, 2002, 2009).
Of course, such habits are expedient and augur professional productiv-
ity; besides, we all perhaps know on some level that this cannot possibly be
true. However, the now-ingrained habit of referring to languages as existent
things, particularly things that do, hold, express and possess, comes at a cost:
the frequent decentring, if not outright omission, of humans and human
collectives from the description, interpretation and analysis of linguistic
matters. We speak about language as if it could be separated from humans,
those messy, frequently opaque, even more frequently contradictory crea-
tures. Indeed, entire departments have been built and disciplines have been
codified around the existence of language-as-thing, pushing out humanity
as if it were some sort of confused and confusing, best-ignored distraction.
And yet, humanity is and must always be the very core of all that we do,
because without humans, any concept of language is null and void.
Consider the following thought experiment: for some reason, humans
suddenly disappear, leaving all else on planet earth untouched, including its
non-human inhabitants and materiality. Without plunging too far into the
depths of existential philosophy, a few things might reasonably be accepted.
Rocks and rivers would continue to exist. Fungi and bacteria would con-
tinue to exist. Animals, from aardvarks to zebras, from primates to plankton,
would continue to exist, procreating and dying – perhaps even thriving in
the absence of Homo sapiens. The planet would continue to rotate around
the sun, bringing changes of seasons, weather patterns and the migration
of birds. Rain would continue to fall, flowers would continue to bloom and
wither, and tides would continue to ebb and flow. But what would happen
to that which we call language?
In such a scenario, language would not merely no longer exist,3 it would
simply not be in any meaningful way, because it would no longer be conceived
and conceivable. Any residue of that which humans produced, from etchings
in stone to ink on paper to bytes on hard drives, would simply be detritus
in this ecology now devoid of Homo sapiens. This debris would no longer
be produced, of course, and it would also no longer be interpretable, being
Rethinking Language 3
void of semiotic potentiality. While its tactile materiality might well persist,
its linguistic substance, that is, the ability to convey the mental images of
its creators to those of its receivers, however imperfectly, would cease to be
constituted and no longer be subject to constitutionality. In short, there
would be neither language nor possibility of language – the very concept
of language, at least as we understand this term, would be annulled. This
highlights a foundational claim, one that may be summarized as Knisely and
Russell put it, “Language is nothing without humans, although humans are
likely a great deal without or beyond language” (2024, p. 22).
Language does not exist, because it is not something that can be existent.
This assertion depends upon two foundational assumptions: one concern-
ing the nature of ontological reality, which I will not take up in any detail,
as it far surpasses the scope and goals of the present work, and another con-
cerning the nature of that which is normally called language and languages,
with which I contend here and throughout this book. Language does not
exist – and cannot exist – in a manner akin to conscious life forms, be these
gorillas, flamingos or tuna; it is not a sentient organism with a neurologi-
cal system and physical morphology. It is also unlike non-sentient forms of
life, such as parasitic bacteria or viruses: it cannot replicate or be separated
from its host for even the briefest of moments (even in the analogical Petri
dish of recordings or writing, such supposed “language” is still hosted by its
receiver-perceiver). Neither does language exist in the manner of inanimate
objects rocks or trees: it has no definable form that can possibly be separated
from the existential being apprehending it. Even if language were to exist
in any manner other than the most elastically metaphorical, it would have
to have some sort of bounded substance and non-predicated shape, and it
would necessarily have a definable, tactile materiality distinct and separable
from the human persons who make and receive it, who think and under-
stand it, and who live in and through it. But it does not.
If we accept the existential outcome of the preceding, we must con-
clude that what is commonly referred to as language is nothing more than
a human consequence, a sort of dynamic tailpipe emission that is accom-
plished by the machine of humanity and human societies. Crucially, such
manifestation through human activity is not existence: it is residuality. And
equally crucially, the apprehension of this residuality depends entirely on
humanity and the existence of human societies. Language does not exist,
because it is not a thing, at least not in the way in which things are typically
understood. It has no definable materiality, it has no independent form or
substance, and it lacks any conceptual autonomy apart from humans and
humanity. It is entirely and utterly dependent upon and predicated by the
existence of humans and their interactions as existent beings. If there are no
humans to do language, to receive language, to understand language and to
imagine language, language vanishes into an epistemological nothingness.
This is a profound assertion, but one that needs to be made time and
again if we are to make progress in describing, let alone interpreting and
understanding, the subject at hand in a critical manner, that is, transgres-
sive languaging acts accomplished by transgressive languagers. I also assert
that this claim needs to be made if we are to make any real progress in
understanding how language affects others and ourselves in any number of
domains and in any number of ways, from the most mundane (e.g. translat-
ing practices such as politeness across linguacultural contexts) to the most
consequential (e.g. disrupting animus targeting vulnerable persons and
communities). In short, I argue that the reconceptualization of language
represents a much-needed step for linguistics and related disciplines.
If Not Existence, Then What?

Certainly, the assertion that language does not exist is not meant to deny
that language happens – to us, among us, within us and upon us as indi-
viduals and within our sociocultural collectives. This requires a fundamental
rethinking of how language should be conceptualized and enlanguaged,
having profound implications for the interpretation of linguistic action and
performances. For the purposes of the present volume, and acknowledging
that so much of the conceptualization and reconceptualization contained
within it is implicationally tied to the linguacultural community practices
within which it has been written and to which it is addressed, language is
understood to be a verb.4 Language is no more and no less than an activity
undertaken by humans and within human collectivities, from which it can-
not be separated in any meaningful way (see also Agha, 2007; Love, 1990).
Any reader of these pages can accept that language is accomplished
through specific action (see Chapter 6). Language is done when we pro-
nounce, when we sign, when we post on social media, when we write emails,
erotic novels and doctoral dissertations, and when we tag buildings with graf-
fiti. It is done when we produce complex, structured, semiotic messages of any
sort, using any medium and addressing any audience (including ourselves).
In short, language is a doing. Wittgenstein’s Sprachspiel (“language games”)
serve as a foundational inspiration for this notion, as these constituting events
are inherently inchoative: the naming of something is the calling forth of its
existence (1953). Indeed, some of the most enduring metaphors of existential
reality involve the use of language-as-verb, for example, the Genesis account
through which Adam’s naming of things renders them real and epistemic.
This is only part of the picture, albeit one that is important and, perhaps,
most easily understood. To focus solely on this end of the language-as-verb
equation ignores a great deal of other languaging activity, as language is also
accomplished by those who participate in what is often considered passive
or receptive communication. Language is done when we take in and process

the languaging actions of others: listening to a talker; perceiving a signer;
reading a book, tweet or email; apprehending and comprehending street
signs and billboards. Of course, this is a different type of doing, a distinct
form of positive engagement, but it is nonetheless verbal, as it involves a
movement to and toward an object and its psychological transformation
on the part of a receiver-perceiver (Harris, 1981). Importantly, language
is also done within the self through the complex psychological action that
involves cognition. We language to the audience that is our own mind, call-
ing upon learned patterns and structures that we have inherited through
anthropological interaction. This reflects what Laclau and Mouffe (1985)
refer to as constitutive of meaning, specifically the ways in which languaging
in an authorial way and doing it as a receiver create the conceptual space
within which meanings emerge and may be contested (see also Ives, 2004).
As discussed in Russell (2021, pp. 98–103), even that which is potentially
prelinguistic, such as raw emotion, is necessarily rendered linguistic (i.e. is
linguistically done) when it is conceptualized as such. Feeling a neurochemi-
cal stimulus certainly precedes linguistic action; however, to label this in one
or another way, for example, as pain, pleasure or itching, is fundamentally
and inescapably a linguistic act, predicated by prior linguistic acts. This is
reflected even in the most canonical of grammatical verbal frameworks, dis-
tinguishing as they do between so-called action verbs (e.g. run, hit), stative
verbs (e.g. be, exist) and psychological verbs (e.g. think, imagine). While it
can be readily admitted that there are different forms of doing, including
ones that are not necessarily agentive or transitive, and have distinct profiles
of semantic association, these are all considered to be fundamentally verbal.
The preceding assertion hints at another profile of language-as-verb,
namely, accomplishment through ideation and ideologization. It is an oft-
repeated adage that standard languages are ideologies, and yet the same
can be said of all conceptualizations of language (including, indeed, the
one offered on these pages). The boundedness of anything labelled as such
depends not upon its material substance, but upon individual and shared
imaginary doings that are accomplished through individual and collective
instantiation and re-instantiation. Ideologies, like language, do not exist, but
are accomplished, iteratively and reiteratively, through inchoative action and
through passive reception. If ideology is conceived of as “meaning in the ser-
vice of power” (Thompson, 1990, p. 7; cited in Holborrow, 2007, p. 52),
this can also be rendered as semantic doing in the service of transitive actua-
tion. In other words, language-as-ideology is just another manifestation of
language-as-verb, albeit in a distinct domain and via distinct pathways.
By implication, the reconceptualization of language-as-verb and of ver-
bality as a plurality of action domains brings this object into alignment with
Foucault’s understanding of discourse – concepts and ways of thinking or

conceptualizing within a domain of semiotic achievement (1972; see also
Chapter 7). Such a reconsideration of language, be it realized through phys-
ical or mental actuation, through individual or collective instantiation, or
merely through passive reaction and perception (and it bears mentioning
that reaction is a form of action), has important consequences: it recentres
the human as the sole locus of languaging. Even when it appears that we
separate language from its putative host, for example, by examining it in a
grammar book, listening to recordings of speakers or viewing the fMRI of
a study participant, that which we are doing remains concomitantly human
and dynamic, as those apprehending these residual enlanguagements are
doing the only thing that can be thought of as properly linguistic. Absent
the human element, one that is fundamentally active and interactive, these
apparent examples of language are nothing but ink on the page, noises in
the air or neurochemical stimuli projected onto a screen.
Implications of Language-as-Verb
Rather than simply being a matter of academic fancy or intellectual pedantry,
the reconceptualization of language-as-verb has important consequences
for this book and its topical focus. Firstly, it removes from consideration any
idea that language is or can be conceived of as inherently taboo, transgres-
sive or simply bad, even if it is freely admitted that such ways of imagining
and believing are part-and-parcel of the ideological doing of languaging.5
Secondly, it places the human languager at the centre of all inquiry and
critical examination, as it is only they who can be the locus of not only
transgressions accomplished through languaging but the active reception of
these as such, as well as any action upon and reaction to various enlanguage-
ments and languagers, in turn.
Language does nothing: humans do things by languaging. This reflects
a well-worn (and deeply troubling) slogan, “Guns don’t kill people: people
kill people with guns.” Of course, there is a crucial element of truth to this,
distasteful as its usage might be: guns don’t do anything without a human
actuator, much as language doesn’t do anything without the same. How-
ever, there are vital caveats that are often lost in this assertion, and these
concern more than the materiality of firearms: the doing of language, much
like the doing of a gun, may and very often does result in harm. And while
a world without guns – or, at least, one with far fewer guns that are subject
to far more restriction – is certainly possible, a world with less languaging
is not, even if there are situations in which languaging is far more regulated
and controlled (see Chapters 5 and 6). After all, gun possession and use are
not intrinsic to humanity, whereas the capacity to language may well be its
most defining and inevitable feature.
For all the clunkiness and iconoclastic bending of labels, terminology and
concepts, this approach represents a fundamental shift in both stance and
posture for critical linguistic work. From such a perspective, language is not
agentive but is an instrument or tool of agency. Language is not a stable,
fixed structure or form that can be good or bad, polite or vulgar, acceptable
or unacceptable, loving or hate-filled, but is a means of conveying, through
structured actions manifest in enlanguaged forms and patterns, intentionali-
ties that are judged in such ways. Language is not and cannot be owned by
or belong to any person or collective; it is manifested through them, often
at the level of ideological connectiveness. Language is certainly subject to
constraint and control, and regulation and rebellion against such regula-
tion, but not in the same manner as are firearms or motor vehicles, as its
fundamentally verbal nature makes this more, if not solely, a matter of moral
and discursive power. Always at the centre of this dynamic is the languager
themself6 – the person who does language in one or more ways: they who
transgress by the doing of language; they who demonstrate hate and ani-
mus via the accomplishment of language; and they who violate sociocultural
norms via the actuation of language.
Tying It Together
In this introduction, a good deal of non-standard terminology has already
been used. For that reason, it seems useful to clarify what is intended by
these terms, as well as by the reconceiving of language as fundamentally
verbal. Henceforth, to language and languaging should be understood
as any positive linguistic action that is undertaken individually or collec-
tively; this involves production, of course, but also reception, imagining
and ideological conceiving (Becker, 1991; Love, 2017). We language when
we speak and sign, when we hear and see, when we type and tweet, when
we listen and read. We also language when we ideate about communica-
tion, again individually and collectively, for example, when we align with or
rebel against norms of academic writing, when we transgress mythological
boundaries, when we judge the languaging of others, and so forth. In short,
we language and are languaging constantly, in one or another modality
(Thibault, 2017).
On the basis of the preceding definition, it is possible to assert that lan-
guaging in all of its many forms may be one of, if not the defining character-
istic of humans. It is certainly one of the ways in which humans self-define,
often via labels that conflate languager with type or identity of languager.7
It might thus be more appropriate to refer to Englishing as the patterned
action of languaging within the inherited system appearing on these pages;
the same conditions would apply to non-standard dialects, sociolects and
registers (e.g. Ebonicsing, Cockneying or frat-bro-ing). Logically, languagers
are those accomplishing these actions, and, by extension of the previous

assertion, we might better refer to them as Englishers, Russianers or Kwey-
olers, even if they will more often be evoked using more canonical forms
(notably, Anglophones) in the pages that follow.
Knisely and Russell (2024) make the case that languaging is an act of
making imaginary worlds, a definition that applies not only to the focus of
that volume, specifically the imaging of worlds beyond traditional gendered
binarities, but to the imagining of any possible world. This is the process
that is referred to as enlanguaging, the achievement of reality through lin-
guistic activity. Enlanguagement is the procedural pathway through which
languaging is accomplished, being constrained by inherited formal, struc-
tural and functional patterns that are themselves the inheritances of other
enlanguagements (see Russell, 2021, pp. 98–103). The term thus conveys
both the outcome and the tactile reality of languaging seen, for instance,
in words on a page, sounds in the air, signs manifest through gestures
accomplished in space and time, social media postings, and so forth and so
on. When we contend with specific manifestation of languaging by spe-
cific languagers, we are describing and interpreting enlanguagements, the
residue or outcome of languaging-as-verb.
Several additional graphological conventions are also worth mention-
ing in closing, as they will prove helpful in interpreting the pages of this
book with more precision. Specific languaging actions and their graph-
ological manifestations are presented in double quotation marks: these
may be attributable to a particular person (e.g. the overworked professor
exclaimed, “give me a fucking break”), reflect generally shared languag-
ing habits (e.g. it is possible to say “fucking awesome” without evoking
sexuality), or constitute an assertion of new languaging reality (e.g. “fuck-
ing with that which would rather be unfucked with” is the heart of criti-
cal engagement). On the other hand, languaging acts that take place in
the mind, namely, those concerning meaning and semantic networks, are
presented in single quotes (e.g. pussy refers to ‘female genitalia’); this con-
vention is also used for translation (e.g. cazzo ‘dick’). Italic script is used
to refer to formal enlanguagements, that is, the material manifestation of
linguistic materiality, as well as for emphasis. Following these conventions,
description and discussion of an example such as fucking should be read as
the enlanguaged form, whereas ‘sexual activity’ should be understood as
the meaning evoked in an utterance such as “the two were fucking loudly
into the night.” Choosing between different terminological and grapho-
logical conventions always requires walking a fine line between pedantry
and provocation; it is hoped that the approach taken provides a new per-
spective and fuels new and more critical insight, both into languaging in
general and into those languagers and enlanguagements understood as
transgressive.
Discussion Questions
• How is language usually understood in your community and in your
scholastic life? In what ways does this correspond to or diverge from the
previously discussed understanding of language-as-verb?
• How do you ideologically language, that is, how do you accomplish
through psychological or mental activity the work of languaging? How
does this often concern languaging and languagers, itself?
• How do you identify as a languager? How do others identify you as a
languager? Through your enlanguagement?
Further Reading
The ontological and epistemological foundations of language comprise a
topic far beyond this work; fortunately, there is no shortage of antecedent lit-
erature for curious readers. A broad and accessible, but still solidly anchored,
introduction can be found in Stephen Pinker’s widely acclaimed The Lan-
guage Instinct; this is an especially good starting point for those who may
not have taken a linguistics class. For those wishing to have a refresher in the
subject, Fowler’s Understanding Language is perhaps somewhat dated, but
it is still a useful companion. Trask and Stockwell’s Language and Linguistics
provides key terminology, albeit often contrasting with that used here. For
readers keenly interested in the history of these and related ideas, the most
important writings of early twentieth century philosophers are an impor-
tant complement to the preceding discussion. These include Wittgenstein’s
Philosophische Untersuchungen, translated as Philosophical Investigations, as
well as the work of contemporary linguistic philosopher Walter Benjamin,
compiled in Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen
and in Regine Kather’s 1989 anthology. For Anglophone languagers, the
Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin (David S. Ferris, ed.) is another
excellent reference. Finally, Russo-Soviet linguist Voloshinov’s seminal work
should also be of interest to those whose passions lie in philosophical tradi-
tions, particularly that translated as Marxism and the Philosophy of Language.
Notes
1 Much of what is presented here reflects the introduction to Knisely and Rus-
sell (2024), in which the question of language and gender is taken up. My own
reflections and intellectual evolution owe much to Knisely, to whom I am grate-
ful for inspiration and for the sharpening of these and other ideas.
2 Here and throughout, I ignore the question of animal languages and the possi-
bility of extraterrestrial life forms, along with that accomplished through artificial
intelligence. There are certainly many compelling issues and paths of inquiry in
these arenas, but they far surpass the scope and objectives of the present volume
(not to mention the expertise of its author).
3 With all due respect to grammatical pundits, the double negative accomplishes
something fundamental to my argument in this sentence (see Chapter Four).
4 With this, I wish to acknowledge that even the re-enlanguaging of language is
constrained to a great degree by that we might label English (or otherwise),
whereby the noun-verb taxonomy is descriptively adequate. If we accept that all
languaging is metaphorical and that these metaphors are learned (see, e.g., Kövec-
ses, 2010), we must also accept that the very notion of verb is itself metaphorical
and situated within the learned patterns of a given linguacultural community.
5 Importantly, recognizing others’ truths is not tantamount to holding these to
be true or even “truthy,” to co-opt liberally from Will Farrell’s interpretation of
former president George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live; it merely admits that
many persons understand it this way, opening additional space for critical inquiry.
6 Throughout this book, I use singular they and its derivations (e.g. themself) both
generally and when the gender of a particular individual is unknown or irrelevant,
as well as when this does not correspond to a traditional binary and when the
person in question prefers such pronouns.
7 Interestingly, this means of self-definition has some historical antecedence, for
example, Deutch (‘German’), deriving historically from diutisc, meaning ‘the
speech of people from the land.’
2
LANGUAGING TRANSGRESSION
“Grabbing Pussy” and “Locker Room Talk”
Key Concepts
• Form and referent
• Sign: signifiers and signified
• X-phemy: euphemisms, dysphemisms, orthophemisms
• Complex signs: structure and utterance
In the fall of 2016, with the US presidential race in full swing, a decade-old
audio recording of then-candidate Donald Trump and Access Hollywood
reporter Billy Bush resurfaced. Among the many cringe-worthy moments
of what became known simply as “The Tape,” one stood out above the rest.
Commenting upon his prior interaction with actress and model Arianne
Zucker, Trump is heard to say, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet.
Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You
can do anything.” After Bush intervened stating, “Whatever you want,”
the then future president replied, “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do any-
thing.”1 Supporters and opponents, alongside pundits on the left and right,
were quick to react.2 One thing was clear: Trump had languaged in a way
that might be looked down upon or didn’t fit within his political aspirations
and, in so doing, had transgressed shared moral and ethical boundaries.
While only the most naïve could imagine that politicians and other leaders
never engage in such communicative activity, most readily assert that any
person who wishes to attain the highest office in the country – arguably the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-2
12 Languaging Transgression
most powerful in the world – is not supposed to say such things for all to
hear.
Perhaps because of the vastness of public reaction, be this from apologists or
opponents, there seemed to be no consensus as to what, exactly, was transgres-
sive about Trump’s languaging. In fact, there was wide disagreement about
the nature of that which should be considered objectionable, let alone how
this was specifically manifested, hinting at a shared ambivalence, one likely
exacerbated by established media outlets’ tendency to not repeat or reprint
the enlanguaged content of this moment. As may well have been expected,
many within and beyond the press fixated on Trump’s use of pussy, referring
to ‘female genitalia,’ while others passed attenuated judgement of so-called
locker room talk, a catch-all for impolite banter between men that is typi-
cally thought to acceptable or expected in closed quarters (see Vaynman et al.,
2019; Rhodes et al., 2020). Few in the mainstream dared to examine in a
closer, more careful manner this moment of languaging and ask what Trump’s
enlanguagements and others’ reactions to these might have to say about such
messy issues as power, authority and ideology as they intersect with politics,
masculinity, sexuality, neoliberalism and the body, among much else.3
Any observations of collective reaction and discomfort notwithstanding,
this and countless other instances of transgressive languaging raise questions
that any critical analysis must contend with squarely and without hesita-
tion. What about pussy made this worthy of moral indignation for some,
but excusable (if cringe-worthy) for others? How can the linguistic actions
of Donald Trump and Billy Bush, as well as the effects of these actions, be
described in a careful manner, one that goes beyond personal or collective
outrage and instead asks why anyone should be outraged in the first place?
And what specifically about this exchange led those on different political
extremes to interpret this moment in vastly different ways, with some label-
ling it as banal male banter and others an act of sexual violence?
Humans are constantly languaging but spend very little time thinking
about their actions, let alone the enlanguagements that they produce. With
the exception of poets, speechwriters and linguists, not to mention a hand-
ful of others who are more often than not excluded from popular media
and shared spaces of debate and discussion, most people don’t reflect upon
languaging often or even at all – that is unless and until they are forced
to, at which point few have little idea where to begin, falling back on their
raw emotions (“I don’t like this word”), dogmatism (“people shouldn’t say
shit”), or utopian positivism (“if we all just respected each other, this would
disappear”). Such habits very likely inspired the media and political pundits
responding to Donald Trump: for lack of either understanding or desire,
Americans of varying ilk and persuasion seized on the most obvious part of
the recording – his use of pussy – and demanded an apology; once this was
Languaging Transgression 13
offered (plausible or implausible as it may have appeared), they moved on,

turning their attention to matters of more apparent importance or perhaps
simply greater facility. But there is so much more to say – not to mention far
better ways to say it – when it comes to transgressive languaging, as well as
our reaction to and understanding of any such moments.
This chapter offers a practical basis from which to better describe and
begin interpreting moments of transgressive languaging, using this incident
for the illustration and discussion of key concepts and terminology. Building
upon Chapter 1, the notion of word is first broken down and replaced with
a series of concepts more appropriate to the task at hand. A second section
looks at complex structures and the enlanguaged content of these constructs.
A concluding section reverts to fundamental concepts normally excluded
from language, notably context (anticipating the focus of Chapter 3). Each
portion introduces key points developed further throughout this book;
readers are thus encouraged to think of the following pages as a descriptive
and analytical toolkit, a means of stepping toward and into the critical intel-
lectual work that is undertaken in more detail in what follows.
Describing Transgressive Languaging

As was obvious to nearly all observers, what Donald Trump languaged in
this moment (much like he did in many hundreds of others in the ensu-
ing years) contravened widely held social norms: he spoke of sexuality and
evoked female genitalia, asserted his right to physically clutch the genitalia
of women without their consent, and did all of this in a way that failed
to respect collective notions of propriety. Languagers across the political,
social, cultural and economic spectrum are well aware that this sort of thing
“isn’t supposed to be done,” even if they might – and probably should –
readily acknowledge that it is, in fact, done quite frequently.
The knowledge of what is and isn’t acceptable within a linguacultural con-
text points to the concept of taboo. This cover term refers to a shared pro-
scription through which certain actions are considered outside of that which
is permissible – in other words, that which is transgressive – setting the trans-
gressor apart from the collective and marking them for punishment.4 Taboos
are noted in all societies, regulating, for example, what is and is not consid-
ered fit for eating, regardless of personal taste or preference (e.g. in the US
and many other settings, consuming the flesh of a cow is not taboo, whereas
that of a dog is), body covering and notions of nudity (e.g. in these same
contexts, the exposure of the male torso is not forbidden on the majority of
public beaches, whereas the exposure of the female torso is subject to fines
and even imprisonment), and the acceptability of different sexual relation-
ships (e.g. the varying ages of consent, as laid out in law or custom). Quite
obviously, entire books can be and have been written about taboo, both
within and across any number of cultural boundaries. The very same exam-
ples raised here can be reconsidered in order to see just how non-universal
any conceptualization of taboo may be, let alone its implementation: there
are societies in which the consumption of dog meat is normalized, those in
which the exposure of female breasts is not subject to constraint, and those
in which the age of consent is vastly different than in the US (Taylor & Wil-
liams, 2017). What is more interesting in the present discussion is how taboo
can be applied to languaging and how this affects linguistic life.
As stated in the Prologue, this book is primarily concerned not with bad
words but with the ways in which people use words – and much more – such
that they cross one or more, often hidden, boundaries of acceptability. For
this reason, it can be helpful to distinguish between common taboos per-
taining to languaging: there are taboos that target what languagers speak,
sign, write or otherwise produce, that is, their enlanguagements; there are
also those concerning the concepts languagers evoke, regardless of how
this is accomplished, that is, their ideas. Of course, taboo may also involve
both sides of the equation – the how and the what of languaging. As is clear
through the arc of this discussion, the bounds between different categories
of transgressive languaging and enlanguagements are hardly crisp, nor are
they rigid. Many examples might well be analyzable according to two or
more profiles, whereas others might be more nebulously situated.
On the one hand are moments of languaging that transgress ethical
codes, always understood within a particular cultural frame (see Chapter 3
for more on this). These codes of conduct can be understood as the implic-
itly held, collectively shared knowledge of rules and the resulting constraints
that govern how languagers may go about doing things. When it comes to
languaging that transgresses such ethical bounds, it is helpful to distinguish
between two sub-profiles and their respective canonical labels: obscenity
and vulgarity. Both contravene conventions about what can and cannot be
accomplished in a public or shared cultural space, although they do this in
slightly different ways. Obscenity is linked to taboo subject matter, whereas
vulgarity is linked to taboo ways of evoking any topic, regardless of whether
it is taboo or not.
One obvious example of obscenity and vulgarity can be noted when lan-
guagers evoke sexualized organs – the vagina, clitoris, penis and scrotum,
as well as female breasts and, more recently, the buttocks.5 The enlanguage-
ment of these is subject to constraint, specifying inter alia when and where
it is acceptable to refer to such body parts. Furthermore, even when it might
be acceptable to refer to these objects, deeply held and widely shared norms
establish that there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to go about
this. Obscene languaging might involve the evocation of the genitalia of
a classmate, a family member or some random passer-by: we know that all

persons possess different sexual and sexualized body parts, and we know we
are not supposed to mention them outside of very limited conditions, for
example, in a physician’s office. At the same time, conventions govern how
these may be enlanguaged, turning to the concept of vulgarity. Even in cir-
cumstances where it might be acceptable to refer to a person’s genitals, for
example, during a medical examination, there are prescribed and proscribed
ways of doing this: a physician is expected to refer to the penis, not the cum
cannon, and to the vagina, not the tuna taco.6 Often conflated, it is helpful
for the description of transgressive languaging and languagers to tease apart
obscenity and vulgarity, if only because this points to different taboos and
societal conventions.
On the other hand, but always emerging within the bounds of shared
collective, are those languaging actions that intersect with moral taboos:
blasphemy and profanity. Like obscenity, these concern ideational objects.
However, these objects are not a priori felt to be inherently taboo – quite
the opposite. Profanity and blasphemy concern the enlanguagement of that
which is situationally understood to be divine or spiritual, or at least that
which is somehow above the realm of humanity. Profanity involves languag-
ing the divine for non-divine reasons, such as the classic example of shout-
ing Jesus Christ in pain after stubbing a toe; in a cultural environment where
the Christ figure is considered sacred or morally consequential (as is the
case for many practicing Christians), it would be profane to enlanguage this
figure when not engaging in some sort of communicative activity oriented
toward the divine, such as prayer or theological debate. If this evocation is
done in a vulgar or obscene manner, for instance, if the same person were
to employ the expletive Jesus Fucking Christ, such languaging would be
considered blasphemous. Not only is this a non-divine evocation of Jesus
Christ, but the association of this figure with sexuality is likely to be consid-
ered an even more serious infringement of moral precepts. For those whose
morality stems from Christian tradition, it is one thing to evoke a deity for
non-sanctified reasons, and it is quite another to also associate, even indi-
rectly, this deity to the carnal act of sex.
Obviously, all four types of transgressive languaging are not static, nor
can they be universally applied. For example, in a cultural setting where
Christian traditions are not part of everyday experience, it is unlikely that
the interjection Jesus Fucking Christ will be judged blasphemous, much less
profane. In a culture that does not have strict boundaries around the men-
tion of dead persons, enlanguaging the name of a deceased family member
would not be considered vulgar or obscene (in the US and elsewhere, such
languaging might even be considered laudatory or celebratory, whereas
in other settings it is highly offensive to refer to the deceased). Other
transgressive languaging acts are similar in this regard: what constitutes an

insult in one linguacultural space might be a rather commonplace statement
in another (or vice versa); enlanguagements that convey hatred and incite
violence in one time or place might be understood as factual in a differ-
ent setting; and a humorous linguistic activity that might engender outrage
in one time and place might be seen as an example of intelligent repartee
elsewhere.
Linguistic Signs
Thus far, our discussion of transgressive languaging has focused on words,
enlanguaged units of meaning like pussy, fucking and Christ. This is quite
expected, as for most individuals words appear to be the most basic, not
to mention self-evident, place to start – after all, most people think about
words when they think about language, often to the point of reducing the
latter to the former. However, languaging involves far more than words –
in fact, words are perhaps its most trivial component, at least if we are to
understand transgression and its consequences (see Russell, 2019, 2021).
If we are to truly wrestle with what is happening in moments like the Access
Hollywood tape or countless others, from the action of those who author
these moments to the reaction of those who receive them (and author sub-
sequent languagings, in response), we must move beyond words and that
which the late R.A. Lodge referred to as the layperson’s approach (1993).
The layperson’s perspective on language is not unlike that of the average
person with regard to biological or physiological life (I include myself in
this latter grouping, understanding little but the basics of human anatomy
and physiology). We know a thing or two about the body and what to do
when we experience a physical problem, for example, that it is a good idea
to clean a cut to our skin with soap and water and bandage the wound to
prevent subsequent infection. We also have a sense of when to seek profes-
sional help, say, if the injury should begin to swell or cause extreme pain.
However, very few people possess specialist knowledge as to what exactly
is occurring inside a wounded appendage or which among many would be
the smartest course of action to promote healing and stave off infection. For
this, we seek the advice of persons with expertise and training. Something
very similar occurs on a daily basis as it concerns our linguistic lives. When
we focus upon some facet of our communicative existence that troubles and
worries us, say a presidential candidate speaking of “grabbing women by the
pussy,” we all too quickly focus on one component that is easy to understand
and agree upon – words that we believe or are taught to believe should not
be used, either at all or in mixed company. What we ignore or simply do not
apprehend to be happening in this and similar moments is the complexity of
action on the part of both languager-doer and languager-receiver, as well as

how all of this contributes to a collective sense of transgression.
In reacting to the Access Hollywood tape, languagers across the politi-
cal and cultural spectrum fixated on Trump’s use of pussy – a short word
counting five letters and two syllables. But why – what about this word is
so transgressive, for anyone, let alone a powerful public figure? We know
that millions of languagers use pussy to refer to female genitalia. We also
know that most co-languagers believe that polite or conscientious people
shouldn’t evoke such topics, except perhaps in the most restricted situations.
We further know that pussy is also used to refer to men who are not behaving
according to normative masculine gender scripts (think about a time when
we or someone said, “Stop being such a pussy,” meaning something akin to
‘don’t be so afraid or unmanly’). Moreover, most of us know that pussy can
also refer to a cat.7 Why is this important? Would it have been acceptable for
Trump to use a different word that referred to the same thing, for instance
bragging that he could “grab ‘em by the vagina”? Was it the fact that he
did this so explicitly, implying that he could have accomplished the same
end by non-transgressive circumlocutions such as “grab ‘em where the sun
don’t shine”? Or was it that he even evoked female genitalia in any manner –
what if he had said you could “just kiss ‘em” or “just hug ‘em,” asserting
that powerful men have the right to physically interact with women, even in
a seemingly non-sexual manner (a transgression of which current President
Biden has also been accused)?
Very little about what is happening in this moment – let alone the
moments that preceded it – is self-evident, and even less has to do with
pussy. Words are certainly at issue here, but in order to really understand
what is happening in transgressive languaging, we must move past the con-
cept word, simply because it isn’t very precise or helpful. Thus, a first step
to adding to the intellectual toolkit of linguists is to replace word with two
interconnected concepts: form and reference, distinct concepts that func-
tion symbiotically, much like two sides of a coin. Forms are elements of our
communicative existence that have physical reality: they are enlanguaged.
We can read forms on the page or screen for written languaging (graphic
or orthographic forms), hear them when they are spoken live or captured
by recording (phonetic forms) in the case of oral language, and see them
as they are motioned and shaped in the case of signed languaging (gestural
forms). Forms are evidentiary in this respect, because we can reach out and
touch them in one or another way: they can be recorded, copied, pasted
onto screens, texted, tweeted and so forth.
This is perhaps the easy part of linguistic description and analysis, as the
recognition of forms doesn’t take a tremendous amount of savvy, assum-
ing one is familiar with the graphic, gestural and/or phonemic patterns of
a linguacultural environment. However, forms are only one part of what

languagers do in their linguistic life. They produce and receive forms in
order to evoke something that they hold in their minds and that they wish
to convey to others – in other words, to make and transmit meanings. These
can be thought of as mental images capturing their experiences of things,
qualities, actions, states and so forth; these images are held in the minds
of individual languagers and shared among languager groups. Languager-
doers render their mental worlds by using forms that they expect will be
interpreted in a more-or-less similar manner by languager-receivers.
Together, form and meaning comprise what Swiss-Francophone linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure referred to as the linguistic sign (1983), which he
conceived of as an indivisible duality: on one side is the signifier, a form that
does the work of pointing to ideas or images; on the other side is the signi-
fied, an idea or image. A schema of the sign is given in Figure 2.1.
Here, the image corresponding to the signified (in French, signifié; in
German, Bezeichnetes) ‘tree’ is associated with the signifier (the signifiant
or Bezeichnendes) Baum: together, the observable form/signifier and the
mental image/signified constitute an enlanguaged sign. Accordingly, the
English form that is spelled tree and pronounced [tɹij] is associated with
an image that might be described as a ‘woody perennial plant’; English
languagers make this signifier-signified connection without much or any
mental gymnastics, because they have acquired or learned the sign and its
components. The same is true of all referential forms, including verbs like
run or fuck, adjectives like pretty or shitty, adverbs like happily or bitchingly –
and, of course, nouns like tree or pussy.
The entire constellation of signs held by languagers is known as a lexicon,
something akin to a mental dictionary of forms and meanings. Of course,
no one person’s lexicon is a perfect copy of any other person’s lexicon, even
among languagers with very similar experiences, leading to any number of
consequential or inconsequential misunderstandings. Some languagers use
distinct forms to evoke a unique mental object (e.g. the well-known pail
and bucket pairing) or ones that point to different identity characteristics
(e.g. soda and pop, which for US Anglophones point to regional origins,
although they refer to the same object). Likewise, widely shared forms can
be linked to vastly diverging referents, leading to debates about what a
given enlanguagement does or might convey (e.g. the meaning linked to
love). Finally, some signs simply are not held by one group of languagers in
a broader linguacultural grouping but are by others, as is the case with in-
group jargon. The latter is occurring on this very page – readers are enrich-
ing their lexicon by adding new signs, including new forms and meanings,
pertinent to the study of language.
Although the two ends of the sign are largely inseparable in linguistic life,
there is an important conceptual difference that distinguishes form-signifier
Signifié
Bezeichnetes
Baum
Signifiant
Bezeichnendes
FIGURE 2.1 The linguistic sign
Source: Wiki Commons
from meaning-signified, one deriving from the material nature of languag-

ing and enlanguagements. Whether it is something we read, see or hear, all
enlanguaged forms are materially real. Forms are manifested in the physical
world, even if ephemerally and even if we apprehend them from our own
idiosyncratic, biased points of view. Reference or meaning, on the other
hand, is not material – or at the very least, not in the same way. We only
have indirect evidence for any signified, and even this is typically mediated
through additional forms: we cannot see or hear reference and meaning in
the same way that we can see or hear forms, even if it may appear so in many
instances.
The assertion that forms are constituted in some sort of material reality
does not refute the claims of Chapter 1, namely, that no component of lan-
guage is phenomenologically existential. The apprehension of any linguistic
form – that is, the understanding that it is not simply ink on a page, sounds
in the air or gestures in space – is entirely dependent upon receptive lan-
guaging action. At the same time, enlanguagement very frequently involves
plural form-meaning associations, at least in the case of referential forms.8 It
is sometimes the case that a single form is linked to only one referent; much
more frequently, forms point to two or more. These are instances of poly-
semy, an example of which has already been cited: pussy may refer to ‘female
genitalia,’ ‘a weak or cowardly person’ or ‘Felis catus.’ Examples of polysemy
pervade linguistic life, ranging from forms normally associated with positive
references, such as love, to those that are judged to be bad, a notable exam-
ple of which is fuck, to that which is generally banal, such as table.
A final mention should be made, especially for the purposes of this chap-
ter, of forms that are sometimes languaged in non-referential ways. Consider
the example of someone yelling fuck! after banging their head or a student
muttering shit! when confronting a difficult exam. These are examples of
interjections, forms that are used without pointing to a specific referent or
activating a given mental image, instead providing situational information
about a languager’s state of mind or perspective. When I shout fuck! after
hitting my head, I am expressing a state of physical pain; the hapless test-
taker grumbling shit! conveys frustration or anger. The forms fuck and shit
may in other instances be languaged in order to convey meanings, but in
these examples they do not: they are enlanguaged solely to give contextual
information about the languager themself (and this for reasons that con-
tinue to elude full explanation; see Goddard, 2014).
It is tempting for many to consider the signifier-signified dialectic as
immutable or inescapable, particularly when it comes to signs labelled bad
or seen as transgressive. To echo Saussure and countless linguists that have
followed in his footsteps, however, any link between signifier and signified
is neither innate nor inevitable, but is always acquired or learned. In effect,
the association between form and meaning is both arbitrary and unstable.
With the possible exception of onomatopoeic forms, also referred to as ide-
ophones, such as hiss (the sound made by a snake) or thud (that of a book
falling on the floor), the signifier-signified link depends entirely on experi-
ences gained within a linguacultural setting.9 Reconsidering the example at
hand, it should be readily apparent that there is nothing about pussy that
necessarily and inevitably prompts languagers to associate this with any of
its possible referents, taboo or otherwise. It has already been noted that
the orthographic form pussy is used to refer to a feline in English, which is
hardly a taboo referent in these societies. Likewise, a very similar phonetic
form used by French languagers – albeit one that is spelled differently –
is pousse-y, pronounced [pusi] (‘push there’), a distinctly mundane enlan-
guagement. Were the signifier-signified link anything other than arbitrary, if
historically retraceable, these and any number of other facts of linguistic life
could not stand as counterfactuals.
The arbitrary nature of form-meaning dynamics goes a long way to bet-
ter interpreting both transgressive linguistic moments and the transgressive
languagers who author them. Most obviously any assertion that a given
form is somehow intrinsically taboo or bad must be dismissed: this simply
does not hold up to critical examination. There may be, and indeed are,
some regularities to forms that are judged negatively, such as the prevalence
of four-letter spellings or certain consonant-vowel-consonant phonemic
sequences in English (Bergen, 2016), but this is hardly a sufficient motiva-
tion. After all, love is a four-letter word and cent has a phonemic profile simi-
lar to any number of supposedly bad words; likewise, fuck, shit, dick, butt
and whore all include three phonemes, as do fun, ship, dive, buzz and hear.
Clearly, the source of any transgression cannot arise from the form itself but
must lie in something beyond it – and that something is the languager, an
assertion repeated throughout this book. Any and all motivation for judge-
ment concerns not enlanguagements but the individuals and communities
who enact and receive these.
Beyond Words
The preceding assertions are not made in order to claim that linguistic forms
are uninteresting when it comes to an examination of transgressive languag-
ing. Indeed, forms are fascinating components of transgressive languaging
acts, particularly because languagers frequently modify them for a variety of
goals and with differing social outcomes. Here again, it is useful to develop
a broader terminological foundation, if only to better describe and under-
stand what languagers do with forms. Two basic distinctions are crucial in
this regard: derivation and composition. Derivation involves the modifica-
tion of a base form through the attachment of affixes; English languagers
most often make use of prefixes and affixes.10 Forms like fucktastic (fuck +
-tastic), shittery (shit(t) + -ery) or megabitch (mega- + bitch) are derived from
the bases fuck, shit and bitch, respectively. Other complex forms arise from
composition, when bases that might otherwise function independently are
combined, such as clusterfuck (cluster + fuck), dipshit (dip + shit) or bitch-

ass (bitch + ass). Both derivation and composition give rise to novel, albeit
related linguistic signs, some of which function distinctly (e.g. bitch and ass
are both nouns, whereas bitchass is used adjectivally). Because languagers
possess vast and always evolving knowledge, these processes are potentially
limitless and ongoing (see Kastovsky et al., 2005).
In many instances, signs that are deployed by languagers in a manner
similar to a singular form are constructed from two or more sub-forms:
these structured forms are often referred to as expressions or idioms, as
they quite frequently express ideas that are only vaguely associable to their
component parts. Consider the moment in which I exasperatedly confront a
bullying colleague with the idiomatic expression shut the fuck up. Here, I am
not really combining the forms shut, meaning ‘to close or confine,’ the, a
functional form used as a determiner, fuck, which has many referents, rang-
ing from ‘coitus’ to ‘person of little value,’ and up, activating situationally
dependent meanings including ‘not down’ or ‘with greater intensity.’ Were
it understood as the linear composition of each of these four formal ele-
ments, shut the fuck up would convey an idea loosely akin to ‘close the sexual
act into a higher position’ – this is hardly the case. Any proficient English
languager understands that I am imploring my addressee to stop talking,
albeit in a manner likely perceived as unprofessional or aggressive. These
strings act as complex, structured forms and are arranged in a relatively fixed
manner, creating a new, albeit formally more complex linguistic sign.
In order to describe what languagers are doing in moments that are seen
as transgressive – and not only, of course – several other concepts are useful,
notably truncation and acronym, as these exemplify further manipulations
of form. A truncation derives from the reduction of a base into a small
formal unit, such as puss for pussy or vaj for vagina; truncations are usually
based upon a phonetic form, with commensurate modifications to spelling.
Acronyms, on the other hand, are entirely dependent upon orthographic
conventions: these are typically enlanguaged using the first letter or letters
of a spelled-out form, such as WAP (for Wet Ass Pussy; see Chapter 8), HBIC
(Head Bitch In Charge) and STUF (Shut The Fuck Up). Interestingly, many
truncations and acronyms evolve such that they are no longer understood
as having emerged from these bases, such as radar, originally an acronym
of RAdio Detecting And Ranging, SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked
Up), FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) and MILF/DILF (Mom/
Dad I’d Like to Fuck). There are also many reverse acronyms, forms that
must be spoken aloud in order for their referent to be understood and their
compositionality apprehended, for example, See You In Toledo, a euphemis-
tic stand-in for cunt deriving from the homophony of C (the letter) and see
(the verb), along with that of you and the letter U and in and the letter N.
In all such cases, historical or preceding forms are being languaged crea-
tively and are entirely dependent upon a languager’s lexical and grammatical
competence. They know that certain forms can be spelled, that others will
be understood based on phonetic shape, and that still more can be clipped
or reduced, but only in certain ways, in order that fellow languagers will
receive them with intended links to one or another meaning.
X-Phemism
Thus far, discussion has largely focused on formal characteristics – the plural
mechanisms used to language a mental image or reality. Variation also works
in the other direction, involving multiple forms that point to the same image
or idea. For referents that are associated with two or more forms, as in the
case of ‘coitus,’ languager-doers have many choices, any of which will affect
how their intended meaning will be received by languager-receivers (con-
sider the forms fuck, do it, make love or know one another). For example, a
languager may choose between pussy, noony and vagina when enlanguaging
the referent ‘female genitalia,’ three forms that have little surface phonetic
or graphological substance in common. This choice is consequential for
how they will be understood and for how others might react in kind.
Languagers are keenly aware of the stakes in such matters and vary their
formal choices accordingly. The example of the Access Hollywood tape and
reactions to it – particularly those who labelled Trump’s choices as locker
room talk – are evidence of this knowledge on the part of all involved.
Keith Allan and Kate Burridge examine the ways in which languagers move
between distinct, but referentially associated forms in order to evoke the
same thing, a dynamic they refer to as X-phemy. This umbrella term sub-
sumes three profiles, each of which depends upon shared knowledge of the
social value assigned to one or another enlanguagement. Euphemisms are
forms that are not negatively valued, for instance, the use of private parts or
nether regions to refer to ‘genitalia.’ Dysphemisms are the more familiar, but
variably taboo and transgressive forms, such as pussy, dick and the like. And
orthophemisms are forms thought to be neutral or clinical, such as vagina
or penis.
Allan and Burridge show that the interplay between form, meaning and
social value is intimately associated with culturally framed understandings
of politeness, considerations that are inevitably bound up in questions of
class and social standing. In the case of English, and especially varieties spo-
ken in the United Kingdom (the basis of their discussion), they propose a
middle-class politeness criterion, a means of qualifying shared notions of
value that are associated with different X-phemisms (Allan, 2019; Allan &
Burridge, 2006). Accordingly, it is often less the meanings that are activated
by languagers that are ultimately understood as transgressive and more the

forms that languagers choose and the ways in which their linguistic choices
position them as having crossed sociocultural lines, ones that have every-
thing to do with norms of behaviour and mythologies pertinent to class,
morality and civic mindedness (see Chapter 3). Languagers who violate
politeness criteria contravene not just the rules of languaging in a given
moment but the rules that determine who is thought to be what “kind of
person” – and all that is expected of such categories – across and within a
wider collective.
With such conceptual tools, we can better describe what is happening
when languagers transgress social boundaries and interpret the languaging
of various form-referent pairings. In some instances, it is not a given refer-
ent or meaning that is subject to judgement but the enlanguaged form used
to reference this – in other words, it is the signifier, not the signified, that
is understood to be taboo or transgressive. One example of this was noted
in 2003, when Irish musician Bono responded to an award given to him by
stating, “That’s fucking brilliant” (emphasis added). Here, the meaning he
enlanguaged was crystal clear to all: he wished to emphasize how “brilliant”
or congratulatory he found the award, and no credible audience could have
reasonably asserted the contrary. And yet, this enlanguagement led to a fire-
storm of protest and the sanctioning of the network that broadcast it.11 The
reverse is true in other instances, when a given referent or meaning is judged
to be off-limits or taboo, regardless of which form is enlanguaged. Here, the
transgressive act involves not the formal choices made by languagers but
their semantic and referential ones, examples of which are hardly lacking.
Consider the oft-repeated adage that certain topics, such as ‘defecation,’ are
not polite topics for dinner conversation; regardless of the form chosen, for
example, shit versus faeces versus poo-poo, there is a broad proscription on
the evocation of this topic, at least in those circles that Allan and Burridge
might ascribe as holding middle-class values.
In the case of the Access Hollywood tape, the nature of the transgression
derives from a bit of both and a bit of either, largely depending upon which
profile of languager-receiver is passing judgement. For some, Trump’s for-
mal choice (pussy) was understood as the source of offence: this was seen
especially on the part of his apologists and supporters but also among the
media and many of his opponents, who fixated on the formal signifier. For
this audience, Trump’s transgression derived from the fact that he used a
dysphemistic form – and perhaps that this enlanguagement made its way
past the walls of the proverbial male-dominated locker room. For others,
the meaning that Trump enlanguaged was the source of judgement and
assertions that transgression had occurred: among these languager-receivers,
there was consternation that a presidential candidate should evoke ‘female
genitalia’ at all, regardless of the signifier chosen. Of course, for still others,
the entire communicative package – the languaging act that brought forth
both form and referent – functioned as the source of ire or apologetics.
Structured Languaging
The preceding discussion challenges the layperson’s view of language as
being primarily a matter of words, while also reordering what these linguis-
tic units are understood to be. A logical next step is to look at how different
units are brought together to convey complex ideas, transgressive or oth-
erwise. With linguistic structures such as clauses and sentences, languagers
create, manipulate and transmit meaning through complex patterns that
follow acquired rules or constraints, the nature of which is subject to intense
(and often irreconcilable) debate in linguistics circles and is a matter that far
surpasses the scope of the present work (see Fabb & Brown, 2006; Odden,
2011). Regardless of any specific theoretical stance about the nature and
shape of grammar, it is clear that languagers don’t simply arrange forms
haphazardly. Instead, their languaging activity follows predictable patterns,
ones that are remarkably similar to those of their fellow languagers within
a given linguacultural environment. By enlanguaging different and highly
variable signs together within these patterned structures, they are able to
convey potentially infinite meanings, ranging from the most mundane to
the most complex, asserting truths and falsehoods, referring to events and
states in the past, present and future, and casting these within any number
of modalities, from volitive to conditional, deontic to hypothetical.
In order to do any of this, languagers depend upon their knowledge
of how, within a particular languaging reality, forms can and cannot be
combined, as well as how these combinations will be interpreted by fellow
languagers. Complex grammatical structures like clauses and sentences are
linguistic units that bring words into a meaning-making relationship – one
that is greater the sum of its constituent parts. It is important to note that
in the construction of complex linguistic units, judgments and values – and
thus power, ideology and authority (see Chapters 4 and 5) – are already and
always in play. This is observable in the types of structures that are expected
or unexpected, thought to be good, bad or neutral, and much more. Con-
sider the forms grab and pussy and their respective referents ‘seize or clasp
suddenly’ and ‘female genitalia,’ as they were enlanguaged by Trump. One
of these is not, in and of itself, typically judged in a negative manner: after
all, Anglophones can “grab a coffee with coworkers” or “grab a book off the
shelf” without transgressing shared values or morality. Pussy, on the other
hand, is widely considered to be transgressive, as is the referent ‘female
genitalia,’ such that even if this were activated with an orthophemism (e.g.
vagina) or a euphemism (e.g. flower), Trump’s linguistic activity would very

likely have been seen as defective. However, when these forms are enlan-
guaged in particular configurations, something much greater than the sum
of each part is produced. In this instance, the sentence enlanguages Trump’s
assertion that the referent pussy is the object of the transitive verb associ-
ated with the form grab, modified by the emphatic adverb just and having
as its implicit subject a famous, powerful man (the you in this instance is
understood to be Donald Trump and people who are, in his words, equally
“famous”). This complex linguistic sign is not simply the combination of
smaller signifier-signified pairings but an elaborate, highly structured mani-
festation of what a languager asserts to be their reality. In the case at hand,
it amounts to a factual declaration that might have been more transparently
enlanguaged as ‘I am [and people like me are] a priori allowed to seize
women by their genitalia.’ (It is worthwhile to ponder how various publics
might have reacted were Trump to have made such a statement.)
Of course, the languagers and enlanguagements under the microscope in
this book involve more than syntactic structures such as these. Transgres-
sion is also intimately associated with the broader environment in which
languagers evoke different referents, especially the presence of others who
are actively or passively implicated in a linguistic action, as well as the rela-
tions between these persons. Consider the following: it is often acceptable
among close friends to evoke someone’s mother or to allude to an interlocu-
tor’s sexuality, but it is far different to evoke someone’s mother as a sexual
being in relation with that person. From this, it is possible to understand
the situational weight of a complex imperative along the lines of “go fuck
your mother.” Linguistic signs matter, of course, in how such languaging
will be received (as well as the responsive languagings it will undoubtedly
engender), but the structures into which they are cast matter just as much,
if not more. After all, the same invective could be rephrased euphemistically
as “go engage in coitus with your mother,” and it would still very likely be
understood as transgressive. Whatever may be negatively judged about this
moment of linguistic life, it has little to do with specific forms and their
respective meanings. Rather, it is the structured contiguity of form/mean-
ing pairs with other form/meaning pairs: mothers and sex are not supposed
not go together according to widely shared norms – certainly not as impera-
tives and especially not when the mother in question is the transitive object
of a sexual predicate-verb having a co-languager as implicit subject. These
are, to put it in the vernacular, fighting words, enlanguagements that can be
expected to provoke negative, hostile or even violent reaction.
Syntactically enlanguaged structures, whether clauses or sentences, can
be understood as units that realize communicative ends or finalities. Of
course, all of this depends upon who languages what to whom, how and
within what parameters. Consider an example along the lines of “you are
very pretty.” If we only take into account the forms contained in this sen-
tence and the meanings activated by them, it would be very difficult to see
how anyone could understand it as disparaging. However, we know that this
isn’t always the case. In fact, this enlanguaged unit and its reception depend
upon several factors that are bound up in its embodied delivery, involving
the ways in which languagers deploy intonation, affect, pauses or hesita-
tion, and much more. It also is only interpretable within a specific context,
notably involving co-languagers – in this case, the person to whom the act is
directed. If this were said to someone who is obviously dishevelled, perhaps
rushing into a class late having just woken up, chances are good that it will
be understood as sarcastic (at best) or insulting (at worst). If it is spoken
to someone who has just completed a ten-round boxing match, it will be
understood differently, perhaps taken as a joke or a form of encouragement.
Regardless of these or any other possible situations, it cannot simply be the
sentence structure and the forms/meanings that it contains that are both
enlanguaged and received, but the entire complex of meaning that is cre-
ated in situ that is understood, processed and – eventually – judged. This is
a unit referred to as the utterance.
Generally speaking, an utterance is understood to be a specific languag-
ing act, involving formal or structural components that languagers do, as
well as the entirety of factors that lead to this doing, frame its reception
and predicate any subsequent languaging activity, ranging from reception
to response (e.g. Crookes, 1990). An utterance is thus an enlanguagement
that can only be described and interpreted in a context – some demonstra-
bly experiential event involving human speakers and human audiences, as
well as all of the cultural and emotional baggage they carry. Importantly,
utterances are not the same thing as sentences, although the two do fre-
quently overlap. Some utterances are single linguistic forms, such as when
I yell “asshole!” at the careless driver who has cut me off on the freeway.
This can be understood as an expression of my anger and my judgement of
the driver in question (and, importantly, not as any reference to their anus).
Other utterances comprise entire sentences in which a subject and verbal
predicate are enlanguaged, often with varying complements and adjuncts,
as can be seen in the example of me telling a tedious colleague to “shut the
fuck up!” Still other utterances are longer and more syntactically dense, as
can be seen in the case of jokes or moments of humour, which may best be
considered the interleaved enlanguaging of utterances within utterances.
Crucially, all utterances, from the most simple, monosyllabic to the most
complex, scripted, multisentence ones, constitute languaging events that
happen at a time, in a physical place and within a cultural backdrop (a matter
taken up in more detail in Chapter 3). These utterances are often considered
transgressive, even when their formal content (i.e. the linguistic forms that
they contain) is anything but, leading to no end of confusion and contro-
versy. Several of these moments will be unpacked in the following chapters,
particularly ones in which languagers claim to not have transgressed shared
boundaries, in part because they had not used putatively “bad words” or, as
in the case of the Access Hollywood tape, because it was claimed to be only
a matter of one such “bad word.” By reconsidering the entire linguistic
package of these and many other moments, description, interpretation and
analysis are able to take a deeper and more critical turn, peeling back addi-
tional layers and offering a more holistic understanding of what is at stake in
these and other moments.
Tying It Together
This chapter overviews some of the more useful tools that can be applied to
specific languaging events, looking past the rather simple concept of word:
the linguistic sign, including both form and meaning; simple and complex
forms, such as derived and compounded forms, alongside truncations and
acronyms; formal typologies bound up by social factors, including euphe-
misms, dysphemisms and orthophemisms; and the utterance, an entirely
context-dependent physical enlanguagement. These tools allow us to better
describe and interpret languaging activities and the languagers who both
author and react to them.
With this in mind, it is possible to reconsider Donald Trump’s comments
and describe them with more precision. By asserting that “you can grab
‘em by the pussy . . . they let you,” Trump was deploying a series of forms,
each of which activated situationally interpretable meanings. Some of these
include straightforward signifier-signified relations, notably his use of pussy
to refer to ‘female genitalia.’ Others involve complex structures, such as
Trump’s use of a sentence that positioned the female body – and especially
genitalia – as something that is susceptible to be grabbed by men “who are
famous” (i.e. men like him), and also framing this assertion as something
that women just allow. This is the crux of the moral and political issue at
hand: a man asserts the factuality of his permission to seize women by their
genitalia, not to mention their expected acquiescence to this, because of his
celebrity and power. Form and structure have, in and of themselves, little to
do with how this may be labelled transgressive: after all, Trump could have
said something like “women simply allow powerful men like me to force-
fully and suddenly clutch their vaginas,” and this would only dubiously be
seen as less transgressive (in fact, the boundary crossing of this utterance
might well have been clearer, not to mention excused with greater difficulty
by his apologists).
Trump’s utterance can be argued to have transgressed a litany of social

boundaries, and not only for the previously mentioned reasons. In order to
push further into this example, we must also consider the contextual inter-
pretation of the utterance and of the sequence of utterances in the wider
linguistic moment. We understand from what preceded and followed this,
as well as the huis clos physical and temporal context of a one-on-one inter-
view with an entertainment reporter, that Donald Trump was engaged in
bragging. He enlanguaged his ability to affect others, specifically women, as
well as their own inability to do anything but acquiesce to his capacity and
dominance. This is nothing more than the linguistic realization of misogy-
nistic manhood (see Harp, 2019; Maas et al., 2018), the linguistic render-
ing of a mental world in which men are understood as able do what they
want to women, provided they possess significant enough cultural, political
and/or economic capital, notably the sort of fame and fortune that Trump
holds in spades (whether this is positive or negative capital is a matter for
other scholarship). This sort of languaging is, indeed, common to homo-
social environments (see, e.g., Kimmel, 2013), that is, it is part and parcel
of the locker room talk of many, but far from all, males. And therein lies
the greater critique of this one linguistic moment, one that largely slipped
by the mainstream press and political positioning of others. That which is
“bad” in this instance, that which transgressed shared social morality, was
not merely Trump’s choice of form or structure, the utterance he enacted
or how it was received: it was all of this and it was more.
A Closer Look
Turning our attention to more complex, structured elements of languaging,

let’s consider Trump’s response to the controversy that erupted following
the release of the tape and its transcript. Soon after these were leaked to
press outlets, and confronting a mounting storm of criticism, Donald Trump
issued an official response to his then decade-old comments. As reported
by CNN, he stated, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize,” before con-
tinuing on to note, “I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference
between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually
abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his
victims.”12 Following this and other repetitions of similar utterances, Trump
supporters claimed that the matter had been settled: candidate Trump had
offered an apology. His detractors and opponents refuted this, asserting that
his utterance had failed to get to the heart of the matter, and even asserting
that this constituted a sort of half-hearted “un-apology.” Given the descrip-

tive tools applicable to transgressive languaging covered in this chapter, how
might you understand one or the other point of view? What about the struc-
tured forms of the original tape and the utterances of Trump’s reply led his
supporters and his opponents to understand these languaging events in such
radically different ways?
This is clearly a matter of more than just languaging – whether this is
reduced to words or sentences, linguistic signs or utterances – this is a matter
of how language is used and by whom and, perhaps more importantly, what
the reception of this says about our shared beliefs and values. Languaging is
not simply about transmitting our mental images to others, it is also about
who we are and who we claim to be, the types of power that we hold, and
the ways in which we are situated in society. Were someone else to have pro-
duced the same utterances as Trump, perhaps someone who does not have
access to vast amounts of social and material capital, someone who does not
hold sway over powerful institutions, do we really think the same outcome
would have occurred? Upon this there is wide, if largely unspoken, agreement,
even across the political fault lines of the present day. The next chapters delve
more deeply into the ways in which doing language is doing much more than
mere communication: it is doing mythology and ideology, power and author-
ity. And it results in more than just words on a page or sounds in the air: it
affects real lives, particularly when it concerns transgressive languaging.
• Reconsider Trump’s languaging activity captured in the Access Hollywood
tape, applying some of the terms and concepts from this chapter to the
different components of this moment. We have seen that pussy is widely
understood as a transgressive or taboo form, at least among English lan-
guagers in North America (and elsewhere) and admittedly with a degree
of variability. Related to these are several others, including
• puss, a truncation with similar dysphemistic qualities
• pussyhound, a compound form referring to a person – usually male –
who is drawn to or seeks out women as sexual, but not necessarily
intimate or romantic, partners
• pussify/pussified, a verbal derivation referring to the act of rendering a
person or object used or usable in the way that would otherwise sig-
nify or be associated with female genitalia
• bussy, a blending or portmanteau of boy and pussy, referring to the male
anus as a sexual organ
What other forms can you think of that maintain a referential relationship
with the base? How can you describe these forms, for example, as deriva-
tions, truncations, etc.?
• Now consider things from a different vantage point, taking into account
the referent that Trump enlanguaged in this moment, ‘female genitalia.’
English languagers use a number of other forms to activate this referent
in the minds of co-languager receivers, such as
• vagina, an orthophemism
• slash, box and cum dumpster, dysphemisms
• flower, cookie and muffin, euphemisms
When do you think that one or another of these forms might be judged
less harshly? What other X-phemisms have you observed, and how might
they be interpreted or classified?
• Name three other supposedly bad forms (i.e. ones that are widely subject
to taboos) that are used regularly in your day-to-day life and identify
their meanings. What derivational or compositional forms can you think
of that are constructed from these bases?
• Give an example from daily life in which languaging – yours or someone
else’s – has been judged negatively in some way. How can you better
describe and understand this in light of the discussion in this chapter?
Further Reading
For readers who haven’t taken a course in basic linguistics, as well as for those
who might need a bit of a refresher, Randall Eggert’s This Book is Taboo: An
Introduction to Linguistics Through Swearing provides an excellent overview.
Keith Allan and Kate Burridge’s volume Forbidden Words: Taboo and the
Censoring of Language includes very useful examples of X-phemy, as well as
several other strategies that speakers deploy when avoiding – or activating –
linguistic taboos (also see Chapter 2). Additional sources, including those
taking a non-Anglophone perspective, can be found in the suggested read-
ings to Chapter 1.
Notes
1 www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html
2 It cannot be forgotten that several women at this time had already, and others
in the weeks following, alleged that Trump had sexually harassed or assaulted
them. That anyone was surprised by or feigned shock at Trump’s misogyny is
certainly a topic that demands more attention than this chapter could possibly
provide: see Benoit (2017), Maas et al. (2018) and Serwer (2021).
3 One notable exception was commentator Ana Navarro, whose excoriation of Re-
publican apologists became a media sensation and was instrumental in furthering
her career as a sort of rebel conservative (www.cnn.com/2016/10/08/us/

cnn-panel-trump-language/index.html).
4 The form taboo appears to have come from the Tongan word tabu, meaning
‘forbidden’ or ‘to be kept apart,’ originally referring to certain foods, as docu-
mented by Cook and King during their colonialist explorations of the Pacific
(1793).
5 The American Dialect Society even anointed -ussy as its 2022 Word of the Year.
This suffix and its productive derivations, including -ussify/ussification, derive
from the portmanteau of boy and pussy, referring to the male buttocks as a site
of sexualization (www.americandialect.org/2022-word-of-the-year-is-ussy).
6 I owe a debt of gratitude to many years of undergraduate students in HUM
15, who have given me these and countless other examples of ways to refer to
genitalia, stemming from their own language research assignments and in-class
discussions.
7 It doesn’t seem like we use that very much anymore, a point made with great
humorous effect by the character of Miss Slocomb in the (now rather dated)
British comedy series Are You Being Served (1972–1985).
8 Referential forms include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These stand in
contrast to functional forms, such as determiners, auxiliaries and prepositions,
which contribute to the construction of meaning in structured clauses, but
which are not linked to semantic referents.
9 Even in the cases of onomatopoeia, there is a great deal of cross-linguistic vari-
ation (see Dingemanse, 2012).
10 Infixation, a process whereby languagers insert different morphological compo-
nents within lexical bases, is rarely seen in English. One seemingly productive
example of this involves the insertion of fucking within complex forms, for
example, unbefuckinglievable; for more discussion and compelling examples,
see Yu (2003).
11 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/03/this-is-really-really-fuckin-
brilliant.html
12 www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/donald-trump-women-vulgar/index.
html
3
LANGUAGING MEANING
“Rolling Coal” and “Having Balls”
Key Concepts
• Meaning: denotation, connotation, association
• Languaging community, community of languaging
• Enregisterment and indexicality
On 12 March, 2021, the crew of Southwest Airlines Flight 531 prepared

to take off from San Jose Airport in California’s Silicon Valley. Typically,
communications between air traffic controllers and pilots consist of for-
mulaic exchanges about weather, flight plans and related details. On this
day, however, things took a decidedly different turn: a series of irrelevant,
expletive-laden communications were broadcast for all to hear, including
hobbyists who record and upload aviation events to social media platforms.1
This moment and its linguistic content afford a distinct perspective on trans-
gressive languaging and languagers, specifically about how transgression
arises from the actuation, reception and contestation of meaning. While the
linguistic sign is certainly at stake in this example, much more interesting
for discussion below is the linguistic context: the assemblage of physical,
interpersonal, and cultural factors that allow such events to be interpreted.
This chapter pierces the surface of linguistic signs, as introduced in Chap-
ter 2, breaking meaning down into three ideational constituents – denotation,
connotation and association – each of which is anchored within a cul-
tural frame. This understanding of meaning subsequently engenders a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-3
34 Languaging Meaning
complexification of the notion of culture, as well as the elaboration of two

additional constructs – the languaging or speech community and the com-
munity of practice or languagers – as the sites of linguistic life. Discussion
then turns to theories in cultural linguistics, most notably relativity, while
also pushing back against deterministic reflexes often operating beneath
the surface of disciplinary habits. Summarily, this chapter explores how
language and culture are inseparably enmeshed.
Unintended Transgression
On the early spring morning in question, the pilot of Southwest 531 acci-
dentally cued his mic to the tower frequency of San Jose airport, broadcast-
ing for all to hear – and record. In what might be considered a moment
of unintended transgression, he engaged in an expletive-laden diatribe,
providing a very personal view of California and Californians, the tran-
script of which was reported in a number of local outlets.2 “Yeah, fuck this
place: goddamn liberal fucks,” he is heard to say. “Fuckin’ weirdos: prob’ly
drivin’ around in fucking Hyundais . . . fucking lowered shit that go slow
as fuck,” he continued, enlanguaging clichéd stereotypes concerning the
automotive choices and driving habits of residents in this multicultural,
multiethnic region. Despite a controller’s attempt to warn the pilot, he con-
tinued, commenting on the practice of modifying pickup trucks so that they
emit thick diesel smoke, asserting that “you don’t have balls unless you’re
fuckin’ rollin’ coal man . . . god dammit.” At some point, someone must
have realized that this putatively private conversation was not private at all,
as another voice from the cockpit of Southwest 531 reverted to the sterile
tenor of airline verbiage and the plane took off for a routine flight to Seattle.
These 20-some seconds made a splash in the news over the ensuing week,
a rather daunting achievement in a period otherwise dominated by a health
emergency (the Covid-19 pandemic) and political turmoil (the aftermath
of an insurrection at the US capitol and the ascent of a new presidential
administration). Southwest Airlines, keen to dispel negative publicity that
might arise from any press coverage, responded to questions from a reporter
at the San Francisco Chronicle, stating that they were “fully addressing the
situation internally,” while also noting that their “corporate Culture is built
on a tenet of treating others with concern and dignity and the comments
are inconsistent with the professional behavior and overall respect that we
require from our Employees.”3
Obviously, the pilot’s languaging is contrary to both airline protocols
and established flight procedures, and is thus transgressive on its face. Per
the Federal Aviation Administration, so-called sterile cockpit regulations
require all pilot communications to be restricted to matters such as flight
procedures and aircraft performance; invectives lamenting slow drivers and

liberal-leaning communities quite obviously do not fit into this scope.4 Fur-
thermore, the Southwest pilot very clearly failed to comply with broader
proscriptions on language use, whether these be company-internal norms
or a sense of propriety. In a work setting, particularly one as codified and
stratified as aviation, shared notions of verbal hygiene (Cameron, 1995;
see Chapter 5) dictate the avoidance of expletives (shit, fuckin’), taboo ref-
erents (balls) and interjections that might be considered blasphemous or
simply impolite (goddamit). In short, but only on the surface, this incident
appears to be a rather ordinary example of transgressive languaging, a lapse
of judgement on this pilot’s part that might be metaphorically understood
as his “forgetting to close the locker room door” – only in this case the
locker room was the cockpit of a commercial jet.
If examined more critically, however, this incident can be understood
as much more than a person making infelicitous linguistic choices, ones
that, while certainly transgressing shared norms, are also part and parcel
of daily life. This diatribe and the public reaction to it put on stark display
the ways in which languaging reflects cultural values and languagers enact
cultural stances. Crucially, this moment did not simply arise from the pilot’s
invoking non-pertinent matters at a non-sanctioned time; after all, the same
person complaining about a mediocre layover meal or lauding the scenic
beauty of Northern California would have been unlikely to engender much
or any response, even though these also represent apparent violations of
FAA regulations. At the same time, transgression is only tangentially a mat-
ter of the use of taboo forms or the evocation of taboo referents in the
workplace: while impossible to prove, it is very likely that such forms and
referents permeate the cockpits of airlines around the world, dominated as
they are by males and masculine codes of behaviour. Summarily, this single
moment is far from a straightforward matter of transgressive words or ideas,
and it is more than just a question of poor taste or hot-headedness. At stake
in this or similar incidents are the ways in which languagers transgress estab-
lished boundaries by evoking referents that can only be understood through
a cultural lens and doing so in a manner that is judged to be unacceptable,
unwanted and/or unworthy, reactions that themselves must be evaluated
from additional cultural perspectives. For this reason, the notion of meaning
and referentiality introduced in the preceding pages requires a good deal of
complexification and retooling.
Languaging Meaning
Chapter 2 introduced the linguistic sign and its two components: form
and meaning. This bifurcation breaks apart the often underexamined
connection between the two halves of what languagers apprehend. That

which are often understood as words, expressions, sayings, sentences and
the like are actually very complex, learned ways of linking mental and expe-
riential realities and expressing these to others. In this section, the seem-
ingly straightforward notion of meaning is teased apart and replaced with
something more multifaceted, acknowledging that meaning exists in the
imaginary world of speakers and listeners, writers and readers, languager-
authors and their languager-receivers. As such, meaning and its compo-
nents are inherently bound up in the images linked to a form, the ways
in which these images are connected to other images, and the pathways
through which any of this mental reality is arrived at and shared among
communities of languagers.
To begin unravelling meaning, let’s consider the linguistic sign in
Figure 3.1. On the left side of the sign is an image likely familiar to all
readers; on the right are written and phonetic forms used by Anglophones
to enlanguage this image. So far, so good: meaning and form appear to
be describable in a straightforward manner. If we take other linguacul-
tural environments into account, the primary element that changes in this
FIGURE 3.1 Linguistic sign

Source: Photo by the author
schematic is not the mental image but the forms used to project this, rang-
ing from hond in Afrikaans to inja in Zulu. Any question of how a given
image might be variably interpreted must, accordingly, arise from the sig-
nifying end of this pairing. However, languagers also know that this image,
like all others, exists in a complex web of connections to other images, each
with respective forms. They also know that any such form-meaning matrix
is intimately related to how they use the linguistic sign; this is referred to
as semantic knowledge, that is, knowledge pertaining to enlanguaged and
languageable meaning.
Reconsider the knowledge held by Anglophone languagers living in the
United States and many other settings as it applies to Figure 3.1. On the
basis of their lived experiences, they understand that the referent linked
to the form dog exists in contiguity with the referent linked to the form
pet: they have undoubtedly seen dogs kept as domestic companions, per-
haps even in their own home, understood that these animals are treated like
members of families, and felt or observed that others in their midst hold
strong bonds of affection for dogs. They have also observed expressions like
man’s best friend used within their linguacultural environment, concretiz-
ing the ways in which these animals are viewed and understood, while also
testifying to strongly held, although at times elusive, values associated with
this object, for example, ‘loyalty.’ Their knowledge about these connections
emerges from shared experiences or moments lived directly or vicariously,
for example, having a pet dog or seeing others with one.
At the same time, this knowledge is subject to idiosyncratic experience
and personal taste that colour how dog connects with pet or affection or any
other linguistic form-meaning pairing. Perhaps they have severe allergies
and thus associate the same linguistic sign with sneezing; perhaps they had
a run-in with an aggressive dog and associate this referent with fear; or per-
haps they simply do not like pets at all, whether they are dogs, cats, hamsters
or any other animal. All such knowledge – information linked to physical
characteristics, culturally emergent relations between a form-referent pairing
and personal understandings derived from life moments – is bound up in
the linguistic sign and in the semantic network within which any sign exists,
and these networks are both communal and idiosyncratic. Clearly, meaning
is not simply a matter of form-referent pairing; there is much more going
on behind the scenes of any linguistic sign, ranging from the rather simple
example of dog to the high-stakes ones of love and hatred. This concerns not
simply how referents stand in relation among each other but how different
parts or qualities of reference link together to constitute semantic networks.
At risk of oversimplifying, it is possible to distinguish among three compo-
nents of meaning, all of which have to do with the ways in which different
referents interact and coalesce in the minds of languagers: denotation, con-

notation and association (see Sonesson, 1998, for a useful background).
Denotation is perhaps the most straightforward piece of this puzzle: a
given form denotes (from the Latin ‘to indicate’ or ‘point to’) a particular
image or images. For example, the nominal form crab denotes ‘a crustacean
of the infraorder Brachyura’ (e.g. “crabs live in the ocean”), the verbal form
crab ‘to fish for crabs’ (e.g. “he crabs in early winter”), the adjective crabby
‘irritable’ (e.g. “she was in a crabby mood after the tedious meeting”), and
crabbedly ‘in an irritable manner’ (e.g. “he responded crabbedly to my ques-
tion”). From the discussion here and in Chapter 2, it should already be clear
that denotations are not always canonically specified, akin to proscribed
dictionary definitions, nor are they shared universally within a languag-
ing community. However, they are generally understood by co-languagers
and across such communities, such that the link between a given form and
denotation is considered a convention (Gärdenfors, 1993). Importantly, the
form-denotation link can and often does vary widely, deriving from experi-
ences and habits, personal or community realities, or any number of other
forces. This fact was made clear while researching the Southwest Airlines
incident that is the focal point of discussion here: among pilots and avia-
tion enthusiasts, crab has an additional denotation, specifically ‘to align an
aircraft diagonally to a runway approach in a crosswind landing’ (e.g. “the
pilot crabbed on final approach due to strong winds”). Thus, it must also
be recognized that the bidirectional form-denotation relationship is inher-
ently unstable and can even contain highly specific links within languager
subgroups, cohering around diverse experiences or activities.
If denotation is variable, but at least relatively easily conceptualized, a
second component of meaning is somewhat less straightforward: connota-
tion. From the Latin meaning ‘to invoke’ or ‘to point toward along with,’
connotation refers to a unidirectional connection among different semantic
denotations. Connotations are activated by languagers along with denota-
tions, typically without much or any attention or thought. Describing these
co-activations facilitates an understanding of how different images coalesce,
constituting semantic nodes, fields or points of intersection. Consider again
the canonical denotation of crab and the denotation ‘a crustacean of the
infraorder Brachyura.’ On the basis of the knowledge held by languagers
familiar with this sign, we can assert that crab also connotes ‘a large, mainly
aquatic arthropod,’ bringing it into semantic contiguity with other signs.
Crab, lobster and shrimp are joined together via a common connotation,
as all crabs, all lobsters and all shrimp share the denotative quality ‘aquatic
crustacean.’ This is a one-way logical implication, however: crustacean does
not connote crab, as not all crustaceans are crabs (indeed, some crustaceans
are shrimp, others are lobsters, still others are barnacles). Of course, and like
denotation, any link between a form or forms and their respective con-
notation is arbitrary, emerging within the linguacultural environments in
which languagers come to understand these signs and their connectedness.
For that reason, different languagers and different communities of languag-
ers may well hold different connotative links. For pilots, crab connotes a
‘manoeuvre’ and is thus connotatively linked to take-off, land and taxi; for
other groups, at least according to the Online Slang Dictionary of Ameri-
can English,5 crab (denoting ‘a person who only pays for things when in
the presence of others’) connotes ‘miserliness’ and is thus linked to stingy,
penny-pincher and cheapskate.
A final semantic concept, one that is far more variably bound up with
the sociocultural knowledge of individual languagers, is association. As the
name suggests, a semantic association captures the relative expectation or
contiguity of one denotation vis-à-vis other denotations, albeit in a way
that is neither necessary nor unidirectional (and thus can be distinguished
from connotation). Associations are closely related to biases, knowledge
built upon and deriving from past experiences, and are thus much more
fluid, even within a grouping of relatively like-minded languagers who share
common experiences (Bhatia et al., 2019; Kenett et al., 2023). For example,
languagers living in the Chesapeake Bay areas of Maryland and Virginia,
regions famous for a blue-shelled variety of crab, may associate the cor-
responding crab with local heritage; others, even those living in the same
communities, who happen to be allergic to crustaceans might associate crab
with trauma and danger; and still others might associate this with summer,
the traditional high point of crab catching and consumption. That one or
another individual does not share identical associations with all others in
their languaging community does not deny the relative strength or weak-
ness of semantic associations and their related links, but it does serve to
point to the inherently fluid, dynamic nature of such relations and their
intersections with other cultural constructs and linguistic signs.
Like denotations, the connotations and associations activated by a lin-
guistic sign do not exist in a vacuum but are connected within semantic net-
works of varying density and complexity. When used by most semanticists
or computational linguists, a network refers to an interconnected whole of
knowledge, be it held by a single person or an operating system, that brings
different linguistic signs and signifier-signified couplings into relation (Zim-
mermann & Sternefeld, 2013). Accordingly, a form-referent pair like fly ‘to
move in and pass through the air’ exists in a complex network involving
different near synonyms (e.g. travel), antonyms (e.g. crash), complemen-
tary subparts (e.g. take off – land), a host of connotations (e.g. airplane,
pilot) and associations (e.g. ticket, vacation). As it concerns transgressive
languaging, the precise nature of semantic networks and their theorization
are far less important than the overarching supposition that both forms and
meanings, as well as the content of meaning, are languaged within complex
matrices of experientially gained knowledge and that the enlanguagement
of meaning at all levels can only be understood within a cultural backdrop,
involving fellow languagers and their lived understanding of the world.
Meaning and Languagers

Considering the preceding information, the Southwest pilot’s assertion that
“you don’t have balls unless you’re rollin’ coal” can be re-examined, and a
complex web of semantic meanings that he enlanguaged in this moment can
be unravelled. Of primary interest are two complex forms and their semantic
content: have balls and roll coal. Both of these should be considered idi-
omatic, as the meaning activated by them has little, if anything, to do with
those linked to the simplex forms constituting them (i.e. have and balls,
roll and coal). Regarding the first token, have balls, Anglophone languag-
ers understand that this denotes a verbal image akin to ‘displaying courage’
or ‘acting in a fearless manner’; the second, roll coal, denotes the action of
‘emitting thick smoke from a diesel engine.’ So far, so good. But what else
is made real with these forms and their linguistic actuation? And what, pre-
cisely, about these linguistic actions can be considered transgressive (besides
the fact that they violated FAA regulations)? To answer these or related ques-
tions, attention must be given to the knowledge held by languagers, both
the one who authored this event and those who received and reacted to it.
Consider the connotations and associations activated by these forms. To
have balls is connotatively linked with a number of other images and their
associated values, some of which are ‘virtue,’ ‘physical and mental strength,’
and ‘agency.’ When an individual is said to have balls, they are inserted within
a semantic imagery that includes these and many other positively connoted
components of shared mental reality: having balls connotes doing that which
is daring and difficult or tackling a challenge. All acts of having balls are
understood to be acts of putative agentive strength and courage, even if a
given languager-perceiver does not like the action in question. As such, and
no doubt because of the connotations linking one part of this complex form
with ideational masculinity (balls denotes ‘male testes’ and connotes ana-
tomical sex), having balls is undoubtedly closely associated with traditional
mythologies about gender roles, presentation and embodiment (see Chap-
ter 4 for more discussion of ideology and mythology). While it is not neces-
sarily true that all those who have balls need to identify as male or as a man,
there is a relatively strong expectation that having balls is correlated with this
status, regardless of whether this bias is also associated with qualities that
might be labelled as good or bad, proper or improper, desired or undesired.
Similar interpretations can be made of the form roll coal, denoting a phe-
nomenon that is largely limited to North American linguacultural settings.
For those who can interpret this form in the way described earlier, semantic
connotations of ‘pollution’ and ‘vehicle’ are necessarily co-activated: all acts
of rolling coal involve polluting and some sort of motor vehicle, regardless
of whether this is viewed as positive or negative, amusing or disturbing, or
by any other optic. The associations activated in the minds of different lan-
guagers and languager groups vary widely, of course, in part based how such
connotations link with their held values. For some (including the present
author), rolling coal is closely associated with political populism, reactionary
conservatism and related identities. Perhaps for this reason, and given expe-
riences of seeing people rolling coal and having coughed through the result-
ing thick emissions of black smoke that this action produces, there is also an
association with aggression and anti-environmental stances. Of course, for
others (and presumably the pilot of Flight 531), rolling coal might be asso-
ciated with positive qualities and experiences, perhaps even with deeply held
values and identity characteristics (see Daggett, 2018; Lindquist, 2019;
Nelson, 2020 for discussion of this and related phenomena).
Obviously, the preceding semantic breakdown is far from complete, as
much more information – particularly concerning connotation and associa-
tion – could be added; these very same forms might have distinct denota-
tive, connotative and associative properties when used by other speakers
and/or in different contexts (consider how the semantic content of to roll
coal might be described were this uttered by workers in a coal mine). Such
generalizations notwithstanding, it is important to consider how the same
signs might be linked to dissimilar connotations and associations by diverse
languagers in the very same linguacultural environment, where such diver-
gences could go a long way to explaining differential reactions to this or
similar incidents. For example, persons who identify as feminists might asso-
ciate the form to have balls with misogyny and sexism, particularly as the
compositionality of this complex form implicationally removes those who
do not physically possess balls from the domain of those who are able to
‘have and display courage’; to assert that the positively valued qualities of
bravery or tenacity are somehow linked to genitalia, and genitalia to tra-
ditionally defined male anatomical properties, might well be offensive to
many. At the same time, those belonging to socioculturally conservative
communities of languagers might associate rolling coal with worthy charac-
teristics and behaviours, with pride of place or of economic status, a display
of normativity to be celebrated and emulated.
This differential view of meanings activated by languagers goes a long
way in clarifying what happened in incidents such as Flight 531, both the
original languaging on the part of the pilot and subsequent languaging on
the part of recipient audiences. Accepting, if only for discussion’s sake, the
preceding semantic descriptions, the boundary-crossing component of this
act derives from the pilot articulating an assertion that could be otherwise
expressed along the lines of, “If a person does not emit thick black diesel
smoke from their pickup truck, they do not have and do not display the
type of courage that is generally expected of men or persons who identify
as such.” What very likely outraged those who first heard this or listened to
the recordings broadcast on various media was not simply the denotative
content of this utterance but the potentially connoted assertion that ‘all
such acts are necessarily virtuous,’ as well as the concomitant associations
that they may have made with southern conservatism, a particularly situated
form of hostile or aggressive masculinity.
Of course, the preceding interpretation is also coloured by additional
semantic matrices activated by the Southwest Airlines pilot during his ill-
advised screed, ones that might be unpacked following a procedure similar
to that just discussed. The complex, structured form goddamn liberal fucks
denotes a number of images, notably a referent that might otherwise be
rendered as ‘persons having non-traditional views of society that are judged
to be of little worth or value.’ But this enlanguaged noun phrase, uttered
as an expletive, exists within a complex, culturally bounded and culturally
actuated matrix of connotations and associations, including ‘conserva-
tism’ and ‘traditional sociocultural precepts.’6 Just as a languager cannot
evoke flying without conjuring up a host of connotations (e.g. ‘taking off,’
‘landing’) and associations (‘airline,’ ‘travel’), the Southwest pilot activated
not merely widely held stereotypes of Californians but an entire network
of highly charged meanings, involving signifiers brought into connotative
contiguity (e.g. ‘politics,’ ‘values,’ ‘Americanism’), some of which are also
antonymic referents (e.g. ‘conservatism,’ ‘tradition,’ ‘worth’) and others of
which have more slippery associative connections (e.g. ‘toxic masculinity,’
‘populism,’ ‘Red State/Blue State antagonism’). To fully understand these
matters, many of which arise more from what languagers feel than from
what they can empirically demonstrate, it is useful to turn to the question
of how culture and language are inseparably interwoven and how this inter-
connection can be better understood and applied to the interpretation of
languaging moments.
Languaging Culture
It should already be clear that incidents like that of Southwest Flight 531
can only be understood within a cultural backdrop, in this case that of the
United States in the second decade of the twenty-first century, one that
may be further broken down into sub-cultural groups defined according to
economic, ethnic, geographic, racial and any number of additional criteria.

This might appear to be a straightforward consideration, yet the concept
of culture, anchored to place and time, has proven to be vexingly difficult
to pin down. Depending upon what is invoked by culture, not to mention
the perspectives and experiences of languagers and languaging communities
that do this, this form may denote “the collective manifestations of human
intellectual achievement,” “the customary actions, interactions, productions
and their reception of a given social group,” or “the non-physical environ-
ment within which human groupings live together,” among many other
possibilities (see Baldwin et al., 2005; Birukou et al., 2013, for an over-
view of debate among human and social scientists, as well as Kroeber &
Kluckhohn, 1952, for a historical perspective on the question). Regard-
less of these sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent understandings,
it should be clear that culture is intimately associated with humanity, much
like languaging as defined in Chapter 1. Importantly, culture is not some-
thing that exists or simply is, but something that is done. Culture is iter-
ated and reiterated, acquired and transmitted, and it is inseparable from its
human author-hosts.
Rather than considering culture as a fixed target, it is perhaps most help-
ful to follow anthropologist Helen Spencer-Oatey’s approach and consider
this concept to be a slippery ideational signifier, one that spans several
academic disciplines and can be viewed from any number of perspectives
(2012). Accordingly, it is possible to refer to culture as the habitual actions
of a community, for example, the different ways of greeting or express-
ing commonality, through which culture might be accomplished by shak-
ing hands, kissing on the cheek, patting on the back, or maintaining eye
contact. It is also possible to refer to the encultured artifacts that a group
produces and uses, as well as the various ways in which these artifacts are
received, deployed and valued. From this perspective, various models of cars
can be understood as encultured products and their reception by individuals
and groups an enculturing act, reflected, for example, in the status of differ-
ent models or the importance people attach to them, at times to the point
of constructing deeply held identities around these. Any number of other
examples and complications could be cited – what is important to grasp is
that culture is not any one thing, nor is it ever static or fixed. Culture is a
moving target, one that is perhaps best understood as a heuristic rather than
a substantive truth, although its effects are certainly observable and held to
be truths (Baldwin et al., 2005).
All human individuals are cultural participants and belong to various, some-
times distinct, sometimes overlapping and always fluid cultural assemblages,
some of which are easy to see and others of which are difficult to describe or
even discern. All individuals also operate in ways and understand the world
according to parameters that emerge from these cultural dynamics and are
transmitted within them by fellow cultural beings. Consider the example of
politeness, a collection of behaviours and attitudes that are enacted with the
goal of demonstrating respect for others and presenting a positive social per-
sona (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003; Leech, 2007). While the phenomenon of
politeness might well be a conceptual universal, in that all humans putatively
adhere or are expected to adhere to some set of values cogent to social perso-
nae, the precise expression and reception of politeness are far from it; any and
all ways of doing politeness are entirely locally emergent, as anyone who has
crossed cultural boundaries can readily attest. An action that is understood to
be polite in one setting, for instance, smiling and making eye contact, might
be considered invasive in another; according to some cultural frames it is
polite to ask a person’s name or occupation upon initial contact, whereas in
another this would be considered ill-mannered; and even the ways in which
the physical body is displayed or adorned are deeply tied to situational con-
cepts of politeness, ranging from what limbs may appear unadorned to the
nature of what is considered acceptable adornment, for whom, and in which
configurations. There is no such thing as a universal politeness of gesture or
presentation, much like there is no culturally transcendent notion of humil-
ity, kindness, friendliness or any other value. All of these ways of understand-
ing ourselves and others, not to mention the labels given to them, are bound
up in the knowledge we acquire from our surroundings, as well as the ability
we possess – and sometimes fail to draw upon – that enables us to conform
to expectations and share commonality with others.
Denial of cultural universality gives rise to a number of tensions, espe-
cially as it concerns the boundary between one and another community, as
well as those elements or practices that are or are not shared within commu-
nity bounds – and, of course, how the actions of languagers and their enlan-
guagements are received and evaluated. It is abundantly clear to any student
or scholar that doing language and doing culture are intimately connected,
although the two are neither synonymous nor straightforwardly overlap-
ping. Certainly, a common way of communicating is central to the develop-
ment of encultured patterns and practices, but it is neither a necessary nor
a sufficient ingredient to what might be considered cultural groupings, as
alluded to earlier. Consequently, the central question for description and
analysis of moments such as the Southwest pilot – or any other transgressive
languaging events – is not how language is central or peripheral to culture
but how languaging mediates culture and, concurrently, how culture medi-
ates languaging (see notably Kramsch, 2014). To better wrestle with this, a
short historical overview should prove useful.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, expressed for instance in the writ-
ing of German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, culture came to be
seen not as a series of things or fixed reference points but as a way of per-
ceiving reality – in his words, a Weltansicht or ‘worldview’ (1820, 1822).
Language was, for him and many of his contemporaries, a manifestation of
culture, one that determines the cognitive ability of individuals and con-
strains how different peoples process experience and imagine the world.
From this stance, it was possible to classify different cultures – that which
might be understood today as linguacultures – according to positivisti-
cally framed taxonomies of advancement or primitivity, ones that can no
longer be viewed as anything except racist and Eurocentric (see Trabant,
2012). Rosa (2018) provides a thorough and needed critique of this and
its descendant views, showing how such deterministic biases and under-
standings of the connection between language, thought and culture con-
tinue to resonate in popular and academic thinking to this day (Alim et al.,
2016; Hutton, 1998; Rosa & Flores, 2017; see also Chapter 4). Over a cen-
tury later, German-American anthropologist Franz Boas took some of the
first scholarly moves past Humboldtian taxonomies as they concerned the
language-culture dialectic, countering determinism and its racist founda-
tions with assertions that culture is both a personal experience and a means
of conveying the collective beliefs and habits of a group of persons, including
their linguistic habits (Boas, 1941, 1942; Seiferle-Valencia, 2017). Rather
than determining the ways in which languagers conceive of the world,
Boas asserted that this influenced ideational reality. He also took a then-
revolutionary stance against Eurocentrism and its trappings, which pro-
posed that certain categories of people possessed inherent traits, such as
cunning or creativity, by questioning the biased ways in which these evalu-
ations were made in the first place (Custred, 2020; Senft et al., 2009; but
also consider Bil, 2020). This determinist versus relativist tension persists
in contemporary scholarship, including linguistics (see Knisely & Russell,
2024, for a thorough critique).
Linguistic anthropologist Michael Agar reiterates the relativist stance of
Boas and his followers with a particularly useful metaphor as it concerns
the link between culture and language. Rather than being a fixed object, he
conceives of culture as a circle, within which outward manifestations such
as language forms, structures and habits are situated within a field (1996).
Agar uses fellow scholar Paul Friedrich’s term linguaculture, already familiar
from prior chapters, which captures the necessary and fundamentally insep-
arable tie between the two (pp. 52–60). While it is far beyond the scope of
this chapter or even this book to enter into the debate as to how to best
account for the resulting tension, what is crucial to grasp – and which Agar
and others have eloquently argued – is that language and culture cannot be
disentangled. The circle of language, whatever this is thought to contain
and however it is conceived, is bound to the field; at the same time, the
field is constituted in no small way by this very circle. It is important, how-

ever, to note that the conceptualization, let alone the position, of a given
linguaculture is not deterministic but relative, as the forms and structures
of one system do not decide how the world is perceived by those who lan-
guage them, akin to a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.7 These
languaging patterns do, however, influence the ways in which the world is
apprehended and envisioned, if only because cognition is also a linguistic
activity (see Leavitt, 2015; Sharifian, 2017). In essence, Agar’s approach
presumes that languagers are shaped, but not trapped, by the enlanguaged
patterns and practices that they acquire and subsequently deploy. Similarly,
culture can be understood as practice or a complex set of practices that are
inherited through experience and iterated or reiterated through action, ones
that constrain but do not confine languaging in all its forms.
Linguistic anthropologists such as Agar and cultural linguists like Sharifian
offer important conceptual tools for better grasping the language-culture
connection, as well as the ways in which both can be seen as shared values and
practices that are fundamentally verbal and active. Sharifian’s view of concep-
tualizations as culturally emergent structures is constructed upon schemas
and categories, that is, integrated knowledge units that can be thought of as
associations of experience and understanding (2011, pp. 24–25). Such units
emerge from and through social interaction and are distributed across a pop-
ulation, which can, in turn, be defined and bounded by the degree to which
it shares a particular cultural conceptualization. Importantly, the congru-
ence or dissonance of conceptual sharing within populations is not binary or
absolute but is much more akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic theory
of image-thought associations (1980). For any given sociocultural grouping,
conceptualizations will be variably shared, both in terms of their schematic
and in categorical content. In fact, the relative importance or scope of these
variations often leads to inter- and intra-community divergence (see Shari-
fian, 2011, pp. 4–16). On the one hand, there is a shared semiotic and com-
municative space that is already and always shaped by prior languaging and
cultural action – no languaging is accomplished in a vacuum or is undertaken
tabula rasa; it is born from and shaped by prior languagings, in turn serving
to constrain and make realizable future languagings by other languagers.
On the other, the very doing of language, not to mention the pathways
through which this is done and received (i.e. the forms and structures used,
the meanings evoked), can only be understood within the very same cultural
ecosystem; languaging and culturing are accomplished simultaneously and
dialectically. This is nothing less than a chicken-and-egg dynamic.
What does all of this mean for any understanding of transgressive lan-
guaging and languagers, including that which is under the microscope here?
In short, both everything and nothing. While there is a level of descriptive
adequacy that can be attained by looking solely to the enlanguaged con-

tent of the languaging moment, holistic description cannot limit itself to
this level; the words and utterances of the Southwest pilot are, absent an
interleaving within a cultural frame and an understanding of cultural sche-
mata that preceded this activity, neither describable nor interpretable. And
yet, absent a better understanding of languaging, in both this moment and
the moments that preceded it, it would be impossible to make anything
other than an idiosyncratic supposition about what was being culturally
accomplished in this moment, either by the pilot or by those who heard
his actions, not to mention their reaction to these. As fellow linguacultural
community members, we know a thing or two about what it means when a
person refers to others, in a fit of pique or a moment of outrage, as goddamn
liberal fucks. We also know a thing or two about what it means to assert
that “you don’t have balls unless you’re rolling coal,” regardless of whether
we share this sentiment. We are not naïve as it concerns our and others’
associations vis-à-vis the languager-authors of these or similar utterances, as
well as the cultural frames – in this case, sociopolitical ones – that are linked
to this languaging activity. And we infer, rightly or wrongly, correctly or
incorrectly, the positionality and perspective of this individual based on his
languaging activity, in large part because we have been exposed to similar
languagers and enlanguagements the past. In short, we understand this to
be a transgressive act – or perhaps we might deny that it should be labelled
as such – solely and entirely due to our cultural knowledge.
Languaging Communities and Communities of Languaging

The connection between language and culture is rather obvious, even if
frequently overdetermined – and not just in academic circles. In daily life,
language practices and patterns, as well as the labels given to these, are
often used distinguish between different cultures as a sort of shorthand. We
frequently refer to people as Chinese or Bulgarians in sweeping, overly
generalizing terms, and in so doing we establish lines that determine who
is included in and excluded from sociocultural constructs, most notably
the nation. We regularly confront truths such as “Japanese citizens speak
Japanese” or “this is America – speak English!” Of course, this ignores a vast
variability, even among those who are seen as legitimate languagers (let alone
those who are not); these divides also gloss over numerous differences con-
cerning how people language, with whom they language, and much more.
As tempting as these shorthand labels might be, they are not terribly useful
for the description, let alone interpretation and analysis, of different linguis-
tic facts and patterns. Much more applicable are two concepts – the speech
or languaging community and the community of practice or languaging.
Coined by the eminent linguist John Gumperz, a speech community is

defined by its linguistic norms, that is, by different characteristics around
which it coheres and through which it distinguishes itself from other speech
communities, including a shared lexicon and grammar (1968). Henceforth,
this is referred to as a languaging community, in part to reflect the founda-
tions laid in Chapter 1 but also to acknowledge that languaging is not always
equitable to speech, at least as this is commonly understood: some languag-
ing is aural, some gestural, still more graphological; a great deal of languaging
is done in the mind; some occurs in proximal interactions among languagers,
other over distances, using different media, all of which render the founda-
tional concept of speech somewhat antiquated, at best, or ableist, at worst.
Building off of Gumperz’ original definition, a languaging community can
be defined by the relative coherence of communicative activity and the rela-
tive similarity of enlanguagements produced by a cohort of languagers who
recognize themselves to be in community, in part because of these facts. Lan-
guaging communities may be bounded and delimited by different isoglosses
or features of enlanguagement observed at any level, from the formal to the
semantic or from the syntactic to the pragmatic. They may also be bound
by ideational conformities, notably mythologies and ideologies pertaining to
their and their fellow community languagers’ activities and identities.
Following sociolinguist William Labov’s understanding, the languaging
community is a rather elastic construct, allowing for the overlapping and
interleaving of different sub-communities along political, socioeconomic,
racial, ethnic or any number of other lines (1972). From one perspective,
a languaging community might be relatively expansive and populous. The
Hispanophone community, for instance, spans an enormous geographic
area from California to Argentina to Spain and includes hundreds of mil-
lions of persons; despite differences in the languagings of a Los Angelino, a
Mendozan or a Sevillian, common characteristics allow them to be grouped
under this heading. At the same time, beliefs about these commonalities
serve as a complementary point of ideological cohesion: most understand
themselves to constitute a languaging community, albeit one in which there
is significant variation. Considered more narrowly, any number of smaller,
more geographically defined languaging communities exist within this over-
arching construct, such as one city, for example, Buenos Aires, or even one
neighbourhood, for example, La Boca. By referring to languaging com-
munities rather than simply abstract cultures, we can focus our description
and analysis on the linguistic and/or ideational components around which
a grouping coheres, without overdetermining extralinguistic factors that
might otherwise be associated with those sharing these languaging norms.
This is a crucial assertion, as there may well be countless cultural dissimilari-
ties among those who otherwise language in similar ways.
In the case of Flight 531, the pilot and the controller, as well as the
journalists and social media followers reacting to the exchange, all belong
to the same languaging community, which for the purpose of discussion
here is labelled US Anglophone (acknowledging the tenuous nature of this
shorthand). Because all involved are proficient participants within this lan-
guaging community, they are able to receive and interpret the enlanguaged
forms and meanings produced in this moment, even if their judgements
concerning these were far from unanimous. At the same time, there is obvi-
ously more going on than the simple understanding of words or sentences
that promotes the grouping of different participants within different cul-
tural categories. By languaging in the way he did and by reacting in the ways
they did, the pilot and various press commentators, along with the airline
itself, demonstrated an understanding of norms and rules that are specific to
particular configurations and domains of language activity and interaction, a
consideration that points to a distinct configuration of languagers, cohering
not around matters inherent to the doing of language but around factors
that emerge from the outcomes of languaging.
First coined by educator Etienne Wenger, a community of practice
(henceforth, community of languaging) comprises persons who regularly
take part in common activities and share common concerns (1998, 2000).
Whereas a languaging community is primarily defined by the form and
structure of linguistic activity, communities of languaging emerge around
shared goals and interests, such as professions, religions or hobbies. Applied
beyond its original pedagogical use, communities of languaging have come
to encompass any number of cohesive, culturally constructed groupings,
for example, gender, which shares a number of often unspoken and unrec-
ognized common threads, as well as any number of distinctions (Eckert &
McConnell-Genet, 1992).8 In essence, a community of languaging is nar-
rower and more limited as it concerns the teleology of communication than
is a languaging community: the former is defined by the why of languaging,
that is, those factors that propel different persons to communicate, whereas
the latter is defined by the how of languaging, that is, the mechanisms
deployed to accomplish this.
Unlike a languaging community, within which persons tend to be lumped
into one (and occasionally more) group, communities of languaging are
inherently modular, reflecting French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari’s understanding of assemblages (1980), a heuristic expanded by
contemporary cultural critic Jasbir Puar (2007). An individual may belong
to several assemblages at the same time, while also moving among and
across these, giving their content variable salience. Depending upon the
assemblages implicated by a particular act and context, specific languagings
will reflect not only the broader linguaculture and the conventions shared
by a languaging community but also its shared values and imbedded prac-
tices; an individual may language in more-or-less different ways across time
and space, depending upon the community of languaging in which they find
themself. The pilot of Flight 531 demonstrated this point when he abruptly
shifted languaging patterns once he realized that his microphone was cued
to an incorrect frequency. Before this, he presumably understood his lan-
guaging to be directed at a much narrower audience, one consisting solely
of himself and his co-pilot (also male), and that such linguistic activity was
either acceptable or not transgressive within this space (it should be noted
that airline cockpits are reputed as communities of languaging dominated by
male-male interactions, frequently involving the types of banter seen here;
see Davey & Davidson, 2000; Neal-Smith & Cockburn, 2009). In the sec-
ond instance, he languaged in a way that reflected the norms shared within
the broader community of languaging of professional aviation, abruptly
shifting his actions to meet the expectations of this conceptual space.
This incident affords one example of how various communities of lan-
guaging can and often do come into contact and conflict. Here, when
broadcasted beyond the intended community of languaging, the pilot’s
cockpit-directed languaging brought him into a space in which different
norms of behaviour were active: he crossed a boundary not only by languag-
ing in a way that was seen as inappropriate for the wider languaging com-
munity but by not realizing that he had, metaphorically at least, stepped out
of the narrower space of the cockpit. He failed to apprehend the assemblage
of languager-receivers that he was accidentally addressing, thus transgress-
ing within a transgression. Of particular interest then is how this sort of
boundary crossing is also situated within a particular form of masculinity,
one intersecting with regionalism and politicocultural orientation.
Languaging Context
As is made clear in the previous section, languaging happens across time
and space. This harks back to the crucial role of context, a somewhat broad
notion that is used to convey the conceptual world or shared frame sur-
rounding a linguistic event that allows anyone to interpret it (Duranti &
Goodwin, 1992). More daily understandings of context look to physical
features of these settings, notably, the spaces of languaging and the languag-
ers who occupy them. However, context is far richer and more complex
that these common views would allow. Any given context certainly includes
persons and objects that are physically present and empirically evidentiary,
such as the pilot and air traffic controller in the case under discussion here,
and of course it subsumes the physical environment, here the cockpit and
airfield. Yet a host of invisible, but still very much active, persons, things
and forces are also contextually present, albeit distally. These include per-
sons who are present only by implication (e.g. airline management and the
travelling public), ideological forces that are felt but are difficult to delimit
(e.g. political divisions between conservative and progressive factions, geo-
graphic divisions and their intersection with ideological masculinity), and
ethereal concepts that are perhaps best understood as heuristic (e.g. national
political cultures and subcultures). To take these factors into account neces-
sitates a broad rethinking of context, as well as of the role that contexts play
in languaging, writ large.
Consider once again the example of Southwest Flight 531. Some ele-
ments of context are indeed rather apparent, as is obvious by the previous
discussion: the physical context (where a languaging act is accomplished)
and the persons situated within it (languager-authors and -audiences). These
can be thought of as actors or participants (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2005; van
Leeuwen, 2005), although the latter term is often used in a more concep-
tual manner in discourse studies (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992; Fairclough,
2013; see Chapter 7). Others are implicationally involved in this context,
in this case the public, press and company officials. Furthermore, and like
all contexts, that surrounding the moment under the microscope here had
also already subsumed a series of invisible or less-visible factors such as time,
including a chronological map of time (e.g. a specific date as formalized by
a given calendar) and the point in time as this relates to actors, those both
physically present and distally implied. At the moment of the Southwest
incident, the United States was confronting deep political, social and cul-
tural divisions, ones that eventually led to an insurrection at the national
capitol on 6 January of that year. The pilot’s diatribe about goddamn liberal
fucks, echoing the sentiments (and perhaps even the words) of pro-Trump
insurrectionists, occurred mere weeks after these traumatic events.
Acknowledging such chronological aspects of the broader context does
not excuse or even attenuate the content and effect of this languaging, but
it does offer a critical window to better understanding the conceptual space
in which it occurred. Moreover, these factors are inseparably entwined with
the cultural positionality of contextual actors, both those physically present
and those implicated by the linguistic act itself, involving invisible forces
such as status and prestige. This in turn harks back to much broader forces
than any one person, as well as to a shared understanding of the ways in
which societies are organized, different actors’ place and position within it,
and the relative power anyone may access and deploy at a given moment
(see Chapter 5).
All languagers confront linguistic action of which they must make sense,
drawing on perspectives that are framed by previous experiences and inevi-
tably biased ways of interpreting these. The ability to understand language
activity is also predicated upon encultured knowledge that binds the recep-
tion of this and constrains subsequent reaction. In other words, languaging
is an inherently subjective activity, and any pretence of ultimate objectivity
can only be viewed as wishful thinking, at best, or pompous self-importance,
at worst. This does not mean, however, that subjectivity is unanchored or
is merely a matter of whim or capriciousness. The grounding of subjectivity
in antecedent experience and the cultural contexts in which experience is
lived may be likened to what French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu called a
habitus (1991): “a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react
in certain ways [that] are acquired through a gradual process of inculcation
in which early childhood experiences are particularly important” (cited in
Thompson, 1991, p. 12). Habitus is a useful heuristic for conceiving of
linguistic performances and accounting for all other ingredients, evidentiary
and ephemeral, physical and ideational, that precede a languaging moment,
as well as those that flow from it. Habitus can thus be thought of as a lens
allowing us to both take up (passively) and perceive (actively) the world,
somewhat akin to von Humboldt’s concept of Weltansicht. This is, however,
much more than a mere worldview, and it certainly is not deterministic or
racially anchored.
Habitus or the expanded context can be reconciled with several other
theoretical approaches to the mind-language-reality dynamic, particularly
those used in critical discourse studies (see Chapter 7). Van Dijk retools
the notion of context, looking at it from the point of view of both speakers
and audiences. Rather than adhere to empirical fact, this is understood to
be all that languagers “know,” regardless of whether it is held to be true or
real by others or even putatively objective observers (2006, p. 163). Van
Dijk argues that context is indirectly observable by its effects, that is, what
is accomplished through discursive action, reflecting Fairclough’s view of
a constitutionality circuit (1992). Accordingly, languaging acts upon the
world while the world concomitantly acts upon languaging; these knowings
and doings (or realizings) function in a chicken-and-egg dialectic (see also
Knisely & Russell, 2024). The context of one languager thus might vary
greatly from the context of another, a disjuncture that as can be deduced
from the recorded languaging of Flight 531’s pilot.
Similar to van Dijk’s view, and taking an important step toward the inser-
tion of cognition within wider sociocultural frames, Wodak argues for socio-
cognitive mediation of reality and the circuitous dynamic of this with regard
to language activity (2006). This is entirely compatible with Sharifian’s and
others’ cultural conceptualization of languaging activity and enlanguaged
forms, albeit from a distinct stance. If cultural schemata are understood to
underly the ability to language between different individuals and groups of
individuals, the mental models of context outlined by van Dijk and Wodak
can be considered the ways in which languaging is rendered both neces-

sary and doable in the first place. The proposed mental representations in
Wodak’s work constitute a sort of conduit for the interpretation of context,
linking prior and new interpretations of experience and further providing
for the conjunction of frames (areas of experience) and schemas (structured
patterns of experience and knowledge) as an explicit means of connecting
history, social practice and discourse actuation. While it is impossible to
look inside the so-called “black box” (pace Wodak, 2006), it is possible
to describe and interpret the external manifestation of this in the form of
enlanguaged materiality, including texts, speeches or social media posts.
Indexing and Enregisterment

Communicative activities are obviously intimately associated with the con-
text in which they occur, both physical and mental. What is accomplished
through languaging, from deploying the simplest form to the most com-
plex structure, serves to iterate and reiterate held truths pertaining to any
number of factors, including place, speaker and goal, all of which recursively
frame and scaffold these very same contexts. In effect, languaging and con-
text are bound up together and cannot be fully or even effectively teased
apart. The former is only interpretable within the latter, and the latter is
in part framed by the former. In order to better understand this dynamic,
the scholar’s descriptive toolkit can be expanded to capture how speakers
create both themselves, as social persons, and their environment, as social
constructs, taking into account two complementary concepts: indexing and
enregisterment (Agha, 2008; Eckert, 2008; Johnstone, 2016).
Through enlanguaged acts, whether singular or iterative, languag-
ers index different facets of shared existence: in essence, they “point to” a
shared ideological frame. A great deal of indexing happens subconsciously
or merely out of habit, as many learned patterns point to socially emergent
identities in a manner that appears to defy a languager’s will or knowledge,
such as the ways in which someone might pronounce a sign that links them
to a sociogeographic and/or socioeconomic identity (this is often referred
to as their accent). Languagers project themselves and interpret others’ pro-
jections on the basis of enlanguaged experiences, situating them as of one
or another place, one or another class, one or another race and/or ethnicity,
and so forth and so on. At the same time, languagers consciously deploy
specific forms or patterns to activate identity characteristics, for example, the
ways in which gay men use phonological patterns to index their social per-
sona (Moore & Podesva, 2009; Podesva, 2011) or the rhetorical structures
deployed by women in the workplace to convey, challenge or appropri-
ate authority (Tannen, 1990, 1993). So much of what is indexed through
languaging, from the mundane to the consequential, points to more than

the canonical semantic content of a linguistic sign; through any number
of mechanisms, languagers index a wide array of proximities and diver-
gences, roles and relations, identities and positions. From the post-vocalic
rhotic dropping that indexes a Bostonian in-group cultural alignment to
the Received Pronunciation norms that index an English upper-class back-
ground, and from the sibilant fronting that indexes a gay male identity to
the tag questions that index white, middle-class American femaleness, lan-
guaging functions as a tactile, experiential ornamentation facilitating the
triage – correctly or incorrectly, generously or discriminatorily – of persons
within socially constructed and propagated categories.
The linguistic features of an utterance through which a constellation
of referents become packaged and labelled in a particular context are con-
ceived of as a lexical order by Silverstein (2003). Any such lexical order
might include form, meaning or other linguistic features; collectively, it acts
as a shortcut to categorization and identification, emerging from and con-
comitantly reinforcing languager biases. For example, when used to denote
‘female genitalia’ and enlanguaged in a heterosocial space, pussy might index
a masculinist stance or male gaze, whereas the same form used in a closed
space involving two men to denote a ‘person lacking in courage’ might index
homosociality and male hegemony (Connell, 2005; Messerschmidt, 2018).
At the same time, much of how languaging and context are intertwined
depends upon how different enlanguagements will be categorized, based
in large part upon experience with prior performances. An utterance or
sequence of utterances influences the ways in which languager-receivers
respond to enlanguagements and situate themselves within the mental con-
text that is influenced by this activity. Such moments of languaging come to
be enregistered, referring to the “processes and practices whereby perform-
able signs become recognized (and regrouped) as belonging to distinct, dif-
ferentially valorised semiotic registers by a population” (Agha, 2007, p. 81;
see also Gal, 2018, 2019). Enlanguagements that are enregistered are asso-
ciated with a host of identity features, pointing to different ideological and
cultural constructs such as race, gender or socioeconomic status. In effect,
enregisterment feeds the indexical order in a type of dual mode of action:
it actuates and reiterates prior effects, while simultaneously actuating and
reiterating prior categorizations of others. As such, languagers do not expe-
rience any single moment of linguistic life ex nihilo, but as type examples
of categories. Much of this operates subconsciously, much like implicit bias
(Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This has consequential effects on audiences
and on subsequent actors, contributing to the contextual ecology and the
ways in which different participants in this interact. By considering what a
languaging act might index and how it enregisters varying social factors, it is
possible to better apprehend what languagers are doing both as doers and as
receivers, as well as those who become doers through subsequent reaction.
Tying It Together
This chapter moves past the simpler duality of form-meaning introduced
in Chapter 2, teasing apart the semantic worlds that exist in the minds of
individual languagers and in the collective imaginary of languaging com-
munities. This is understood to be grounded in the cultural experiences of
languagers and the shared mental schemata that emerge from linguacul-
tural life. These images and their enlanguaging are solely understandable in
context, a concept that has been extended well beyond the physical world,
encompassing the cognitive or mental realities of languagers as well. This
view of linguistic activity affords additional descriptors, specifically index
and enregisterment. From the bases of this chapter, transgressive languag-
ing can be better described and interpreted, and stronger, more motivated
arguments as to what is being done by languagers through their actions can
be made. Transgression is not simply a matter of signs or their content but
is fundamentally a question of culture and of context, as it is only in collec-
tive communities that meanings emerge and only in contexts that they are
actuated. In short, transgression is very much in the (linguacultural) eye
of the (linguacultural) beholder, whether this be an individual, a languag-
ing community or a community of languaging. The supposed “truth” of
any moment is really just another mental context, one that, like languaging
itself, cannot be untangled from its human host.
A Closer Look: Fucking Weirdos and Lowered Hyundais
What does the culturally framed, contextually grounded understanding of

language have to offer the description and interpretation of the communi-
cative moment captured on Flight 531’s hot mic? To begin answering this
question, first reconsider two elements of the pilot’s languaging, specifically,
his evocation of fucking weirdos and his characterization of Californians as
“driving lowered Hyundais.” Obviously, some forms are readily understood
and of little importance (e.g. driving). But what of the rest? Certainly, the pilot
broke a number of rules by speaking about non-pertinent matters during
taxi and take-off, but this would be unlikely to have engendered a sense of
transgression from the wider public. Likewise, it is hardly taboo, even if it may
be judged mildly transgressive, that a person would insult others, especially
when they are engaged in private conversation. The offensive nature of this
moment is something more: it is something that many feel but have a difficult
time articulating, perhaps beyond admonitions that such languaging should
not occur in the first place.
What happened in this moment can be evaluated as transgressive because
of different cultural values presumptively shared by all involved. A part of
this certainly involves the pilot’s use of the expletive fucking and his labelling
Californians as fucking weirdos. In doing this, he not only flaunted norms of
professional decorum but did so in a way that inserted schemata of con-
servativism and politics, along with more nebulous associations of racism,
into the linguistic moment. The latter derive particularly from his assertion
that these very same fucking weirdos “driv[e] lowered Hyundais.” For those
unfamiliar with this practice, lowering involves making modifications to the
suspension and drivetrain of a vehicle, such that it is much closer to the
street surface than original factory specifications. This practice, especially
when applied to smaller cars produced by manufacturers such as Hyundai
(based in South Korea), is culturally associated with Asian-Americans, a group
that constitutes a sizable minority in California’s Bay Area, where the incident
occurred. Thus, by languaging fucking weirdos and referring disparagingly to
their practice of lowering Hyundais, the pilot was activating mental models
and cultural frames infused with political and racial assemblages – and did so
in a way that clearly did not celebrate them. His subsequent assertion that
“you don’t have balls unless you’re rollin’ coal” (an utterance that might be
more canonically rendered “a person is not normatively masculine unless he
is driving a large truck emitting thick diesel smoke”) affords a similar inter-
pretation of the pilot’s mental context, as reviewed earlier. Participants in the
broader languaging community reasonably interpreted this as demonstrative
of a worldview looking down upon certain racio-ethnic groups and celebrat-
ing a white, conservative American masculinity.
Far from simply speaking on a hot mic, the pilot of Flight 531 enlanguaged
his mental reality: real men have balls; those who have balls roll coal; and the
state of having balls and the action of rolling coal are positive and desirous. At
the same time, the state of being a fucking weirdo and the act of driving lowered
Hyundais are cast as undesirable. That this assertion was made for all to hear,
especially in a setting in which the putative fucking weirdos constitute a siz-
able population, and by a person otherwise tasked with the safe transport of
passengers (many of whom might be fucking weirdos themselves) constitutes
a very clear transgression of shared norms of behaviour.
Admittedly, it is impossible to know with certainty what the pilot of Flight

531 was thinking and how he understood himself and his relation to others –
in other words, no person has access to the black box of his mind. How-
ever, it is possible to assert a reasonable interpretation that this action was
intended to deprecate people on the basis of racialized characteristics (see
Chapters 6 and 7).9 All such factors must be taken into account when devel-
oping a clearer picture of this incident, as the pilot was languaging not into
a void but into a cultural context that could not help but language in return,
construing this as yet another piece of evidence of deep-seated prejudice
and hostility. This was, in essence, understood as another instance when the
proverbial locker room door separating a certain profile of male languager
from the wider world was left open, exposing their own views to the world
at large.
The case of Flight 531 involves a layering of transgressions, some more seri-
ous than others. From the violation of codified rules of languaging put forth
by the FAA, to the unwritten rules of politeness that govern public-facing
professions, to the even more opaque boundaries that separate appropriate
from inappropriate expressions of personal taste, the pilot of Southwest 531
crossed many lines on that spring day. These lines had already been crossed
before and would be crossed countless times again by other languagers in
other settings; acknowledging this and its apparent banality does not mean
that such moments are uninteresting, however. In fact, they may be seen as
all the more compelling for analysis because of their commonality, not to
mention the ever-evolving nature of reaction and response.
• To what languaging communities do you belong? How is language activ-
ity used to define these communities?
• With which communities of languaging do you affiliate? How does your
languaging change when you are within these groups versus when you
are not?
• Consider the commonly heard gender stereotypes, such as “she is so lady-
like” and “he’s a man’s man.” What are the denotations activated by forms
such as ladylike and man’s man? The connotations? The associations?
• How do different ways of languaging point to or index the identities you
noted earlier? In what ways might these also be enregistered? How do
your or others’ languaging habits transgress broader cultural norms?
• Chose a moment when a prominent individual was captured saying

something on a hot mic or in a similar manner, that is, unintended for
wider distribution. What contextual factors must be taken into account
in order to understand this moment? How can you tease apart the physi-
cal versus mental participants in this context, reconstructing a type of
mental map pertinent to the languager in question?
• Thinking of this same moment and the enlanguaging that was accom-
plished in it, what cultural knowledge is held by different participants –
both the languager-author of the moment and the languager-receivers
who reacted to it? How can you describe this cultural knowledge in a
way that affords greater clarity vis-à-vis the semantic worlds that were
languaged and their reception?
Further Reading
For those wishing to further explore meaning and the linguistic subfield of
semantics, excellent starting points are Cruce’s Meaning in Language: an
introduction to semantics and pragmatics and Griffiths’ An introduction to
English semantics and pragmatics. Palmer’s Toward a theory of cultural lin-
guistics provides an accessible primer to the culture-language duality and to
related questions. For those interested in context, Duranti and Goodwin’s
edited work is perhaps the most cited source; additional readings can be
found in Stanley’s Language in Context. While somewhat dated, Holland
and Quinn’s Cultural models in language and thought also maintains reso-
nance and importance. In addition to the sources cited previously related to
indexicality and enregisterment, readers are pointed to Gumperz’ seminal
works Language and social identity and Rethinking linguistic relativity, the
latter co-edited with Levinson. They will also find important clarifications
and rich discussion in Corazza’s Reflecting the mind: indexicality and quasi-
indexicality, which develops a mental model of perception and context.
Notes
1 The incident was broadcast by local ABC affiliate channel 11 (https://abc11.
com/southwest-airlines-pilot-rant-on-hot-mic-against-san-francisco-jose-
mineta-airport/10456214/). All transcriptions are the author’s, based on the
recording made available at the hosting platform Vocaroo (https://vocaroo.
com/1jvOncVfdwNb).
2 Here and in the following, boldface font indicates emphasis; non-standard spell-
ing is used to reflect pronunciation.
3 www.sfgate.com/travel/article/pilot-hot-mic-bay-area-airport-16049942.php
4 Federal Aviation Regulation Part 121, Section 541, amended 1981 (https://rgl.
faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/7027DA4135C34E
2086257CBA004BF853?OpenDocument).
5 http://onlineslangdictionary.com
6 This is, quite obviously, an inference made on the basis of the author’s decades of
participation in American culture and linguistic life. For those less familiar with
liberal in this landscape, it has little to do with other Anglophone uses of the
form.
7 Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never collaborated, but their collective
understanding of linguistic relativism, by which it is asserted that linguistic pat-
terns influence thought, has come to be known under this title (Koerner, 1992;
Sapir, 1983; Whorf, 1956).
8 Echoing Judith Butler’s view that gender is something that a person does, rather
than something that a person merely is (1990), Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
highlight the ways in which language is used by males and females (they only
look at gender binarity) to perform salient identities, reframing communicative
patterns as community-based practices.
9 Similar rhetoric is noted in former president Trump’s labeling Covid-19 as the
“China flu,” increased incidents of anti-Asian violence and rhetoric, and the
storming of the US capitol by insurrectionist groups, many of which were bla-
tantly white supremacist (see, e.g., Gover et al., 2020; McHendry, 2018; Schaefer,
2021).
4
LANGUAGING WORLDVIEW
Ideology and Mythology
Key Concepts
• Ideology
• Mythology
• Academic English and standard language ideologies
“In my opinion, I personally think this author has got no business telling
us what to think about what you can say.”
The preceding line is taken from a student assignment that required under-
graduates to reflect upon and respond to a reading about taboo language.
Upon review, at least three supposed errors stood out and begged “cor-
rective” attention: the lexical and semantic redundancy enlanguaged by my
opinion, personally and I; a colloquialism, namely, got business, here con-
veying the idea of “be allowed to engage in an activity”; and the use of
impersonal you referring to “anyone,” rather than the canonical second per-
son. For instructors like me, whose responsibility includes guiding students
toward standard writing practices, these choices appeared flawed, triggering
a professional instinct to point them out and offer correction. Importantly,
the student’s opinion and the expression thereof were never concerns – in
fact, I fully agreed with their assessment (I found the reading in question
to be blathering and pedantic). It was how they expressed this opinion that
led to me providing some less-than-enthusiastic feedback. Like most of my
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-4
Languaging Worldview 61
colleagues, I suspect, this sentence transgressed the boundaries of what an

academic writing assignment should look like and how an undergraduate
should articulate their opinion.
This chapter explores linguistic ideologies and mythologies from the
perspective of critical linguistics, a stance that seeks to better understand
the relationships between different institutions and structures, as well as
the boundaries that separate supposedly good or conforming from bad or
non-conforming languagers and practices (Charity Hudley et al., 2020;
Fowler & Kress, 2018; Pennycook, 2001; Wodak, 2011). It begins by
rethinking this linguistic moment based upon a review of Academic English,
before moving on to define what is meant by ideology and mythology, both
in general and as applicable to languaging and languagers. Next, the ques-
tion of how linguistic ideologies are inherited and passed along is tackled,
revisiting putative transgressions such as the one shown previously. In clos-
ing, ideologies are brought into contiguity with the themes of power and
authority, anticipating the foci of Chapter 5 and asking the foundational
question of who has entry into ideological and mythological formations and
who is excluded from these dynamics.
Beliefs and Languaging

The preceding example and many thousands like it are undoubtedly echoed
in any given university course, on any given day, in any given discipline or
field of study. Whether through the forms they choose, the structures they
deploy or the rhetoric they employ, countless students simply do not play by
the rules of academic linguistic life. They transgress boundaries separating
the “educated” from the “uneducated”, those who respect languaging tradi-
tions from those who disrespect them, those who are labelled as sophisticated,
clear-headed or talented from those seen as crass, vague or unrefined. Stu-
dents are told that they must write clearly, intelligently and with precision –
if not, they will have fallen short, not only in a course but as a demonstration
of their cognitive ability and ideas. Playing by the rules of this game is not
about language, per se, but about languagers and how they are or will be
perceived. But how, precisely, does the sample sentence above demonstrate a
lack of intelligence, a dearth of clarity or any intellectual shortcoming? Why
should what the student languaged be considered erroneous?
Despite what legions of professional educators may say, any answer to
these questions is far from straightforward. Firstly, the supposition that this
linguistic act is fundamentally flawed must be dismissed, that is, unless an
explicitly dogmatic and overly determined stance were to be taken. It is
wholly understandable, as only the most ingenuous (or perhaps pretentious)
62 Languaging Worldview
of co-languagers can honestly claim to not comprehend what was written.

In the same vein, the sample sentence fully respects the structures of English
syntax and morphology, at least as they are done by contemporary languag-
ers in California and other Anglophone settings. Moreover, this sentence is
pragmatically impactful and persuasive – the writer deploys an anti-topical
cleft to clearly situate their stance (“in my opinion”), establishing the per-
sonal bias of what follows. Even the apparent redundancies manifest by “in
my opinion, I personally think” may well be considered a form of argu-
mentative transparency, something that should readily be seen as an act of
intellectual honesty.
Despite the this, I critiqued the student’s writing in my feedback, encour-
aging them to reconsider their languaging habits and pointing them to
sources that I believed would help them perform better (which is to say,
according to the rules) on future assignments. And yet, I am a linguist, one
who has spent decades preaching that there is no such thing as intrinsically
good or bad in linguistic life, that native languagers are incapable of error,
and that the task of any linguistic scholar is to describe, rather than dictate.
Why then did I feel no compunction in passing judgement on this sentence
and indicating that such formulations should be avoided? And why did the
student not respond with prima facie evidentiality, highlighting the very
grammaticality of the sentence, its comprehensibility and even its effective-
ness, rejecting my heavy-handed verdict (something that upon reflection
would have been logical and beneficial)? What does this moment and count-
less other moments like it, ones that virtually all who read these pages have
encountered and in which the vast majority have even taken part, have to
say about how forces acting upon our existences shape our actions, either as
languager-does or languager-receivers?
This line of questions points to stances and postures common to criti-
cal linguistics, a subfield often confounded with critical discourse analysis
(CDA) or, as it is perhaps more aptly titled, critical discourse studies (CDS;
van Dijk, 2009; see Chapter 7). According to Fairclough, all such frame-
works are founded upon the “increasing consciousness of how language
contributes to the domination of some people by others” (2014, p. 1).
Critical approaches understand all semiotic activity, including that which
is labelled languaging here, to be mired in a network of power and author-
ity, as well as the structures and institutionalizations of this (see Chap-
ter 5). Building upon this foundation, critical linguistic inquiry requires
that scholars interrogate how culturally inherited and socially transmitted
beliefs shape languaging and that they examine (or perhaps re-examine)
the ways in which these forces precondition how languagers will be valued
or devalued, celebrated or diminished, included or excluded. In the case
at hand, a critical approach begins by asking what subjacent mythologies
and behind-the-scenes ideologies lead people – especially ones like me who

are vested with outsized authority – to interpret languaging such as the
preceding example and languagers like this student in the ways we do. And
at the heart of the matter is one overarching ideological enlanguagement:
Academic English.
Languaging Rules
It is common in university settings in the United States and, very likely,
around the world to hear professors lamenting the poor writing skills of
their students.1 At times, such complaints focus on a poor grasp of the
subject matter, such as the mistaken use of terminology or an erroneous
interpretation of data. At others, criticism concerns banal conventions of
writing, notably formatting and normative punctuation. Such matters are
easily remedied by students with a bit of attention. Much more cumber-
some are concerns stemming from the mastery (or lack of mastery) of what
is commonly referred to as Academic English (henceforth, AE; Scarcella,
2008), a cover term for a series of languaging practices that are expected
to be respected by all who participate in university life, as well as in other
privileged sociocultural domains, including corporations and government.
Similar to ways of languaging that are deemed prestigious and considered
proper in other linguacultural settings, AE (also known as Standard, School
or Professional English) is a target that, once achieved, affords languagers
entry into domains of power and privilege (Rumberger & Scarcella, 2000;
Scarcella, 2003). However, this is a slippery, even elusive target, as are those
forces that regulate what is and is not believed to meet the target, how far
from this a given languager may fall, or how their enlanguagements are or
should be judged. Unlike in many other linguacultural settings, there is no
official governmental institution standing guard at the gates of AE making
politicolinguistic pronouncements pertinent to enlanguaged form, struc-
ture and patterns: AE emerges from the patterned languagings of those who
are understood to be its practitioners, rather than from a physical institu-
tion. This distinguishes it from, for example, the standardized forms of pop-
ulous languaging communities such as French (governed by the Académie
Française) and Spanish (Real Academia Española), something also seen in
demographically smaller communities, including Icelandic (governed by the
Íslenska málnefnd language council) and Slovenian (Slovenska akademija).
AE language regulation derives largely from the de facto authority of
persons and institutions who practice power over languaging and languag-
ers implicitly, rather than explicitly, with the latter being akin to the de jure
mechanisms of linguistic control seen elsewhere (see Chapter 5). Such dif-
fuse, couched and often invisible sway over what languagers do and how
their enlanguagements are judged is at times difficult to pin down, although

it is quite easily felt. In fact, the result of authority and its manifestation in
sanctioned and celebrated patterns of languaging permeates the linguistic
life of all community members, even (and perhaps especially) those who
do not succeed or simply refuse to language in ways that are cogent to AE
norms. These languagers are not simply transgressive, in that they cross
boundaries, but are banished, that is, they are removed from any contiguity
to the boundaries themselves (just ask any student who fails to attain suf-
ficient mastery of AE).
Of course, the preceding does not mean that languagers who wish or
are required to perform to the standards of AE must navigate in perpetual
darkness and confusion, as numerous sources are available to guide them
(see Anstrom et al., 2010, for a thorough literature review). The AE lexi-
con is formalized in and validated by published dictionaries whose use is
required in public and private schooling and whose prescribed enlanguage-
ments, including the phonetic and orthographic form, canonical denotation
(as well as possible associations, e.g., of vulgarity), and any derivations, are
held up as evidence that there are “real” and “not real” words, “accurate”
and “erroneous” meanings, and so forth and so on (see, e.g., Peterson,
2020). AE morphosyntactic structures are prescribed in formal grammar
manuals for learner languagers, with specific patterns asserted as the “true”
and “correct” ways to do English (with other ways being variably asserted
as “flawed,” “sloppy” or simply “incomprehensible”). And AE rhetorical
and stylistic patterns are conventionalized by pundits extoling the virtues
of these and the languagers who accomplish them, ranging from writers
admitted into the ideological fold of capital L Literature to languagers who
are put forth as orators of acumen and effectiveness. For those who have not
yet attained proficiency in AE, countless self-help instruments are available
offering detailed lists of “dos and don’ts,” as well as step-by-step instruc-
tion for any number of languaging tasks, ranging from writing a doctoral
thesis, to crafting an effective email, to engaging in political debate. Like
so many other resources affording persons entry into the middle class and
its trappings, vast resources are dedicated to AE, notably its defence and its
propagation – entire departments and curricula are even dedicated to it in
primary and secondary schools, as well as universities, often in response to
governmental or para-governmental mandates.
AE can be thought of as a shibboleth, a linguistic line separating two
ideologically defined camps. On the one side of this boundary are those
who language in a manner deemed close or close enough to this moving
target: they and their enlanguagements are labelled in a number of ways,
nearly always positively, ranging from intelligent to effective, clear thinking
to poetic; even when they are judged negatively, perhaps as snobbish or elitist,
the shared connotation of being educated or erudite is still active. On the

other side of this line are those who do not, cannot or simply do not wish
to language accordingly: they are seen as illogical and unintelligent, their
enlanguagements are incorrect and poorly done, and the thoughts or mental
images that they convey are seen as sloppy or false, among the many nega-
tively connoted terms that might be observed (Snow & Uccelli, 2009; but
cf. Zwiers, 2006, 2007, 2008). Importantly, AE not only separates persons
according to their languaging but also triages them in a possibly infinite
number of ways. The ability to do AE constrains languagers throughout
sociocultural, -political and -economic and even physical spaces, affording
them movement into and acceptance within prestigious settings, with all of
the trappings of power and privilege that these proximities beget. Doing AE
is not only about getting good grades and being seen in a positive light – it
is the key to corporeal security (Lippi-Green, 2012; Milroy, 2001).
Despite claims to the contrary by celebrated authors and academic insti-
tutions, there is no precise delimitation of what is and is not or of what does
and does not constitute AE. Like all other ideologically defined languages
and forms of language, AE does not exist: it has no ontological reality aside
from its doing, be this through positive languaging action, passive languag-
ing reaction or individual and collective conceptual accomplishment. Also,
and again despite the claims of numerous pundits and pedagogues, there is
nothing intrinsically better, clearer, more effective or more efficient about
AE than any other pattern of languaging. A person can realize any num-
ber of ideational worlds, ranging from mundane concepts, such as driving,
cooking or changing a lightbulb, to the most complex and expertise-laden
activities, such as poetics, philosophy or automobile mechanics, by languag-
ing in ways that fail to conform to AE. As concerns the first two elements
of AE, it is fundamentally no different than any other languaging paradigm:
all languagers and all enlanguagements follow inherited, shared pathways
of realization, configurations that can be exploited to achieve an infinite
number of communicative ends. The question of AE and of languagers
who do not conform to it is fundamentally a matter of what is believed and
the implications of this belief, a third ontological component of languaging
(Irvin & Gal, 2000; MacSwan, 2020). Accordingly, any critical description
of languagings and languagers who transgress the boundary separating AE
from other ways of doing English must contend with two distinct, but fun-
damentally interleaved ideas: mythology and ideology.
Mythology and Ideology

The two concepts introduced in this section are often used in day-to-day
life in a way that is distinct from what follows; for this reason, it is useful
to begin with some terminological clarification. Here and throughout this

book, mythology refers to that which is considered known and understood,
following Barthes’ seminal work on the ways in which cultural understand-
ings emerge and circulate (1957/1972). Mythologies may be thought of
as beliefs that are not overtly or explicitly conceived of as such, in large part
because they operate in such a way as to appear as common sense or simply
“that which is unquestionably true.” Ideology, on the other hand, refers
to a series of attitudes and sympathies that go beyond epistemic ideas and
concepts that people hold true, encapsulating beliefs about the ways things
“should or should not be.” In other words, ideology concerns not just the
world as it is but the world as it is intended or desired to be. Mythology and
ideology are intimately associated, at times to the point of appearing con-
ceptually interchangeable: a person’s or collective’s understanding of truth
(their mythologies) inevitably frame their understanding of how truths
should be interpolated, that is, the consequence of truth as it concerns
different facets of existence and life (Flood, 2003; Halpern, 1961).
From Barthes’ point of view (one, not uncoincidentally, inspired in part
by Saussure), a myth can be thought of as a semiotic whole that is greater
than any given sign (see Chapter 2). Beyond the duality of signifier-form and
signified-referent, a myth encapsulates all communicative potentiality that is
accomplished by the enlanguagement of a sign. Barthes exemplified this by
looking at a number of material objects, some of which have gained distinct
mythological qualities since the 1950s, and others of which have remained
relatively unchanged. His analysis of wine, for instance, argues that this was
(and perhaps is still) not just a beverage for participants in French society;
rather, it was an icon steeped in notions of national belonging and éducation,
something that might be loosely understood as socialization and civic forma-
tion. According to Barthes, wine came to mythologically manifest a certain
type of Frenchness: its presence, consumption and integration with different
aspects of social life signalled partaking in the ideological community of the
nation and separated those who engaged with this myth from those who
engaged with other products and practices (famously, milk among those in
Anglo-Saxon cultures). Myth can thus be thought of as the practice or doing
of social meaning, involving multiple layers of semiotic practice.
If mythology is somewhat straightforward, describing the broader shared
beliefs vis-à-vis some sort of object or identifiable referent, ideology is a
far more fraught and contentious concept. The term has been used across
disciplines such as politics, economics, literary criticism and anthropology
(among many others) to refer to sometimes overlapping, sometimes distinct
phenomena, ranging from belief (as mythology was formalized earlier) to
ephemera (i.e. something that operates at a level beyond description). Even
a cursory examination, such as one that might be offered by an internet
search, points to a nearly limitless and frequently contradictory range of

definitions. For this reason, it is useful to have an operational understanding
for discussion throughout this book, one that comes, not uncoincidentally,
from critical linguistic scholarship.
Van Dijk distinguishes between several conceptualizations of ideology,
while also acknowledging the vagueness of this concept. Rejecting, or per-
haps simply nuancing several more traditional understandings, including
those that see ideology as a set of false beliefs, a dynamic concealing social
relations and deceiving masses and a system based in truth and falsehood,
van Dijk articulates a seemingly simple definition of ideology as “the basis
of the social representations of a social group”; in other words, ideologies
are not simple beliefs but the foundation of believing (1998, p. 8). This is
similar to Thompson, who considers ideology to be “meaning in the service
of power” (1990, p. 7; Holborrow, 2015); accordingly, ideology encap-
sulates understandings that augur authorities and their ability to exercise
such authority over others. However, even this apparent simplicity belies a
complex tension, one that van Dijk formulates as concurrently social and
cognitive. In this view, ideologies are not simply facts or epistemes – they are
frames that are held by individuals and shared across a collective. More than
simply a worldview, ideologies constitute mental frameworks that allow
persons and collectives to know or believe anything, anticipating Sharifian
(2011, 2017; see Chapter 3).
The preceding articulation of ideology provides a powerful tool for the
interpretation of social phenomena, ranging from the most mundane (e.g.
salutations) to the most consequential (e.g. physical violence). Consider the
example offered by table etiquette and related comportments in settings
where food is consumed in public: for a person to act in ways that are con-
sidered ideologically appropriate, there must be a shared understanding of
the mental frameworks, themselves anchored in beliefs, that are at play in
any given context. These frameworks constrain how individuals are thought
to best configure their body (i.e. posture), which utensils should be used to
consume different foods and how these should be wielded, and the manner
in which persons should interact with others sharing a meal. Underlying this
constellation of moments and actions are two ideological frames: politeness,
or the phenomenology of appropriate and inappropriate ways of interacting,
and the table, conceptual shorthand for a given model of eating. Both ideo-
logical frames predispose individuals and collectives to comprehend various
actions or states in contextually predetermined ways. For instance, a person
who loudly slurps from a bowl of soup may be understood to violate shared
frames of politeness, whereas a person who consumes soup without making
noise and using a spoon (perhaps a particular spoon ordained for a specific
type of soup) may be understood to have respected such frames. Of course,
it is not the case that most or any participants will explicitly recognize this
as an ideological enterprise; in fact, most simply “know” and “believe” that
certain actions are impolite and others polite, even if they may be aware that
this is not universal.
It is important to note that van Dijk’s conceptualization of ideology
rests on a fundamental tension between individual and collective dynamics.
On the one hand, only the individual can cognitively apprehend any phe-
nomenon; on the other hand, this can only be cognitively perceived when
nested within a collective frame. In the example of a person slurping soup,
it is not that the entire cultural or anthropological community sees and
hears this action; rather, this is seen and heard by a collection of individual
cognitive actors who are acting as a sort of proxy for a wider community.
The action of soup slurping only comes to have meaning, and thus fit into
a broader frame (here, politeness), when all cognitive actors act as one,
deeming such an act to be impertinent, a sign of ill-mannered upbringing
or something along these lines.
As should be obvious to any reader who has made it this far, languag-
ing and languagers are steeped in both mythology and ideology (see, e.g.,
Bauer & Trudgill, 1998; Blommaert, 2010). It has already been noted that
certain linguistic signs function like icons, standing in for something much
larger than the written or spoken forms, let alone the meanings that they
canonically evoke. In the same vein, and very similar to the material exam-
ples evoked by Barthes, linguistic elements are imbued with mythological
significance. Not only are forms associated with meanings far beyond their
denotations or connotations (Chapter 3), but more complex enlanguage-
ments also come to be mythologized, a prime example of which is seen in
accents, the regularized articulatory patterns that are associated with geo-
graphically and/or socioculturally defined communities.
For many participants in the languaging community of US Anglophones,
British accents (however vaguely this might be understood) are imbued
with mythologies pointing to class sophistication or nefarious otherness,
both of which are manifested in any number of popular television shows
and movies (Zabalbeascoa, 2021). A given character using an iconically
British accent will be understood as cosmopolitan and refined (e.g. Renée
Zellweger’s somewhat clumsy attempt in Bridget Jones’s Diary), suave and
sophisticated (e.g. virtually any character interpreted by Hugh Grant), das-
tardly and cruel (e.g. Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of Amon Goetz in Schin-
dler’s List), or aloof and cool-headed (e.g. Judy Dench’s Q in the James
Bond series). In the same cultural spaces, phenomenologically similar myths
are associated with the so-called southern drawl, heard as charming and
folksy (e.g. Sandra Bullock’s incongruously Oscar-winning role in The Blind
Side), “southy” Bostonian, considered mythologically rough and uncouth
(e.g. Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting), “valley girl” South-
ern California speech style, portrayed as vapid and materialistic (e.g. Alicia
Silverstone’s hallmark character in Clueless), and too many more to exhaus-
tively list here (see Lippi-Green, 2012, especially her Chapter 4). It is not
that these phonological patterns, loosely defined and variable as they may
be, convey meaning in the same manner as a linguistic sign; rather, they
are enmeshed with meaning through the shared beliefs and semiotic values
made real by languagers and conveyed through continual relanguagings.
Accents simultaneously index and are enregistered: they point to and point
out the purported qualities of languagers and languaging communities.
Of course, accent is not the only component of linguistic life ideologized
and mythologized: languagers and languaging communities are also steeped
in mythological truths and framed by ideologies. One of the prime examples
of this is the very focus of this chapter – languagers who master AE and lan-
guagers who do not. Lippi-Green formalizes these as examples of standard
language ideology, which she views under a subordinate-ordinate hierarchy
as “the promotion of the needs and interests of a dominant group or class at
the expense of a marginalized group, by means of disinformation and mis-
representation of those non-dominant groups” (2012, p. 68). Such ideologi-
cal formations mythologize homogeneity and favour the upper-middle-class
elites, themselves long-standing holders of authority and power over mat-
ters of education, politics and related social institutions. Collectively, stand-
ard language ideologies work to not just stigmatize non-standard accents
and other ways of languaging that do not conform to mythologically “true”
or “acceptable” patterns; they produce the very enregistered patterns of lan-
guaging that often stand in for social, economic and cultural identities. In
the United States, this is perhaps most noted when languaging ideologically
intersects with mythologies of race and class, a topic taken up more later in
this chapter (Lippi-Green, 2012, pp. 207–208).
Silverstein formalizes linguistic ideology as “a set of beliefs about lan-
guage articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived
language structure and use,” providing a particularly useful expression of
how beliefs about and imperatives pertinent to standard languaging shape
linguistic life (1979, p. 193). This view of language ideology interleaves
with mythologies, as defined earlier, but does not fully capture the ways in
which the former predispose both persons and communities to understand
language praxes according to mostly invisible, subjacent frames. Irvine
bridges this gap, asserting that linguistic ideologies are “the cultural system
of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading
of moral and political interests” (1989, p. 225). From this, it can be inferred
that ideologies operate not only on the perception of languagers and lan-
guaging communities but on their evaluation according to other, broadly
shared concerns. In the case of AE, this is readily apparent: what languagers
do and how they do it function as a metonymic stand-in for intelligence
and skill, upward mobility, acquiescence to middle-class values and much
more. Obviously, the ideological frames that precede AE are closely related
to those of other standard languages used in university and other formal
instructional settings. Such languaging practices and their enlanguaged by-
products are ideologized as both non-aligned, that is, as a site removed from
power contestations, and meritorious, that is, as lacking in the deficien-
cies of other registers, dialects or sociolects (Milroy, 2007). They are also
asserted to be reference points and to constitute common ground, at least
among a wider languaging community, and they “are perceived as neutral
and correct, implemented with the goal of uniformity or invariance so that
every speaker uses the same grammatical form and vocabulary” (Gámez &
Reyna, 2022, p. 6). Summarily, languaging is bound up in multiple layers
of mythologies and ideologies, pertaining to languagers and enlanguage-
ments, all of which operate in such a way as to implicitly – and at times
explicitly – promote conformity to pre-existing norms, themselves ideologi-
cally framed and mythologically grounded.
Linguistic ideological status and frames can be seen as anthropological
inheritances: shared cognitive schemata that are passed down from genera-
tion to generation, albeit with inevitable modification, akin to the shared
mental schemata of cultural linguistics (see Chapter 3). Such statuses fre-
quently circulate beneath the surface of collective consciousness; occasion-
ally, however, they are rather nakedly manifested, especially when it comes
to formal instruction and educational policies. In the US and other coun-
tries, educational policies explicitly target the mastery of prestige forms like
AE, and continuation within institutional tracks requires this, with varying
repressive and exclusionary mechanisms applied to pupils who do not master
it. Through this wielding of symbolic power and its canalization as symbolic
violence (see Chapter 5), students are subject to a myriad of mythological
and ideological forces, for instance, those that reframe their home languages
as defective, in many cases excluding them from participation in other social
settings or labelling them as cognitively deficient. These forces intersect,
again most often in a quasi-invisible manner, with additional mythologies
and ideologies pertaining to still more identity constructs, most notably
race, a fact that merits specific attention.
Languaging and Race

Language ideologies are intimately bound up in those pertaining to languag-
ers, notably identities such as regional origin, socioeconomic class, religion
and ethnicity. In the United States and elsewhere, such factors are intricately
interwoven with the construction of race (Lippi-Green, 2012; Rothenberg &
Mayhew, 2014). The ideological foundations of what people linguistically

do – or what it is asserted that they should and should not do – are thus
inseparable from those pertinent to their individual and collective identi-
ties, whether personally held or socially imposed. A vast array of scholarship
testifies to the ways in which racial ideologies have led to the stigmatization
of different persons and communities, based in part on real or perceived
languaging patterns. Those who language in one way, typically reflecting
mythologies of mythological whiteness, are seen as acceptable and norma-
tive, whereas those who do not are viewed as transgressive and marginal – or
worse, dangerous. This is especially noted in the case of Black and Indig-
enous populations, whose accents are othered or removed from the domain
of acceptable practice dominated by ideologies of whiteness (Hill, 1998;
Urciuoli, 1996; Wodak, 2008). Careful historical and contemporary schol-
arship has also demonstrated how ideological standard languages, includ-
ing those cogent to AE, can only be understood in relation to racialized
worldviews (e.g. Bonfiglio, 2002, 2010). At the same time, the processes
by which languagers are evaluated as conforming to ideological practices
are also racialized, including educational attainment and classifications of
proficiency and native-language status (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa, 2016).
A field of critical linguistic inquiry that has only recently come to
prominence, and one that has engendered no end of controversy and
backlash, raciolinguistics focuses on uncovering the seemingly hidden
past and present dynamics that have and continue to racialize languag-
ers and language race. From its roots in the first decades of the present
century and the founding work of Alim et al. (2016), raciolinguistics has
always kept in its sight issues of language and education. This is particu-
larly pertinent in the US and other settler colonial polities, where race is
one of the primary and historically foundational ideological frames (viz.
Charity Hudley, 2017; Fanon, 1952/1967). Looking to how language
is both deployed in and shaped by racializing ideologies, linguists like
Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores (e.g. Rosa & Flores, 2017) interrogate
the often unspoken and continually reinforced appropriateness of differ-
ent language variants and performances. These have long situated the
linguistic forms, structures and variants associated with white Europeans
as hierarchically superior to those associated with non-white and non-
European languagers. Re-reading some of the earliest modern philo-
logical and anthropological texts, they show that hierarchical, deeply
prejudiced ideologies around race and language emerged concurrently:
language was used to support theories of white supremacy, much as
racial taxonomies were used to classify languages along an advanced-
primitive axis.
Rosa and Flores’ work reconsiders the place of Iberian Spanish in US
language curricula, unravelling the ways in which Eurocentric, racialized
ideological formations have historically and continually pressured Indige-

nous and non-white languagers and languaging communities to conform.
They suggest that it is not a language itself that is perceived as defective or
flawed, at least in the first instance, but the racialized bodies that are associ-
ated with and are ultimately the source of such action. Parallels between the
status of AE and racialized languagers and the ways in which Iberian Spanish
is promoted to the detriment of other registers is further taken up by Gámez
and Reyna (2022), who consider the status of so-called heritage speakers in
US language instructional settings. They note that, despite having a high
level of functional proficiency and rich cross-cultural knowledge, heritage
speakers are frequently told that their languaging and enlanguagements are
defective or faulty, if they are acknowledged at all. In such examples, trans-
gression is born on the very skin of the languager: racialization of the physi-
cal person entails racialization of the languaging person, and vice versa.
What emerges from a raciolinguistic perspective of AE and of a languag-
er’s ability or inability – perhaps their desire or lack of desire – to conform
to the ideological frames that gird this is a much more complex understand-
ing of transgression and of transgressability, that is, that which is considered
defective language and the ideological foundations of this judgement. It is
not simply that a given languager does not follow an ideological pattern
or mythologized practice but that this languager brings into being other
ideological frames, ones that are steeped in mythologies of race, belonging
and whiteness, among much else. Understanding such moments from a
raciolinguistic point of view opens additional paths of inquiry, notably those
concerning who has the power and authority to frame ideology in the first
place and how the identity of these persons – as well as that of those who
are racialized – leads to a particular hierarchical configuration and power
dynamic. This critical posture also raises questions as to the consequences
paid by those who transgress ideologies of enlanguaged racialization and
of racialized languaging, ranging from exclusion from different institutions
(notably education, but also many other prestigious professions) to exclusion
from domains of social action (e.g. housing, employment). In sum, raciolin-
guistics provides a critical lens through which to interrogate transgression
and the biased scaffold that inaugurates and reinforces any boundaries –
not to mention any boundary crossings. This allows scholars to apprehend
mythologically non-normative and ideologically non-conforming languag-
ing for what it is: a challenge to long-held understandings of the way the
world is understood to be and how it should be. It also allows for a clearer
picture of how AE and other standard language ideologies operate, rein-
forcing white centrality and all that this entails.
In this chapter, languagers and languaging are understood to be perme-
ated with mythologies concerning what is believed to be true or authentic,
as well as the ideological formations that fuel and frame such myths, a
dynamic that augurs the position of those who have relatively more access
to power (see Chapter 5). At times, ideologies and mythologies concern-
ing languagers and languaging intersect with those about gender, race and
ethnicity, such that it is impossible to fully tease these apart. Because of their
contextual experiences, languagers know what is valued and lauded, what is
devalued and disparaged, and the material benefits that access to different
languaging spaces affords. This knowledge is reinforced, sometimes sub-
tly, but often very explicitly, through educational and related institutional
practices, as seen in the example evoked at the beginning of this chapter.
By providing this student with feedback about their writing in my role of
instructor, I reinforced any number of ideological frames pertaining to AE,
the status and intelligence of languagers who acquiesce to this mythology
and ideology, and the need to do so in order to achieve academic success.
It is very likely true that similar dynamics are repeated hour after hour, day
after day, week after week in classrooms and on campuses around the coun-
try and across the world.
And yet, some people are never fully admitted into the mythological
fold of the educated, the sophisticated or the rhetorically effective. Some do
not language in a way that corresponds to prevailing ideological frames and
mythological norms – and this for any number of reasons. They are inevi-
tably deemed transgressive because of their supposed failure, that which
may be better re-ideologized as differential success, because they no doubt
language in a way that allows them entry into any number of other socio-
cultural domains, albeit ones that fail to correspond to additional and
interleaved ideologies of capitalism and the model neoliberal citizen. Others
do indeed language in manners that correspond to prevailing ideologies
but are never admitted into the corresponding domains because they are
racialized in a way that precludes such entry. These languagers often cannot
not transgress ideological boundaries (note the importance of transgressive
double negation), no matter how hard they might try, as their very person-
hood represents a sort of meta-transgression of ideological whiteness. Still
more refuse to acquiesce to the very notion that one or another way of lan-
guaging is somehow better or refuse to renounce their ways of languaging,
as doing so would constitute a loss or erosion of identity. These languagers
challenge ideological foundations themselves, as well as the possibility that
any languaging pattern can be considered transgressive in the first place.
Tying It Together
Where does the preceding discussion leave the question of AE and
the very basic task of education, that is, the formation of community
members who are capable of effectively participating in civic and collec-

tive life? What does this mean for critical scholars of language, those who
aim to peel back multiple layers of belief, rendering the fundamental ine-
qualities and injustices plain for all to see? These are, perhaps, questions
best left open or answered only tentatively, as any rush to conclusion
risks oversimplification and the reification of the uneven power structures
propping up and propagating pertinent mythological bases and ideologi-
cal frames.
Clearly, there is nothing intrinsically better or worse, clearer or murkier,
more or less elegant, and so forth and so on when it comes to different lan-
guaging patterns or their content – to claim this is not to stake a defensible
linguistic position but to assert an aesthetic value. (Of course, aesthetics are
also part of human experience, but this is a distinct – and distinctly acriti-
cal – matter: one can very well like or dislike something without asserting
that it is intrinsically likable or should be disliked by others.) At the same
time, AE is hardly just another variant. To use AE is to conform to the
conventions of a powerful social structure (education) and its powerful
institutions (schools, colleges, universities, academic journals and publish-
ers, etc.); to fail to do so is to be excluded from these spaces (and thus be
branded as poorly educated or entirely uneducated) and to be banished
from these institutions (sometimes even by expulsion). Given the immense
stakes involved in AE, it should be no surprise that the vast majority of
instructors believe it is their duty – and some even their mission – to teach
students this linguistic variety, to insist that they use it and to punish them
(typically through poor marks) for not conforming to the morphosyntactic
structures, lexical choices and rhetorical pathways associated with this vari-
ety. Not uncoincidentally, these are the same structures, choices and path-
ways that instructors themselves were taught and eventually acquired, at
times at great cost, that those who taught them were previously taught, and
so forth. AE is thus a social inheritance. And much like wealth or titles can
be inherited, variably but nonetheless steadily, AE and related mythologies
and ideologies are passed down from generation to generation, a process
that in many ways renders it mostly undetectable and seemingly inevitable,
much like the “best of all possible worlds” of Molière’s Candide. However,
and echoing the title character of this play, it is possible to ask the ques-
tion: if this really is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? It
is also possible to ask the equally compelling question: who decided and
continues to insist that this was best, why and at what cost? It is to these
questions that subsequent chapters turn, further complexifying the world
of languagers and languaging, as well as any concept that these are or can
be transgressive.
A Closer Look: Gender in Academic English
Few topics pertaining to language in the present day have garnered more
interest – and engendered as much controversy – as that of gender. Anglo-
phones, unlike most other Indo-European languagers, do not normally mark
the gender of inanimate nominals: table and chair are not realized within a
category labelled masculine, as in German (der Tisch and der Stuhl), nor are
they classed as feminine, as in Spanish (la mesa and la silla). At the same time,
English languagers do not mark nominals as specifically neutral or non-gen-
dered, as seen, for example, in the Dutch words for book and work (het boek
and het werk, respectively). Moreover, Anglophones do not use gendered
labels for nominals unless they are realized as pronouns, when all inanimate
referents are projected with the third-person it (e.g. “the students read the
book” versus “the students read it”). Even in the case of animate beings, nota-
bly animals whose biological sex characteristics are unknown or irrelevant in
a given context, it can be used (e.g. “the lion ate the gazelle” versus “it ate it”).
This is not to say that Anglophones do not enlanguage gender, particularly
in the case of human referents (e.g. “Anne is here” versus “she is here”, “Rob-
erto is there” versus “he is there”).2 While grammatically possible, the use of
it when referring to any human is typically seen as offensive, leaving open the
question of how to refer to a person whose gender is unknown, those who
do not identify within the canonical woman-man binary, or simply when refer-
ring to persons in general, irrespective of gender identities. In the past, this
possible conundrum was prescriptively resolved via two mechanisms, at least
in AE and other standardized ways of languaging: the use of a default mas-
culine third-person pronoun (viz. “any student who does not come to class
cannot turn in his paper”) or the seemingly inclusive, but somewhat cumber-
some, conjoined use of both masculine and feminine forms, most often in
that order (viz. “any student who does not come to class cannot turn in his or
her paper”). As gender and related topics have become more socioculturally
salient, particularly on university campuses and in other areas of public life,
both purported solutions have been subject to increasing scrutiny. In the first
instance, a default to a masculine-marked pronoun can be seen as reinforcing
male hegemony and patriarchal power structures (Cameron, 2006; Lakoff,
1975; Mills, 2008; Pauwels, 2003). In the second instance, the alternation
between marked male-female pronouns or possessive determiners excludes
the possibility that persons might identify otherwise, while also being widely
seen as syntactically clunky (Conrod, 2022; Eckert, 2014; Zimman, 2019).
Non-standard and non-academic practices have long offered a distinct

solution to this apparent conundrum: the use of they, them and their for
singular third-person referents (viz. “if any student do not come to class, they
cannot turn in their paper”). Usages such as this are documented from at
least the fourteenth century, particularly when referring to generic or non-
specific third persons (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002). Until relatively recently,
however, such practices had been disfavoured in AE, as noted in instructional
books throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and even in some
in the twenty-first (Choy & Clark, 2010). As questions of gender inclusivity
and non-binarity have become more mainstream, the use of singular they has
gained wider traction, affording languagers the means to reference them-
selves or others in a way that better matches their identity (Bjorkman, 2017;
Conrod, 2022; Konnelly & Cowper, 2020). Such patterns have even been
sanctioned by influential style manuals, including the Chicago Manual of Style
and that of the Associated Press, and are used throughout this book.
As might be expected, singular they has been met with significant back-
lash, particularly from those who proclaim such usage to be an affront to
good writing and precise thinking – in other words, as a transgression against
prescribed ways of languaging, akin to the sample sentence opening this chap-
ter. Part of this undoubtedly stems from transphobia and heteronormativity
(Bandini & Maggi, 2014; Bettcher, 2014; Herz & Johansson, 2015; Robinson,
2016), while other reactions might best be described as stemming from a sort
of genteel angst in the face of change. One example of this is noted in the
musings of Atlantic columnist Jen Doll, who in 2013 asserted that speakers
“must stop it before it goes too far,” portending linguistic cataclysm on the
horizon (although, to be fair, such voices appear fairly muted, especially com-
pared to reactions to parallel neologisms in other languages).3 In this short,
monosyllabic pronoun, a series of clashes come to the surface: mythologies
concerning the place of gender and gender marking, as well as the status
of default masocentrism; ideologies of language purity and language change,
reverting to questions of authority and power; and counter-positioned ide-
ologies promoting inclusion and representation, not only of women but of
trans and non-binary persons, as well as those who refuse the primacy of
gender marking.
Quite naturally, most languagers don’t seem to care much, if at all, about
such hubris when it comes to their daily habits. Despite the admonitions of
pundits and purists, singular they appears to be on the road to acceptance.
But this is not the end of the gender story in English, nor is it the most
prominent example of language ideology in contemporary life. From the use
of additional non-binary pronouns (e.g. ze) and terms of address (e.g. Mx.) to
any number of ways in which languagers have evolved their repertoires, the
boundary between that which is acceptable and unacceptable may have been
moved, but it has not been dismantled, nor do there appear to be fewer per-
sons willing to challenge such restrictions or to act as their bulwark. A par-
ticularly interesting example of transgressive languaging was provided by Dr.
Rochelle Walensky, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC). In early 2021, as part of her regular public messaging
during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, she issued a statement
“recommending pregnant people receive the Covid-19 vaccine.”4 In what
seemed like common-sense advice in the face of a deadly virus, Walensky
purposefully omitted gender marking, referring to pregnant people instead of
pregnant women, acknowledging that there are individuals who do not identify
as women and become pregnant. Likely augured by the politicization of vacci-
nation and increasingly partisan reactions to all matters of public policy in the
Trump and post-Trump eras, the controversy that ensued pitted not just right
against left but progressives against feminists5 and those promoting inclusion
against those who viewed the removal of female nominals from associations
with pregnancy as yet another battle line in a culture war aimed at erasing
sex and gender differences.6
Eventually, Dr. Walensky was forced to revert to traditional enlanguage-
ments, referring in subsequent communications to pregnant women, a testi-
mony to the power of ideological formations. In this case, the mere mention
of pregnant people was viewed as a transgressive act, albeit for various rea-
sons. For some, Walensky had transgressed ideological gender formations by
languaging pregnancy in a way that weakened connotative links to women and
femininity. For others, enlanguaging people transgressed ideologies pertinent
to reproduction and the traditional family, along with all of the trappings
that this construct entails. Both stances suggest the operation of ideologi-
cal frames. The removal of gender markers from syntactic constructions of
pregnancy and childbirth was viewed as transgressive, and not simply because
of its unusualness or statistical peripherality but because such languaging real-
izes a world that runs counter to beliefs of how things should or must be.
• Reflect upon other mythologies about language and about languagers
that are part of your linguistic life. What other facets of languaging are
held to “just be true”? Consider different ideologies or shared beliefs
that people hold concerning how languaging “should be/shouldn’t be

done.” What values are imposed upon different languagers and ways of
languaging?
• To what extent do standard language ideologies, especially AE, influence
the ways you language, both in class and outside of class? What has been
said to you (or to others you know) about conforming to AE and the
possible consequences of not achieving this objective?
• Consider your experience as a student. In what ways have you been
required to adjust your languaging to conform to standard language
ideologies, specific to English or otherwise? Try to identify these and
describe them in terms of the ideological frames dictating how you should
and should not language.
• Taking a raciolinguistic perspective, consider how languagers are racial-
ized in your community. Identify two concrete examples in which lan-
guagers are racialized and in which race is enlanguaged. What ideological
formations do you suspect to be at play in these examples?
Further Reading
Those who are interested in delving deeper into questions of language and
identity are encouraged to consult Lippi-Green’s English with an Accent: the
third edition (2022), authored by Rusty Barrett, Jennifer Cramer and Kevin
McGowan, substantially expands the original work, including more up-to-
date examples and folding in a number of other communities. Although
somewhat dated, Patricia Bizzell’s Academic Discourse and Critical Con-
sciousness attends to many pressing questions in educational settings, as well
as their effect. For those interested in ideologies of race and their intersec-
tion with languaging ideologies, the volume Raciolinguistics: How Language
Shapes Our Ideas About Race, edited by H. Samy Alim, John Rickford and
Arnetha Ball, is an invaluable resource and a solid basis for further explora-
tion. Jonathan Rosa’s Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race provides
a compelling companion to Alim et al., focusing on the experience of Latinx
languagers in US public schools. For questions of gender and ideology, read-
ers are pointed to Tommaso Milani’s edited volume Queering language, gen-
der and sexuality and to Michelle Lazar’s Feminist critical discourse: gender,
power and ideology in discourse, both of which provide useful overviews of
trends in the fields of critical linguistics and critical discourse studies.
Notes
1 I admit to having done this more times than I care to count, although I feel
more and more ambivalent about what Brightman and Gutmore (2002) have
labelled the educational-industrial complex, not to mention its demands for rigid
conformity to standard language ideologies.
2 For more on the distinction between sex and gender, both in general and as dis-
cussed here, see Butler (1990, 1993, 2004); for a background to contemporary
understandings of the intersection of gender, sex and language, see Knisely and
Russell (2024) and Milani (2018).
3 One need only consider the case of French iel, a non-binary complement to il
and elle (‘he’ and ‘she,’ respectively), whose inclusion in the authoritative Dic-
tionnaire Robert led to near-riotous pedantry, including commentary from the
first lady of France and former teacher Brigitte Macron, who asserted that “two
pronouns were enough” (www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/
brigitte-macron-desapprouve-l-entree-du-pronom-iel-dans-le-petit-robert-
20211118, www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/world/europe/france-nonbinary-
pronoun.html).
4 www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/04/23/990195585/
cdc-director-recommends-pregnant-people-receive-covid-19-vaccines
5 www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/pregnant-people-gender-
identity/620031/
6 www.independent.co.uk/voices/pregnant-people-bma-pregnancy-motherhood-
intersex-transmen-nhs-a7553601.html
5
LANGUAGING AUTHORITY
AND POWER
Karens in the Wild
Key Concepts
• Power, symbolic power and symbolic violence
• Authority
• Censorship: de jure, de facto, self-censorship
• Verbal hygiene
In early October 2020, Laura Karowsky Norris stood at the entry to Bones-
N-Scones, maskless but insistent that she be allowed to shop, where she
was confronted by Aidan Bearpaw, the pet supply store manager. Like all of
California and much of the world, the city of Palm Springs had mandated
that facial coverings be worn in public spaces in response to the Covid-19
pandemic. Refusing to comply, Ms. Norris dialled 911 (emergency services
in the US), asserting that her rights were being violated, specifically claim-
ing that she was the victim of discrimination and demanding intervention.
Like many other incidents of this nature, the encounter was recorded and
uploaded to YouTube,1 from where it proliferated across social and even
traditional media. Quickly branded “Pet Store Karen,” Ms. Norris became
the object of ridicule and scorn,2 although this did little to dissuade her
efforts to sell essential oils, promote anti-vaccine theories and position her-
self as a victim of unjust treatment.3
This chapter unpacks moments such as this, in which languagers trans-
gress behavioural norms in stereotyped ways. The chapter begins with a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-5
Languaging Authority and Power 81
necessarily brief overview of the Karen figure, moving on to introduce and

problematize the concepts that are applied in the description and interpre-
tation of such cases: power and authority. Discussion is founded upon a
series of related concepts – notably, symbolic power, capital and violence –
also taking into account censorship and verbal hygiene. These concepts
allow critical linguists to tease apart controversial tropes such as Pet Store
Karen, recasting them within a broader sociocultural light. From this, it
emerges that the confrontation between Ms. Norris and Mr. Bearpaw is
much more than a petulant customer insisting on getting her way; it is the
enlanguaged instantiation and re-instantiation of much larger forces playing
out across and within multiple and varying linguacultural settings.
Karens (as well as Darrens, Beckys and Warrens)

It is important to begin any description and interpretation of the preced-
ing incident by re-examining Karens and related cultural tropes – figures
famous (or infamous) enough to have been given their own emoji.4 In
Anglophone linguacultures, especially, Karens have taken on a mythological
quality in recent years, defined by BBC journalist Ashitha Nagesh as “the
kind of person who demands to ‘speak to the manager’ in order to belittle
service industry workers, is anti-vaccination, and carries out racist micro-
aggressions, such as asking to touch black people’s hair.”5 In other words, a
Karen is an individual – often, but not always, a woman – who transgresses
explicitly stated and implicitly circulating rules of social interaction, assert-
ing themself upon others, most often those of lower socioeconomic and
sociocultural standing.
Of course, the very act of labelling Karens is fraught with misogyny and
sexism, even if it does serve to cast a light on racist practices and positionali-
ties (Tiffany, 2020). It is also worth recognizing that related memetic labels,
such as Becky (often thought of as a younger, college-aged Karen) and Dar-
ren or Warren (their male counterparts), have not received commensurate
cultural traction, this for reasons that far surpass the present chapter. Love
it or hate it, Karen has come to embody white womanhood and a violent
weaponization of the privilege afforded this identity and positionality (Arm-
strong, 2021; Deckman, 2017; Kendall, 2021). Of course, this may be due
in part to the status of a stereotypical Darren or Warren, who shares white,
bourgeois privilege, but is more often represented as someone who assaults
the manager, that is, if he is not in fact the manager who has been sum-
moned by a Karen.
While it is impossible to point to a single moment in which this label
appeared, by the second decade of this century it had become firmly anchored
in Anglophone public consciousness. The Karen image came into sharper
82 Languaging Authority and Power
focus in the later 2010s, particularly as systemic discrimination and violence

against Black and other minority persons and communities in the US and
elsewhere was increasingly recognized, much like the complicity of white
persons and communities in this dynamic. On social media, “white women
who take it upon themselves to police the actions of others – primarily Black
and brown people” were, like Ms. Norris, attributed this label (Lang, 2020).
L.A. Jones also observes that one of the primary characteristics of a Karen is
her ability to deny her own privilege and racist bias, even as she asserts her
victimhood and its status, railing against Black Lives Matter actions while
insisting that she cannot be racist for various reasons, consequently and
concurrently upholding pre-existing racio-economic orders (2020; see also
Harris, 1993, for a historical perspective). Similarly, Negra and Leyda note
that the positioning of Karens is integrated within a neoliberal, capitalistic
service economy and related hierarchies of socioeconomic power, as well as
related anxieties concerning race and societal change (2021).
The Covid-19 pandemic and related public health measures provided
fuel to Karens’ collective fire, when wearing – or not wearing – a mask
emerged as a semiotic marker of white reactionary conservatism (R. Jones,
2020) and also as a shibboleth for supporters of former present Trump and
his political movement (Russell, 2022). Bhasin et al. specifically note that
those who were labelled Karen frequently held positions counter to public
health mandates and were more often self-described anti-maskers (2020).
It is thus little surprise that incidents such as the one involving Ms. Norris
became a familiar part of linguistic life in the US and elsewhere in the socio-
culturally supercharged years of Covid-19, at times culminating in physical
violence. The actions of Pet Shop Karen, along with so many others, trans-
gress widely shared, but also widely contested, ideologies concerning col-
lective conduct and response in times of emergency. What is required of the
individual in the face of community danger? What is the nature of rights and
that of responsibility – notably, who is afforded rights and upon whom are
responsibilities imposed? What does it mean to have and assert such rights,
as well as to negotiate or refuse to negotiate them, when doing so might
limit or violate the rights of others?
Obviously, these questions are not explicitly or even immediately lin-
guistic; however, their manifestation and negotiation are inevitably enlan-
guaged (while also being embodied). It is most often through languaging
that Karens assert their power and status; it is through languaging that their
position and identity are made visible to others; and it is through languag-
ing that they are contested, rejected and/or tolerated. Language is thus one
of the primary, if not the primary, domain of Karenhood and its daily expres-
sion. (Of course, there are numerous incidents in which fists fly and bodies
become the site of power and its effects; fortunately, these are relatively
rare, even if they are tragic.) Summarily, the social reality and performance
of “Karens in the Wild”6 is nothing more nor less than a specific profile of
transgressive languaging and of transgressive languagers, as well as a collec-
tive reaction to this.
Authority and Power

Before delving further into the incident at hand and others like it, it is
helpful to have a general understanding of what is meant by two key terms:
power and authority. Both are used in daily life in ways that are both similar
to and distinct from their operationalized meanings in the following pages.
Both are also subject to disciplinary debate, if not outright controversy.
For these reasons alone, the following discussion avoids a rigid, dogmatic
understanding of either power or authority, specifically avoiding one that
is physically grounded, as might be more common in scientific domains.
Instead, it strives to deploy these from a wider, purposefully eclectic, albeit
critically situated perspective.
When it comes to languaging, neither power nor authority need be
explicitly embodied, akin to physical power; these are, however, social phe-
nomena arising from the interaction of embodied actors. This should not
be taken to mean that there is a complete disconnect of power or authority
from its physical manifestation. The former conveys a sense of tacit, mani-
fest faculty: the power to read this book, as one commonplace example,
captures the ability of an individual to apprehend and process the words on
the page. Such an understanding of power is thus grounded in the potential
or capacity, held by individuals or groups of individuals, to engage in some
sort of activity. Importantly, any manifestation of power is always preceded
by other manifestations of power: for example, the cognitive ability required
to read this book is preceded by the ability to access it in the first place (nod-
ding to economic power and monetary capital); the affordance of monetary
capital is preceded by the ability to access sites and institutions that grant
this capital (implicating sociocultural power); and so forth and so on. The
point of this thought exercise is not to render power concrete – indeed, it is
not – but to underscore that power always involves multiple, often opaque
layers of prerequisites and preconditions (Foucault, 1980).
If power captures a potentiality or capacity to engage with objects,
authority is somewhat more concretely manifest. It refers to the embed-
ded and embodied governance of power. Authority is a conduit to power
that is sanctioned and contested, one that is claimed and vested, and one
that is always in need of sustenance and reinforcement. Returning to the
example of reading a book, it may be noted that writers and publishers
grasp at transitive powers and receive demonstrative acquiescence to these
potentialities in order to produce, distribute and market a given work. The

accomplishment of these acts is afforded and endorsed by various forces,
ranging from the legal to the economic, from the cultural to the political.
Authority is thus accredited, notably, with titles and documentation given
juridical standing and imbued with power in particular configurations. This
is all well and good for the rather ordinary example of a book – including its
reading, writing, publishing and selling. But how do power and authority
relate to languaging and to languagers, let alone to those moments of lan-
guaging and their respective languagers that are understood to have trans-
gressed ideological boundaries in one or more ways? To arrive at a deeper
understanding of what is happening in this example, let alone that of Pet
Store Karen, requires a more nuanced understanding of power as a plural
and multifaceted potentiality, as well as a rethinking of authority as the ever-
contested discipline of such potentiality.
For post-modern scholars of language and culture, power is much more
elusive to description than the preceding. Much of this is due to French
philosopher Michel Foucault’s seminal work, in which power is intimately
associated with knowledge and what he termed regimes of truth, cultur-
ally specific discourses that regulate what “counts as true” and what there-
fore becomes unquestioned, at least by the vast majority in a given setting
(Foucault, 1976, p. 112; see also Lorenzini, 2016). Accordingly, power is
not simply a capacity or an ability to accomplish but a capacity and ability
to apprehend and understand that which has been accomplished and what
might be accomplished in the future. To return to the previous example,
there is certainly power implied by reading a book, and not only as the facil-
ity to read the words on a page, making correspondences between graph-
emic representations and antecedent linguistic competence. Power is also
deeply interleaved with a reader’s ability to intellectually contend with what
they read, implicating their knowledge of textual (e.g. style) and contextual
factors (e.g. positionality), as well as shared truths and untruths that are
implicated in all levels of interaction with the written object. The ability
to language, as well as the particular manifestations or limitations of this
ability – that is, the ability to language in one or another way – thus consti-
tutes a quotidian, but particularly impactful manifestation of power. Build-
ing on the stance articulated in Chapter 1, languaging (doing language) is
a very specific expression of powering (doing power); at the same time, one
of the primary mechanisms of powering or empowering is also languaging.
This understanding of power is intimately bound up with the construc-
tion and contestation of knowledge and truth, a consideration that demon-
strates the inseparability of power from authority, which Milroy and Milroy
consider to be the physical persons and institutional structures that lay claim
to and subsequently exercise power through regularized action (1991).
In the reading example, authority precedes and supersedes the ability of

an individual to access a text, as power-dependent and power-deploying
authority is directly implicated in textual enlanguagement. To offer a rather
simplistic application of this, a writer cannot simply choose any spelling or
grammatical conventions at will – they must acquiesce to various personal
and institutional authorities regulating these matters. Implicitly, those who
have more ability to power – those who have greater capacity to dictate
what counts as true and to constrain or canalize knowledge – have greater
authority in this domain. At the same time, and again following Foucault,
power is always unstable and dynamic, as are the authorities who hold and
exercise it. Just as power is never static or fixed but always in motion and
up for grabs, authority is never stable or eternal but is forever challenged
and confronted by other claims to authority. And, like power, authority
is almost inevitably enlanguaged: it is rendered, apprehended, acquiesced
to and contested through languaging by languagers who do, receive and
respond to these actions.
Another French philosopher of the late twentieth century, Pierre
Bourdieu, makes an important distinction between the type of raw physi-
cal power more commonly understood and more transparently noted in
daily life, on the one hand, and the ways in which power plays out in vari-
ous semiotic domains, on the other. He refers to this as symbolic power:
the capacity to construct shared sociocultural reality through the creation,
use and manipulation of signs and symbols (1991, p. 170; see also 1982).
Symbolic power encapsulates those potentialities which construct and influ-
ence meaning: it is the facility to “constitute reality through language and
other symbolic systems, to make people see and believe in this reality, and
to confirm or transform their vision of the world and thereby their action
on the world” (Kramsch, 2021, p. 216). Symbolic power subsumes the
faculty to create and transmit sharable signs in order to convey one indi-
vidual’s mental reality, such that this influences others’ mental realities. The
transitive potentiality of languaging is thus a display of symbolic power.
Consequently, power emerges as much more than an exercise of material
or physical force to coerce others (pace Gramsci, 1933; see Chapter 7 of
the present book) – it is a potentiality to affect the ways in which people
understand that which they or others experience, to see a given moment as
good or bad, a particular performance as normative or transgressive, and so
forth and so on. This book is a concrete manifestation of symbolic power,
negotiated at numerous levels both before and after it reached any reader’s
hands and mind.
Linguistic authorities and their claims to symbolic power (successful or
unsuccessful as they may be) are part and parcel of everyday existence, from
the most mundane routines to the highest stake situations. At times, this is
revealed in that which Bourdieu classified as symbolic violence, an output of

symbolic power exerted upon others – as well as the self – to behave in a cer-
tain way, sometimes, but not always, against a person’s known will, desire or
habit (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1995). For many, especially those whose daily
habits differ from norms associated with prevailing authorities, acquiescence
to symbolic power requires that they language differently and even abandon
parts of their own cultural identities, a particularly vivid example of which is
noted in the ongoing debate around the use of forms of English associated
with African-American communities, sometimes referred to as Ebonics (see,
e.g., Baugh, 2000; Delpit, 1997; Rickford, 1999). The punishment for not
adhering to these norms may not be corporal or involve bodily injury, but it
is nearly always enlanguaged: failure to achieve the all-important university
diploma has economic, social, cultural and even physical consequences in
both the short and long term (Russell, 2021; see Chapter 4).
Kramsch offers a particularly telling example of how symbolic power and
authority manifest through language in her re-reading of La Fontaine’s fable
of the lamb and the wolf. Her analysis of the symbolic power of this well-
known tale shows how the male wolf convinces the female lamb that not
only is she susceptible to be eaten but that it is her inherent nature that leads
to this end (2021, pp. 40–43; see also Marin, 1988). Kramsch goes a step
further in her discussion of how symbolic violence plays out in this instance,
making connections to the allegorical basis of the original fable. Much like
the lamb who comes to understand herself as intrinsically and inevitably
food for the wolf’s voracious appetite, the eighteenth-century French mon-
archy exercised authority and wrought symbolic violence over its subjects.
In this instance, the ability to dictate not only what someone should do but
the very forms, structures and utterances that make such activity knowable
and understandable is a particularly prescient form of sanctioned authority
and the power dynamics that it realizes and upon which it relies. The wolf
was able to reframe the lamb’s understanding of her nature and purpose
on earth (not to mention his place in a power hierarchy) and to promote
a truth about his relationship to her, much like European aristocracy was
able to frame its subjects’ understanding of themselves, their kings, and the
physical, economic, social and spiritual relationship of king and subject for
centuries – and perhaps still to this day.
Doing Language and Doing Power

While allegorical and certainly diverging with regard to embodied and
enlanguaged authority, Kramsch’s approach can be applied to the Pet Store
Karen incident, especially the portion of this in which Ms. Norris sum-
moned the sanctioned authority of the police and simultaneously claimed
that of her own. Consider the following transcript between the three par-
ticipants in this incident: the emergency response operator, Ms. Norris and
Mr. Bearpaw:7
Operator [O]: 9-1-1 what’s your emergency?

Laura Karowsky Norris [LKN]: um yeah: as per the 1964 civil rights act
I cannot be discriminated against: um I do
have a right to be able to breathe O2 not
CO2 and um I am being discriminated
against *right now*
Aidan Bearpaw [AB]: # (sigh)
LKN: at a store so
O: what are are you calling to *report* some-
thing ma’am?
LKN: uh yes that I’m not being allowed into
the store because I’m being discriminated
against
AB: # cuz you would not like to wear a mask
O: @@@ you’re being discriminated against
and what store is that?
LKN: um it’s called *Bones N Scones* and I’m
being discriminated against because I’m
being told I need to wear a ma:sk even
though I have a: religious exemption right
and: a god given right to breathe O2 not
CO2.
In this portion of the exchange, Ms. Norris makes two specific claims to
authority, through which she asserts symbolic and physical power: one that
revendicates bodily autonomy, specifically the authority to decide whether
to wear a mask, and another that extends this personal jurisdiction to the
shared public space of the store. In both regards, her assertions of authority
are predicated on pre-existing institutionalizations of symbolic power. Some
of these are uncontroversial, most notably bodily autonomy, although the
consequences produced by the exercise of this right are not attended to by
Ms. Norris. What edges toward symbolic violence is her implicit claim over
others’ bodily autonomy. In asserting her right to not wear a mask while
in a public space in which air is circulated among many individuals, Ms.
Norris asserts her right to overrule the pronouncements of health authori-
ties and others’ embodied experiences. As asserted through her languaging,
she should do what she wishes and others not only must accept this ability
but must contend with the consequences of her desires expressed through
action, regardless of any rights that they might believe they hold. Much like
the wolf, albeit without his ultimate success, she attempts to convince the
lamb (here, Mr. Bearpaw and, presumably, others in the store) that it is (and
they are) intrinsically destined to submit to her will.
Ms. Norris asserts her authority and exercises symbolic violence in
another, related way. Having telephoned a 911 operator – a person who has
the authority to dispatch police officers, who in turn are conveyed specific
authority and embodied power – she attempts to frame subsequent under-
standings of this moment, anticipating the insertion of additional actors
who might see it, and react to it, differently than Mr. Bearpaw. By calling
emergency services, Ms. Norris summons authorities and their institution-
ally sanctioned powers through a very specific type of linguistic interven-
tion, one that could very well result in more than mere symbolic violence to
Mr. Bearpaw or a third party. This is a claim to authority and an enactment
of power that are implicitly tied to white privilege at the intersection of gen-
der, race and economic status. There is a long, tragic history of white per-
sons, both women and men, asserting authority over others, especially those
others whose role or status is presumably below theirs and who are under-
stood as being required to meet their needs, accomplishing this through
the interpolation of state institutions (Armstrong, 2021; Deckman, 2017;
Kendall, 2021). Even in the absence of a response, the very act of calling the
police serves as a reminder of established hierarchies: the health and comfort
of some are proclaimed as more important than those of others.
Like the interaction between the lamb and the wolf, this is not the first time
a predator has reminded its prey of the supposed natural order of things –
specifically, that wolves eat lambs with impunity and that the customer is to
be served no matter the cost. This is nothing more than the enlanguaging
of symbolic violence, an observation made even clearer later in the recorded
exchange, involving several conversational turns with the 911 operator.
O: it is (a) mandated *county wide*

LKN: but it’s also not a law so I could actually uh you actually so you’re one
of the first people that I’ve called 9-1-1 who actually doesn’t seem to
understand that in the end I’m actually the one with the rights even
though it’s *mandated* it’s not actually a law it’s based off of an
*emergency* state of emergency that we are *no longer in* so: uh
O: but it’s certainly a municipal code that *is in effect*
LKN: that’s okay I mean you can you can say *all you want* I *do know*
in the end I have the right and in the end
O: #okay
LKN: if I wanted to sue this gentleman I could and I will win I’ll work with
Dell Bigtree I’ll work with Robert uh Kennedy Jr. I’ll work with uh
Peggy Hull uh and uh those are names that you might not be familiar
with but *I am* and I know that everyone who calls and orders to
have their rights be supported uhm to be able to shop by being able
to breathe in *O2* not *CO2* uhm they’re all winning their cases.
Ms. Norris’ claims were largely – but not explicitly – rebuffed in this
case, accomplished through the enlanguaged assertion of counter-authority
and other codified powers on the part of the operator, who echoes the
public mask mandate. At the same time, Ms. Norris continues to evoke her
own authority to interpret legal mandates, denying that the operator or Mr.
Bearpaw might have any power over her, while also asserting the authority
to punish others for what she has framed as a transgression of her rights and
reinforcing her contention by providing a list of names putatively intended
to add credibility to her claim.
As farcical as this exchange might appear from the safe distance of these
pages, such moments of duelling potential transgressions – or, at the very
least, acts that can be seen as such from one or another perspective (i.e.
that of Ms. Norris or that of Mr. Bearpaw) – provide another prescient
example of mental context and its effect on discourse (see Chapter 3). The
fact that Ms. Norris makes specious threats is not particularly relevant if van
Dijk’s view of context is adopted. She asserts her authority over others as
the ability to sue them, presumably in civil court, an overt attempt to enact
symbolic violence, not to mention that which might be both economic and
physical. She thus stakes out the authority to shape the physical context – to
impose her body and breath on others – and to shape the discursive and
linguistic context. While Norris ultimately failed in her attempt to exercise
physical violence (she was impeded from entering the store and eventually
left), the very conjuring up of other authorities was, and still is in many
other circumstances, a prescient realization of symbolic violence in and of
itself, one that was exerted upon countless front-line employees during the
pandemic and continues to be seen at present.
Censorship and Self-Censorship

Moments such as that exemplified by Pet Store Karen are hardly isolated cases
of authority and power being deployed and contested through languaging.
At the same time, no such event occurs in a vacuum: all are part of a chro-
nology of events that precede and follow, moments that also involve claims
to authority and the exercise of symbolic power – and all too often physical
violence. In order to better understand the wider cultural and temporal con-
text surrounding Pet Store Karen or any other linguistic moment, as well as
to better apprehend how they come to be seen (by some at least) as trans-
gressive, it is important to grapple with the concept of censorship, albeit in a
way that is distinct from how this term is usually employed.
For many readers, censorship conjures up images of imposing state

authorities dictating what can or cannot be printed on paper, published
online or spoken aloud. The term evokes historical periods when politi-
cal authorities exercised control over many facets of linguistic life, sending
those who violated norms to gulags or placing them on blacklists, for exam-
ple, Stalinism in the former Soviet Union or McCarthyism in the United
States. These forms of de jure censorship are, of course, impossible to forget
or to consider as anything other than overt manifestations of symbolic vio-
lence. But there are many other instances in which states or official institu-
tions impose restrictions on languaging, one of which can be seen anytime
a television set or radio is tuned to broadcast channels. In nearly all polities,
a governmental or paragovernmental institution is charged with overseeing
what can and cannot be languaged, what can and cannot be presented, and
what topics may or may not be raised, at the very least in contexts that are
deemed sensitive, most notably over public airways or traditional media.
Such overt restrictions most often target forms (e.g. fuck), utterance types
(e.g. libel) and referents (e.g. ‘paedophilia’), although the ways in which
different institutions operate and the extent to which they attempt to or
succeed in achieving symbolic violence vary widely. In the US, languaging
authority is vested in the Federal Communications Commission, an inter-
governmental institution founded in 1934 and authorized to impose fines
of up to $325,000 for violations of decency standards, as defined in their
Program Content Regulations.8 Other polities maintain similar institutions,
including the Independent Press Standards Organisation in the United
Kingdom, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Com-
mission, and the Info-communications Media Development Authority of
Singapore.
Of course, de jure censorship is not only applied to media by these and
similar institutions: sanctioned prohibitions on languaging exist in many
forms and apply to any number of modalities. These include blanket bans
on speech that incites physical violence or lawlessness, such as that codified
into law in the US by the 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v.
Ohio, which provided that various American polities may limit the right to
free expression if this is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless
action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”9 In other jurisdictions,
censorship extends to the regulation of blasphemous speech (see Chap-
ter 2), for example, those laws long in force in the United Kingdom that,
while repealed in England and Wales in 2008 and Scotland in 2021, remain
in effect in Northern Ireland at the time of writing. Other authorities target
sensitive topics, such as the censoring of Holocaust denial through speech
or print that is in effect in many European countries, including Germany,
Austria and France. These and other legal conduits of authority formally
express and institutionalize the authority of different social and linguistic

actors – most notably governments or their administrative arms – to exercise
power over citizens, prohibiting the use of various forms or structures, the
performance of different utterances, and the evocation of referents under
the force of law or policy.
If de jure censorship is relatively easily perceived and understood, this
is because it is almost always laid down for posterity through some formal
mechanism, such as laws or policy regulations. Far less clear are instances
of de facto censorship, those manifestations of authority and power that
are rarely, if ever, clearly spelled out in text or law. This type of symbolic
power and violence permeates linguistic life, ranging from family settings
to the workplace, from life on the street to online chat rooms. And because
it operates in an informal, albeit far from accidental, manner, de facto cen-
sorship can be maddeningly difficult to apprehend, let alone to tease apart
its effects. In fact, most daily control of languaging escapes notice – that
is, until transgressions occur or someone objects to the limitations placed
upon them. Languagers are expected to avoid certain topics in certain situ-
ations, for example, a professor is not supposed to refer to their sexual con-
quests during a lecture about medieval history or cell biology. Languagers
are expected to express certain opinions carefully to and about colleagues
whom they might find abrasive or inadequate, for example, “choosing their
words” such that they are judged to be professional in work settings. And
languagers do not or are expected to not tell offensive jokes in most set-
tings, the with the possible exception of those involving very close friends
or confidants and in relatively restricted social spaces such as locker rooms,
in which these sorts of otherwise transgressive performances are more
accepted, if not implicitly required (see Chapter 2).
When a languager breaks these unwritten rules – if a professor were to
brag about their sexual prowess to students, if a colleague were to say to
another, “You’re a fucking asshole,” or if a person were to tell a racist joke
in the office breakroom – there will, more often than not, be a steep price
to pay. At times, these involve overtly codified penalties, such as a professor
being censured, demoted or fired; such outcomes are specified in personnel
manuals or labour contracts, making them consequentially more similar to
de jure cases of censorship. At other times, consequences are much more
elusive to qualification, while still being very real. A languager who has vio-
lated unwritten rules might engender feelings of animosity in the workplace
and be ostracized by colleagues, suffer a breaking apart of friendships and
feelings of emotional pain, or find themself excluded from communal events
and face social isolation. Regardless of any specific outcome and its stipula-
tion, the penalties for violating unspoken languaging rules are always very
real in the lives of languagers and their communities.
Facework and Verbal Hygiene

The preceding and any number of other examples point to how languagers
are required to police their own and others’ communicative actions at sev-
eral contending levels. Particularly when it concerns self-censorship, this is
invested by a host of visible and invisible authorities, as well as by codified and
uncodified conduits of power. Much of self-censorship becomes ingrained
to the point of appearing automatic and inevitable, such that languagers
don’t often or ever consciously realize that they are engaged in any such
behaviour. In fact, languagers are constantly self-regulating, avoiding certain
activities and configurations of activity while preferring others; they exercise
symbolic power and enact a form of symbolic violence over themselves. Self-
censorship extends into the realms of personal preferences and habits, even if
all such action is idiosyncratic and highly variable (most readers will be able
to cite the example of someone who is not terribly good at self-censoring or
who violates norms that seem self-evident to nearly all others).
However inconstant and variable, self-censorship is always an indirect
manifestation of diffuse authority and symbolic power being internalized
and reflected through languaging. Sociolinguist and discourse analyst Susan
Gal refers the power that is exerted upon the self as a configuration of ideo-
logical constraints (2019). This concept encapsulates the myriad ways that
languagers align themselves with existing categories of persons through
repeated languaging activities, for example, the ways in which they act in
order to be regarded as the ‘socially aware co-worker,’ ‘supportive friend,’ or
‘caring professor,’ all of which are intimately associated with culturally emer-
gent qualities and characteristics. Acquiescence to ideological constraints
requires that languagers engage in multiple acts of facework, a term Goff-
man (1967) used to describe how individuals construct and mediate their
social personas: the projection of the self that is meant to be interpreted by
others. Facework involves a wide array of linguaculturally specific, pragmatic
knowledge, for example, understanding what actions might be judged as
polite or impolite, appropriate or inappropriate, and so forth. Importantly,
all facework and subsequent judgement occur within contextual parameters:
there is no such thing as neutral languaging, just as there is no such thing as
a context-free enlanguagement. One languaging act, such as bragging about
sexual conquests and seductive prowess, might result in positive face if it
takes place within a group of intimate friends and in a context that augurs
this, for example, in a locker room with teammates. However, it will very
likely produce negative results in other contexts and when distinct languag-
ers are implicated, for example, at a work meeting of office colleagues. The
same is true of less controversially understood topics; a reader need only
consider what it would be like to bring up research into nuclear fission or an
alternative textual analysis of Marcel Proust’s writings among friends at a bar
on any given Saturday night. While such languaging might very well pro-
duce positive outcomes in a lecture hall or academic conference, it is very
unlikely to reflect a desirous social persona in other settings – in some cases,
it might even lead to social exclusion. As this one, admittedly light-hearted,
example illustrates, when languagers fail to do adequate facework and do
not align with ideological constraints, there is always price to pay: they risk
being seen as inept or rude, being branded a sexist or racist, or not being
invited to participate in the next fun outing with their friends.
Like other forms of censorship, facework amounts to a form of language
policing, in this case the exercise of power over the self. Sociolinguist Debo-
rah Cameron coined the term verbal hygiene, capturing the myriad ways in
which languaging is subject to both de jure and de facto control. According
to her formulation, verbal hygiene is akin to linguistic prescriptivism, which
operates complementarily to proscriptions or censoring acts but is also more
expansive. Verbal hygiene takes place through speech, writing or any other
formal mechanism, while also transpiring within the mental side of languag-
ing. Cameron notes that verbal hygiene “comes into being whenever people
reflect on language in a critical (in the sense of ‘evaluative’) way” and has
the result of “putting ideology into linguistic practice” (1995, p. 9). Allan
and Burridge bring verbal hygiene into alignment with linguistic purism,
particularly as this concerns standard forms of language, noting that such
actions promote these as “a kind of linguistic ‘best practice’ ” (2006, p. 114).
Cameron further observes that verbal hygiene is inextricably bound up in
both authority and identity, albeit in ways that defy facile description. When
it comes to such internalized ways of doing and understanding what is done,
authority is not always emergent from an external institution, although this
can certainly be the case; it often comes from within, both collectively and
individually (1995, pp. 12–15). Questions of linguistic authority imbue all
aspects of verbal hygiene, as well as reactions to it, as only a limited subset
of persons and groups of persons get to “call the shots” and are allowed to
define relevant truths, standards or related prescriptions and proscriptions
(pp. 118–122). In effect, while verbal hygiene is something that all languag-
ers must contend with, not all are equal participants in this dynamic.
Certain languagers – ones with greater cultural, political and/or eco-
nomic capital in a given languaging community – are frequently among
those who explicitly or implicitly determine what sorts of practices should
and should not be valued, to what extent and in what manner these will be
evaluated, and the consequences of any eventual transgression. On univer-
sity campuses, verbal hygienic requirements are codified in style manuals and
prescribed in course syllabi, all of which explicitly instruct students how they
are to act and how they must language. This is also deeply internalized, such
that all languagers, from the most senior expert in the field to the first-year
student, orient toward so-called “good writing.” This orienting toward and
the myriad actions that it requires – from the mastering of vocabulary, to
the reproduction of syntactic structures, to the use of rhetorical patterns, to
the very internalization of these and all other languaging yardsticks – is a
very prescient manifestation of verbal hygiene (see discussion in Chapter 4).
The Pet Shop Karen incident offers a compelling, but perhaps easily over-
looked, example of verbal hygiene and self-censorship – in this instance, not
from Ms. Norris but from Mr. Bearpaw, the store manager. This occurred at
a particularly prescient moment in the final portion of the video recording,
as in the following written transcript:
AB: Ma’am you hear them you hear me I’m just doing my
job can you step outside
LKN: yeah uh huh [stands in door, blocking] and could you
make sure this gentleman gives me his name as well
ma’am just through the phone can we at least help me
to get his name:: if I can have your name too ‘cuz
AB: my name’s: Aden: N: Bearpaw
LKN: Bearpaw
AB: I’m an employee here at Bones-N-Scones
LKN: okay good perfect: so at least I have *your name*
because if I wanted to I could take it further and I won’t
AB: okay fine
LKN: cuz I’m not here to do that
AB: okay have a *lovely* day
LKN: but in the end *I* was discriminated against
AB: okay
LKN: for not being able to stop shop at your store
AB: that’s your narrative
LKN: okay wonderful thank you in fact I’ll just go live too
for a second
AB: I mean if you want to
LKN: okay there you go
AB: I’m just doing my job
LKN: #and I’m just doing my job
AB: I have rules I will get in trouble if I let you in without a:
mask we have a lot of *elderly* customers you know it’s
LKN: I get it cuz there are *no* elderly customers
AB: #it’s a county
LKN: there are no elderly customers here
AB: it *really* doesn’t matter
LKN: yeah uh huh so:
AB [to phone?]: officer could you ask her to step away from the door
she’s making me feel kind of unsafe
LKN [talking over]: Aidan Bearpaw could you just tell me tell me your last
name again Bearpaw?
AB: yeah uh huh
LKN: okay Aidan Bearpaw thank you so much
AB: yeah take care *god bless you*
In this exchange, several elements of Mr. Bearpaw’s languaging are of inter-

est: his use of the honorific ma’am, the evocation of other persons, notably
the elderly, presumably to provoke sympathy, and the formulaic salutation
god bless you. Through such languaging, Mr. Bearpaw exercises a disciplinary
power over himself, one that most contextual participants would under-
stand as polite and even-tempered, if perhaps exasperated, corresponding to
expectations of a person occupying his role and position.
Verbal hygienic authority is bound up in identity, both that held by the
self and that imposed by others. The ways in which languagers exercise ver-
bal hygiene over themselves and respond to that of others frame how they
understand themselves and such others. Who is intelligent or clever? Who is
rude or petulant? Who is friendly or antagonistic? Like languagings, identi-
ties are never neutral, but intersect in complex ways with other components
of social personas, including gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status,
that is, that which Puar calls assemblages (2007). Languagers know that a
‘smart man,’ for example, is expected to engage in verbal hygiene differently
than a ‘smart woman.’ They also know that the price to pay for any failure
in this regard includes being seen as something other than ‘smart,’ ‘a man’
or ‘a woman’ – they might well be understood as something less flattering
or even highly denigratory, for example, an ‘indecisive man’ or a ‘pushy
woman’ (Cameron, 2006; Lakoff, 1975; Tannen, 1990). In all instances,
verbal hygiene and facework act like regulatory frames, mediating not only
interactions between languagers but the ways in which languagers under-
stand themselves (Cameron, 1995, pp. 15–17). This interplay of authority
and identity is, in turn, related to concepts of agency or the amount of con-
trol different languagers have over a given activity, the domain in which this
may or may not take place, and how this will be interpreted, notably, their
ability to engender desired outcomes.
Tying It Together
It may seem odd to use Pet Shop Karen – and the very ideological construct
of Karens, itself – as the basis of a chapter dedicated to the thorny con-
cepts of authority and power, not to mention symbolic power and violence,
accomplished through languaging activity. What do these languagers have

to do with lofty academic theories, and why should they be centred in the
application of these? The answer to these queries is rather simpler than
might first appear: all such moments are in fact always and already about
power and authority, as well as the wielding of symbolic forces. While they
might be more mundane than scandals involving prominent political figures
or widely recognized celebrities – many of whom have and continue to
engage in similar languaging – the banality of these moments, not to men-
tion the apparent omnipresence of such “languagers behaving badly,” makes
them all-the-more interesting and important objects of examination.
Significantly, the transgression example of Pet Store Karen occurred
entirely within the semiotic realm. Ms. Norris is not reported to have physi-
cally injured anyone, at least not in this example – she “used her words” and
not her fists, as cringy as these actions might be judged. As such, hers is a
fundamentally linguistic transgression. Whether labelled a Karen or in some
other, perhaps less back-handedly misogynistic way, languagers like Ms. Nor-
ris are grasping at power and asserting their authority over others – here Mr.
Bearpaw, fellow employees and shoppers in the store – while also making
broader claims to authority over a wider community. Like that of other so-
called Karens and Darrens, Ms. Norris’ languaging is a manifestation of not
simply what she wanted or desired but what she required and demanded, that
is, compliance with her will above that of others. And in so doing, she exer-
cised – or attempted to exercise – symbolic violence, subjugating Mr. Bearpaw
and all others. In the next chapter, attention is turned to the broader ideational
backdrop in and through which languaging takes place and through which
languagers accomplish – or seek to accomplish – specific ends. Although atten-
tion turns to a distinct example from linguistic life, the question of Karens and
their actions can also be understood in this light, representing a further unrav-
elling of transgressive languaging moments by considering the finalities that
are achieved and those that remain unachieved through their interpolation.
A Closer Look: Karens and Moral Panic
The preceding incident provides one example of a languager grasping at

power and exerting authority over others and, in so doing, transgressing
shared norms by failing to exercise verbal hygiene in a way correspond-
ing to widely shared ideologies and mythologies. Cameron notes that such
practices have the effect of naturalizing and even rendering many languaging
events inevitable or unquestionable, whereas others are denaturalized and
cast as dangerous or defective (1995, pp. 18–23). This is notably observed

in instances of moral panic, a moment of collective anxiety or hysteria that,
according to Cameron, “occurs when some social phenomenon or problem
is suddenly foregrounded in public discourse and discussed in an obsessive,
moralistic and alarmist manner, as if it betokened some imminent catastro-
phe” (p. 82). When it comes to moral panic associated with languaging, dif-
ferent enlanguaged components (what she refers to as words and grammars)
stand in for other issues or are co-opted to give materiality to the object of
the moral panic (pp. 94–97).
While the case of Pet Store Karen is not a quintessential example of moral
panic, it certainly encapsulates a moment of moral indignation. Ms. Norris
echoes long-standing authorizations of behaviour by a certain category of
persons when in confrontation with another category of persons – specifi-
cally, a white adult female customer confronting a younger service employee,
who is also a person of colour, and claiming authority not only over her own
body but over a situation in which other bodies come into contiguity, all in
the context of a deadly global pandemic (it bears mentioning that the event
occurred in the fall of 2020, before vaccines and other treatments were avail-
able). This claim to authority and its stated bases, anchored in neoliberal
conceptions of society and tainted by racialized privilege, act as a conduit of
symbolic power and authority (and not only). Such moments and their actor-
authors convey not shared terror in the face of a new or unknown element
but one of individual “unnerving” in the face of a new or unknown challenge
to long-held authority and long-canalized ways of doing power. These same
events and their participants also provoke moments of collective anxiety and
dread on the part of a wider public, especially those who do not have access
to the gender and racial identity characteristics associated with Karens. In
such situations, symbolic power and symbolic violence play out in a madden-
ingly intricate, shadowy languaging dance (assuming the interaction does not
turn physically violent).
Quite obviously, Karen phenomena involve a lack of self-censorship and
corresponding verbal hygienic exercise. The question of how fellow languag-
ers should respond, most notably those who find themselves in a Karen’s
(or a Darren’s) line of fire, is rarely spelled out in practice or law, requiring
participants to walk a tightrope of understanding social convention, corpo-
rate policy and idiosyncratic emotion. Although these do not have the force
of a governmental policy or administrative institution, they can result in
very real – and at times very severe – penalties for those who do not follow
the explicitly codified or implicitly felt rules. This certainly occurred in the
case of Ms. Norris. While she was not subject to any sanction by the public
authorities for having called 911 and requested that an officer be dispatched,
she did become subject to qualitatively elusive – and far from incontro-
vertibly negative – outcomes, including her name and image being spread
across social and traditional media.10 In the age of constant and instant con-
nectivity, it would be difficult to argue that this does not constitute a real
consequence.
Of course, not all such incidents end innocuously; indeed, several well-
publicized examples have resulted in efforts to codify rules of languaging and
to impose legal penalties on languagers whose actions have resulted in harm,
of which the infamous case of Central Park Karen provides a compelling exam-
ple. This occurred on 25 May, 2020, in New York City’s Central Park, when
avid birdwatcher Christian Cooper, a Black man, encountered Amy Cooper,
a white woman (of no relation to Mr. Cooper). According to reports pub-
lished in the New York Times and broadcast on CNN,11 Mr. Cooper requested
that Ms. Cooper exercise greater control of her unleashed dog, beckoning
the animal with a treat that he kept to hand following similar incidents in
the past and recording the interaction on his mobile phone. Ms. Cooper is
heard responding with panicked breath, “I’m calling the cops . . . I’m gonna
tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” which she
proceeded to do in the now-famous footage.12 Fortunately for Mr. Cooper,
the police who arrived on the scene successfully diffused the situation and did
not respond in a manner that might otherwise be feared or even expected,
given the now well-documented police bias toward Black men who have been
accused of aggression by white women (Armstrong, 2021; McMahon & Kahn,
2018; Ware, 2015).
As in the case of Ms. Norris, Ms. Cooper’s actions can be understood as a
grasping at power, through which she violated several largely unstated rules of
linguistic life, most notably that persons are not supposed to lie, especially to
the police. Mr. Cooper had not, in fact, made any threat on Ms. Cooper’s life,
a detail that she later acknowledged to be true. Her actions also transgressed
widely shared ideologies pertinent to race, that is, that such topics should
not be evoked, despite the persistence of racial stereotypes, ideologies and
actions (see, e.g., DiAngelo, 2018; Greenwald & Krieger, 2006; Payne & Han-
nay, 2021). Unlike the event involving Ms. Norris and hundreds, very likely
thousands, of similar incidents occurring each year, this moment produced a
very public and overtly political response. Long-standing and widely shared de
facto norms governing languaging behaviour and widely (albeit not universally)
shared ideologies specific to languagers and their enlanguagements became
codified de jure – and this at a rather surprising speed. In June of that year,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law State Senate Bill 8492,
an act imposing civil penalties for any person who calls emergency services
and makes accusations regarding someone of a protected class absent “a rea-
son to believe a crime or offense, or imminent threat to person or property,
is occurring.”13 Unlike the public, political and institutional reactions in other
cases, that set in motion by Central Park Karen changed established law, with
specific punishment and means of adjudication.
• Consider the authorities who determine how you can and cannot use lan-
guage in your day-to-day life. Who are these authorities? What prescrip-
tions and proscriptions do you encounter on a regular basis, and how can
you describe these in light of the reading?
• Thinking about power as a capacity to affect others, describe the power
held by the authorities in your linguistic life – both individuals and
groups. To what sorts of symbolic violence are you subjected? Do you
hold symbolic power over others? If so, how and in what manner?
• How is language policed in your community (give some relevant exam-
ples)? Is this de jure or de facto? What are the consequences for those who
do not follow these rules?
• Consider self-censorship, acts of self-control in which we all engage, fre-
quently without thinking much about them as they have become quasi-
automatic. Identify and describe one example of self-censorship that
transpired in the past 24 hours.
• Identify three examples of verbal hygiene. Describe the mechanisms of
verbal hygiene – the forms, referents, structures and/or performative
packages that are subject to these actions. How do these involve concepts
of face? How have these become internalized or part of mental reality,
implicating verbal hygiene?
• Consider another moment in which you witnessed a languager or sev-
eral languagers “behaving badly.” Using concepts and terminology
from this chapter, describe and interpret the symbolic underpinnings of
these events. What authority was being claimed? What power was being
grasped? Who was affected by the exercise of symbolic power and vio-
lence in this instance? How were they affected?
Further Reading
Those wishing to delve deeper into questions of linguistic authority, spe-
cifically authorities who pre- and proscribe different forms of language, are
pointed to Milroy and Milroy’s classic work Authority in Language: Investi-
gating Standard English. As noted in prior chapters, Lippi-Green’s English
With an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States
also provides important grounding to the ways in which language authority
plays out in daily life. For questions of linguistic power, notably symbolic
power and violence, an excellent starting point is Claire Kramsch’s Lan-
guage as Symbolic Power. In this, she offers an accessible overview of much
of the most important scholarship in this field, notably looking to the work
of Bourdieu and his inheritors. Bourdieu’s original work, translated as Lan-
guage and Symbolic Power, can also be read in conversation with Buraway’s
compelling Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu. For questions
of power and discourse, McHoul and Grace’s A Foucault Primer: Discourse,
Power and the Subject is a useful and approachable first step into rethinking
many of these concepts from a distinctly post-modern perspective. Finally,
those interested in the history of Karens, notably at the intersection of
whiteness, race and gender, are pointed to Jackson and Rao’s White Women,
alongside Robin DiAngelo’s accessible work White Fragility and Janet Hill’s
The Everyday Language of White Racism.
Notes
1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ-3MMIO2xw
2 https://centralavetv.com/karen-viral-videos/
3 www.facebook.com/laura.karowsky, www.linkedin.com/in/laurakarowsky, www.
youtube.com/user/laurakarowsky/about
4 https://aknextphase.com/the-rise-of-the-karens/
5 www.bbc.com/news/world-53588201
6 See the YouTube channel by this name, one of the first to collect and dissemi-
nate incidents of Karens, as well as Darrens and similarly labelled social actors:
www.youtube.com/channel/UC1e8uA3YdIU_rB49ksUO6kg
7 Here and in the following transcripts, asterisks are used to convey relative pro-
sodic emphasis, # shows overlap between different participants, and the amper-
sand (@) conveys unclear elements.
8 www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations
9 https://tile.loc.gov/storage-ser vices/ser vice/ll/usrep/usrep395/us-
rep395444/usrep395444.pdf
10 In fact, a simple Google search for “Pet Store Karen” undertaken in June 2021
yielded a surprising number of results – approximately 32,800,000 in under 1
second.
11 www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/nyregion/central-park-amy-cooper-christian-
racism.htmland(www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-
african-american-trnd/index.html, respectively.
12 https://time.com/5842442/amy-cooper-dog-central-park/
13 www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s8492
6
LANGUAGING CONSEQUENCE
Linguistic Performativity and Hate Speech
Key Concepts
• Insults
• Hate speech
• Pragmatics
• Speech act theory
• Illocution, perlocution
Early in 2021, a Rutgers University law class discussed a court transcript that
included a portion in which a trial witness used the n-word, which was spo-
ken verbatim by a white student. In the days that followed, a Zoom record-
ing of this moment circulated, prompting angry reactions from students
and faculty alike.1 A few months later and a few hundred miles away, Uni-
versity of Illinois-Chicago Law Professor Jason Kilburn faced dismissal after
invoking a hypothetical case on an exam in which a plaintiff was referred to
as “a ‘n____’ and a ‘b____’ (profane [sic] expressions for African Americans
and women),” using the truncations given here.2 Although he had warned
his students about the topic, and despite agreeing to mediation, prominent
civil rights leaders demanded Professor Kilburn’s ouster: upon facing intense
backlash, this decision was reversed. (Ironically, it was also reported that the
very same slurs were languaged without redaction in the training Profes-
sor Kilburn was required to follow, leading to allegations of hypocrisy and
calls for verbal hygiene on the part of university administrators.)3 Countless
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-6
102 Languaging Consequence
other examples of the n-word and the repercussions of its enlanguagement

can be cited within and, especially, beyond the confines of academia. Con-
sider, for example, the case of Florida State Senator Frank Artiles, who in
2016 jokingly remarked to colleagues that “six [n-word]s had elected him”
and also referred to the state senate president using a derogatory term for
female genitalia: Artiles resigned facing angry reaction.4 Or that of celebrity
chef Paula Deen, who in 2013 was sued by a former employee accusing
her of using this racial epithet with restaurant staff on numerous occasions:
despite public apologies, Deen’s image continues to be tainted by scandal.5
Even entire crowds have been swept up in the languaging of this form and
reaction to it. For instance, dozens of basketball fans chanted this during
a game between rivals Vanderbilt and Mississippi State University in 2021.
In the days that followed, respective administrators issued remorseful state-
ments, but neither the teams nor their fans faced consequences more severe
than a cycle of less-than-favourable new stories.6
This chapter explores the thorny question of derogatory languaging, of
which the n-word is but one, albeit a particularly powerful, example. Building
on concepts introduced in Chapter 2, linguistic performativity is explored in
more depth, looking to the ways in which languagers accomplish things in
the world, the outcome of these actions, and the inchoative links between
language-as-doing and language-as-effect. It begins by reviewing the nature
of hate speech, linguistic moments that have a profound effect on specific
participants in a languaging community, before offering a broad overview
of pragmatics and speech act theory. Discussion then turns to questions of
how languaging achieves – and sometimes fails to achieve – varying objec-
tives, notably, how linguistic performances and their content might be con-
sidered harmful or injurious. The arc of this chapter calls into question the
types of transgressive languaging that are labelled as hate speech, reframing
these as complex actions involving a form of imbalanced complicity between
different linguistic actors, themselves having vastly different access to power
and authority.
Insults and Hate Speech

It is very likely that anyone reading these pages has both insulted and been
insulted, that is, has been the author and the object of languaging that
focuses upon some real or perceived aspect of personhood and asserts that
this is somehow flawed or undesirable (Foster, 2020). Such languaging
may target a person’s intelligence or competence (and this in any domain),
their physical appearance (ranging from height to body size to perceived
tidiness), their gender and conformity or lack thereof to gender stereo-
types, their sexuality, group identity characteristics (such as race, religion
Languaging Consequence 103
and ethnicity), and just about anything else imaginable (Castroviejo et al.,
2021; Nunberg, 2020). Insults appear to be as vast and variable as any other
means of enlanguaging cultural and personal values, including descriptors
of positive qualities, and are – again, like all languaging – intimately tied
to individual knowledge and shared experience (see Mateo & Yus, 2013).
Among the many forms that are understood as insulting and offensive
among Anglophones, the n-word may well be the most powerful and con-
troversial. Denoting Black Americans, this form activates connotations of
racism and racial prejudice and is strongly associated with white supremacy,
alongside historical and present-day violence. Two syllables, four phonemes
and six letters that, when languaged by non-Black persons, are very likely to
explode like a linguistic hydrogen bomb.
Few things seem to unite Anglophones in North America and elsewhere
more than the understanding that injurious forms whose semantic quali-
ties disparage a person or group (also known as epithets) are not to be
enlanguaged, at least in shared public space. Of course, that hardly means
that such forms or the denotations, connotations and associations linked to
them have been eradicated from linguistic life. Quite the contrary: it seems
that rarely a week goes by without a prominent person being caught hav-
ing violated this or a related taboo. These involve not just the n-word, as in
the preceding examples, but any number of others, including – but hardly
limited to – the f-word (referring to gay men, in general, and those who do
not present in a normatively masculine way, more specifically), the c-word
(referring either to female genitalia or to women, most often those who do
not act in normatively feminine ways), and any number of others denoting
a racial, sexual, religious or ethnic minority. These and others would seem
to be inscribed on an unwritten list of “words that should never be spoken,”
although they are indeed spoken and signed, written and texted, day in and
out (see Cervone et al., 2021).
There is a widely repeated adage that “sticks and stones may break my
bones, but words will never harm me”; this manifests the mythology that
language action cannot inflict harm on others, at least, not in the same
way that the use of material objects may accomplish such finalities. At first
glance, this would seem to be a straightforward truth: a linguistic sign can-
not directly inflict injury on another, if only because a sign is nothing with-
out the languagers who enlanguage it and those who receive and process
it – all signs require linguistic actors to bring them into semiotic being (see
Chapter 1). And yet, words are understood to inflict harm on audiences and
are believed to be injurious, perhaps because languager-doers deploy them
in order to cause pain or injury and because languager-receivers apprehend
them as such (Knisely & Russell, 2024). Transgressive languaging acts such
as these, ones that are undertaken with the full knowledge that they are
injurious to others, particularly those who are now or have been historically
oppressed, are frequently labelled “hate speech.”
While there is no precise definition of what constitutes hate speech, the
term is widely used to refer to linguistic activity that addresses or evokes a
person or group of persons in a way that is understood to convey sentiments
that this person or group is somehow defective, unwanted or less than, par-
ticularly when there is agreement that the person or group has been histori-
cally or is presently the object of discrimination. In other words, hate speech
is understood to manifest animus and direct this toward a contextually sali-
ent target. The American Library Association offers a simultaneously con-
cise but vague definition of hate speech as “any form of expression through
which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group
or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin colour, sexual iden-
tity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin,” distinguish-
ing it from unpopular, unpatriotic or impolite speech and noting that it is
protected under the US Constitution.7 Nevertheless, this apparently tidy
divide does not correspond to contemporary debates among languagers and
within languaging communities, within which hate speech or other forms of
animus are much more elusive to shared denotation. For some, expressions
of preference or dis-preference are labelled hate; for others, the term is so
fluid as to be useless. Even those acts that are legally protected in the US
or elsewhere are widely viewed as hate speech, inciting no small amount of
controversy and response (see Chapter 7 for more on this topic).
The lack of collective consensus surrounding what does and does not
constitute hate speech should not be understood to reflect a lack of inter-
est, especially among scholars whose research interrogates the ways in which
language functions in specific sociocultural and political settings. Indeed, the
past three decades have seen tremendous scholarly interest in the definition
and dissection of hate speech or, more broadly, linguistically born animus,
from a variety of venues. For example, Matsuda et al. (1993) use hate speech
as a label referring to an action that is injurious to the psychological or emo-
tional state of a target, as well as to their social, economic and political status
(see also Langton, 1993; MacKinnon, 1993; Whillock & Slayden, 1995).
Obviously, this is a very broad definition – one that might correspond well to
cultural mythologies, but one that also clashes with other widely held beliefs,
not the least of which is the right to free expression. It also ignores – or per-
haps simply glances over – the causal links between the languager-doer and
the languager-receiver, reverting to the “language as anthropomorphized
and existential force” stance that is specifically taken up in Chapter 1.
Sceptical that language can be understood as the agent of injury, Judith
Butler reconsiders the ways in which languaging – in her words, speech –
brings about distinct states of mind and body, especially in interactions
involving asymmetrical power and authority. Key to her understanding is

how language can engender effects in interpolation, the act of calling forth
and calling out another. She redefines Althusser’s understanding of interpo-
lation, recasting those acts commonly labelled as hate speech as mechanisms
that result in subjection (assujetissement), the process by one person or
group becomes subordinated to another person or group (1997). From this
point of view, languaging itself does not accomplish harm, but it does enact
subjections that result in harm, often through the iterative or citational reci-
tation of subjections that precede the form or utterance itself. Accordingly,
offensive epithets such as the n-word “mark out a discursive place of viola-
tion” because both ends of the languaging dyad – the doer and receiver –
understand that this form conjures up and opens such a space predicated
by their prior experiences with and knowledge of the form and its semantic
content (1997, p. 27). Building upon this view, Russell (2019) considers
specific acts that are labelled homophobic to be enlanguaged manifestations
of complex discursive ecologies, systems in which different participants are
positioned in such a way that they are lessened or subjected, although this
is not always borne out through specific or even widely recognized forms.
Importantly, this ecosystem subsumes a host of different linguistic factors,
ranging from semantic to syntactic structure, all of which can only be under-
stood in situ. From this perspective, there is no such thing as an intrinsically
hateful languaging act, nor are there enlanguaged forms or structures that
inevitably result in harm or injury. Any and all moments of linguistic ani-
mus and their result can only be understood within a complex network of
semiotic activity, manifested in a specific and dynamic linguacultural setting.
Perhaps because of the difficult-to-pin-down nature of hate speech –
something that languagers feel deeply but are, at times, at a loss to define
or delimit – these moments are controversially subject to different layers of
control, ranging from de jure proscription to the more mundane pressures
of verbal hygiene (see Chapter 5). Unlike acts of physical violence or politi-
cal exclusion, very few political jurisdictions around the world specifically
proscribe hate speech, at least until and unless such languaging is clearly
linked to physical action, and even then only in a limited manner. The Neth-
erlands and Sweden, to offer but two examples, sanction racist, sexist and
homophobic communication, but even such proscriptions are limited to
public speech and cases involving actionable threat or injury. Moreover,
unlike physical violence, speech is far more difficult to qualify as specifically
harmful and legally punishable. After all, it is relatively easy to determine
both the harmer and the harmed in the case of a fistfight or when a neo-
Nazi calls for attacks on synagogues; it is, however, rather difficult to ascribe
specific injury, and therefore agentive responsibility, to most daily cases of
languaging and to their languager-authors.
Despite all efforts to contain hateful languaging – even when these result
in the sanctioning of the languager – such linguistic action continues seem-
ingly unabated, as any of the examples mentioned in the introduction to this
chapter readily demonstrate. In one time and place, it may be possible to
push specific acts into the shadows of so-called decent society and to pun-
ish identifiable actors, but even then other practices eventually take hold
and emerge, standing in for prior languagings in their ability to produce
harmful states. Beyond the use of the n-word or other epithets that open
up a space of subjection and subordination, it is readily apparent to any
observer that it is not just a matter of forms: entire structures and widely
circulating utterances, as well as the patterns of these, can and often do
function in analogous ways, rendering any concept of what does or does
not constitute hate speech or hateful languaging a slippery, elusive target
(Russell, 2019, pp. 1–4). This observation requires that attention be given
not only to transgressive languaging and the transgressive languagers who
are its authors but to the wider context in which any such activity takes place
and its meaning, particularly to the ways that all languagers – from speakers
to listeners, from writers to readers, and so forth and so on – accomplish,
negotiate and contest languaging on a daily basis.
Languaging in Real Time

Pragmatics is a subfield that examines the interplay of languaging and lingua-
cultural habitat: it is concerned with the specific moments in which languag-
ing occurs, involving both actor-doer and receiver-audience, and, perhaps
more importantly, the knowledge that any languager must hold in order
to participate in these moments. Obviously, pragmatics is an immense sub-
field, one that includes formal and performative or functional approaches,
as exemplified by Birner (2012) and Robinson (2006), respectively. For this
reason, its treatment here is somewhat cursory, although it should be clear
that pragmatic description and analysis are always at play when it comes to
the analysis of transgressive languaging, and not only. Pragmatics affords
greater understanding of how cultural concepts such as politeness or ani-
mosity are accomplished, how such actions are carried out successfully or
unsuccessfully, how languagers understand different actions as transgressive
and why any such judgement might be controversial.
Echoing the discussion in Chapter 3, Sharifian brings pragmatics into
dialogue with cultural linguistics (2011, 2017). He breaks down instances
of language life and recasts these as pragmatic schema, epistemological
structures capturing what languagers know about their world and the expe-
riences they have had in it (e.g. being polite is seen positively). These pre-
cede and scaffold any particular action (e.g. a given salutation judged as
polite) – moments within which languagers actuate or realize the content

of schema. Importantly, both the schema and the act are steeped in cul-
tural knowledge that far surpasses a specific moment and its participants.
In the case of politeness and its manifestation, no concept or action can
be considered universal: they are instead inseparable from the languaging
community and community of languaging in which all actions and conse-
quences are lived out. For example, in some cultures, it is considered polite
to ask questions about one’s work and occupation in casual settings when
presented with persons who are not already known, whereas this might be
considered rude and invasive in another. Likewise, in some linguacultural
settings, topics such as religion or politics are considered highly inappro-
priate for conversation among any except the closest of friends or family,
whereas in another setting these very same matters might be understood
as ‘fair game’ for casual conversation among new acquaintances. Politeness
may well be phenomenologically universal, but it is entirely locally realized
and apprehended.
Mey’s Pragmatic Act Theory (2001) proposes a useful distinction
between two complementary facets of lived languaging: the pragmeme and
the pract, concepts which Sharifian co-opts to further enhance understand-
ing of speech acts and their consequences. According to this framework,
pragmemes are scripted performances, for example, ‘greet people’ or ‘small
talk at a casual gathering.’ These are not static languaging formulas but
overarching meta-structures around which varying, related actions cohere.
Practs or pragmatic acts, on the other hand, are the specific linguistic and
paralinguistic doings that are accomplished in a given linguacultural setting:
these are formulas languagers implement to accomplish a pragmeme, often
to the point of becoming quasi-automatic (as in the case of many daily
interactions). Like all languaging activity, pragmemes and practs are learned
through experience, and the knowledge held by individuals varies enor-
mously, even within a languaging community. For example, many North
American Anglophones learn how to accomplish ‘small talk’ at parties and
other gatherings, also understanding the consequences of not conform-
ing to the accepted patterns of these apparently trivial – but in fact highly
charged – scripts. At the same time, and as anyone who has experienced
(either personally or vicariously) a moment of social awkwardness in such
backdrops can readily attest, not everyone shares a common understanding
of what constitutes appropriate manifestations of ‘small talk,’ let alone the
specific practs that might correspond to this in one or another setting. In
essence, not everyone shares the same pragmatic schemata, whether these
be the pragmeme umbrella (e.g. ‘small talk is expected at casual gatherings’)
or the contextual interpretation of momentaneous practs (e.g. ‘the weather
is an appropriate focus of small talk’).
While the study of pragmatics is far too broad to be fully attended to

here, it is important to note that any description and interpretation of
specific moments of language transgression, let alone the ways in which
languagers come to be labelled as transgressive, depend entirely on shared –
and implicitly agreed upon – pragmatic foundations. A host of pragmemes
determine the domains of acceptable and unacceptable action in a particular
linguacultural environment, whereas specific practs are put into play such
that a languager transgresses or respects these frameworks. Languaging is
already and always a pragmatic enterprise, if only because the very forms and
patterns languagers use are imbued with shared cultural understandings,
ranging from the denotations linked to a given form or structure to the very
concept of transgression itself. They also constitute spaces of contestation,
where power and ideologies come into conflict. Not all languagers will share
the same meta-structural pragmemes, nor will all share the same under-
standings of how one or another pract respects or challenges those scripts
that are shared (in part or in whole) by others in their communities. If one
person understands casual comments about a politician to be an acceptable
pract, for example, but their interlocutor understands this to violate the
pragmeme boundaries of ‘small talk,’ it is possible that confusion and even
offense will result.
Similar, but far more consequential, disparities in pragmatic knowledge
may well be at the heart of controversial moments involving transgressive
languaging labelled hate speech. For example, the Rutgers students reading
aloud from a court transcript were very likely following a relatively strict
pragmemic script, specifically that of citation, within which the quoted wit-
ness (who originally languaged the n-word) was following a distinct script,
that of recounting or retelling. This is not the end of the pragmatic story,
however, a fact that both complexifies and attenuates the case at hand. The
student and the entire class were also following at least two different scripts,
each of which actuated pragmatic scaffolds: that of an in-class discussion,
more specifically, and that of public languaging, more generally. While the
reading of a witness statement verbatim might well present few tensions with
the specific scripts assigned to a law school class (in which, presumably, such
material is part-and-parcel of course material), when the citation is embedded
in higher level scripts, such as that of ‘good citizen’ and ‘university commu-
nity’, the possibility that this could be understood as a transgression is never
far to hand. This also abuts further pragmemes, notably, those surrounding
racial and ethnic identities in the US: the pract of enlanguaging the n-word
by a person who identifies and/or is seen is Black versus one who is white
or of another identity actuates a vastly divergent pragmatic interpretation.
Except for instances in which injurious language is accomplished with
the expressed intent to communicate a harmful or violent message (e.g.
a neo-Nazi yelling antisemitic slogans), pragmatic tensions such as these

likely underlie many instances of controversial languaging, especially those
labelled hate speech. Leaving open the question of what languagers should
or shouldn’t know, that is, overarching ideologies concerning appropriate or
expected pragmatic knowledge (see Chapter 3), it is abundantly clear that
they do not always share identical pragmatic competence and that they do
not always agree upon identical pragmemes, let alone practs. This consid-
eration effectively resituates the locus of controversy in the cases at hand – as
well as that of any linguistically born hatred and injury – to both pragmatic
and ideological spheres, that is, to that which persons and groups know
and bring to bear on different real-life languaging moments, as well as to
that which is ethically or morally understood to be requisite or expected
knowledge and reaction to the interpolation of such knowledge through
linguistic action.
Speech Act Theory

As should be clear to any reader who has made it this far, language does
not happen on its own, nor is it something that is undertaken in a vacuum:
language is done by people, to people, for people and with people. To para-
phrase Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the world is given shape
by the linguistic forms and structures we use to render it legible to ourselves
and to others: we make our worlds by languaging our worlds (1953, but
cf. 1921). His view resituates any outcome of languaging not with form
or structure but with its makers – the individuals who speak, sign or write
and the collective groups who receive, interpret and, ultimately, reiterate
these linguistic products. In short, language cannot accomplish; it requires
interaction and the communities that foster and shape interaction in order
to accomplish or be understood as accomplishing anything at all (see also
Knisely & Russell, 2024). The disciplinary posture formalized in Chapter 1
recaptures and rearticulates Wittgenstein’s understanding, using the terms
languaging, languager and enlanguagement; it is also reflected in speech act
theory. J.L. Austin’s seminal 1962 work How to do things with words reprises
much of Wittgenstein’s understanding, applying this to a number of exam-
ples that continue to resonate to the present day. Contemporary speech act
theory seeks to describe and explain the interplay between language events
and their outcomes or effects – precisely the topics that should interest any
who wish to better understand transgressive languaging and transgressive
languagers.
Perhaps the most important concept applicable to the situational inter-
pretation of languaging is the utterance – a bounded action undertaken by
languagers with one or more goals in mind. Utterances are inchoative verbal
or gestural speech events, also noted in written communication through

traditional textual or any other medium (e.g. Twitter). Some utterances
are synchronous and are accomplished in real time, such as when chatting
with a friend or giving a university lecture. Others are asynchronous and
not attached to a fixed moment in time, as in a recorded lesson or TikTok
video. Regardless of the temporal nature and medium used, all utterances
are undertaken by an actor or actors who address an audience – those who
receive the utterance and respond accordingly. Importantly, the profile of
relations between different languagers – notably actor and receiver – and the
mechanisms through which they are brought into contiguity have impor-
tant consequences for how any utterance is interpreted, as well as any effect
that this interpretation might produce. Actors and audiences may be face-
to-face or separated by great distances; they may also be known to one
another or entirely anonymous. At the same time, audiences may – and
indeed frequently do – respond and become actors in their own right, blur-
ring the apparently tidy division between the two sides.
In the Rutgers law discussion outlined earlier, one immediate actor was
the student who uttered the n-word while reading from the court transcript;
their audience, at least in the first instance, consisted of the professor and fel-
low classmates. However, this audience became much larger with the release
of the Zoom recording to a wider public, at which point many other audi-
ence members became actors in their own right, as their reactions, ranging
from administrative apologies to community outrage, engendered a series
of subsequent actions, each with its own actor-audience dialectic. Accord-
ingly, a singular, relatively easily delimited speech act and linguistic moment
(the reading of the court transcript) is part of a much broader ecosystem,
one that is situated within a web of speech acts, both preceding (e.g. count-
less prior iterations of the n-word and similar racial epithets) and follow-
ing it (e.g. op-eds in various media outlets). Utterances are metaphorically
born of and birth utterances, all of which are bound together in a com-
plex, rhizomatic network involving countless languaging acts, differentially
positioned languagers and interleaved communities of languaging. Taken as
holistic moments, these and countless other examples of linguistic activity
are considered performances, or what American linguist Noam Chomsky
defined as the “actual use of language in concrete situations” (1965, p. 3).8
Performance has been increasingly complexified – or, to use Judith Butler’s
terminology, troubled – in contemporary speech act theory. This requires an
analytical a stance that looks not only at what a languager does, the enlan-
guaged outcome of such doing, and the distal effect of the broader languag-
ing moment; it also requires a careful description and interpretation of the
intentional and inchoative links between act and effect, between doing and
done-to, and between accomplishing and accomplishment.
In his seminal work, Austin made key distinctions between how persons
language to achieve varying goals (1962). Common to any and all perfor-
mance is teleology, that is, the fact that communication doesn’t happen
by accident but is undertaken to achieve one or more objectives. Austin
uses the concept of locution, covering the most mundane and seemingly
unscripted to the most redacted and planned, in a way that is similar to
languaging in its broadest sense. He further distinguishes between two
locutory subtypes: illocutionary and perlocutionary. Illocutionary acts
accomplish an outcome in the moment of actuation, a classic example of
which is seen in wedding ceremonies. In the US and many other coun-
tries, two persons are legally wed only at the moment when an officiant (a
state official or someone authorized by the state) pronounces the phrase
“I now pronounce you legally married” or some accepted variant thereof.
Before this utterance is performed, the legal status of matrimony does
not exist; after this moment, it does. In illocution, languaging is akin to
accomplishing, and doing is more than the mere act of transmitting the
mental image of one person to another. Illocutionary languaging alters a
state or status – it achieves and fulfils an objective. Crucially, illocutionary
acts are dependent upon de jure conventions. In the marriage ceremony
example, explicit legal precepts dictate who may enter into the contract,
which utterances must be performed, and in what manner. All of these are
spelled out and codified in the politicolegal sphere. At the same time, a
host of de facto conventions are also at play, many of which can be called
into question should the illocutionary outcome be held in contempt, for
example, concerns that might arise if one or both parties to the marriage
were intoxicated.
A sort of complement to or extension of illocution, perlocutionary acts
are far more common in linguistic life. Perlocution does not describe a lan-
guaging act itself, but that which is accomplished subsequent to this act:
perlocutionary languaging sets in motion a chain of events that eventu-
ally accomplishes an objective and produces an outcome. Consider the case
of a person who approaches the barista at a coffee shop and says, “Could
I have an espresso, please?” This utterance does not produce the desired
outcome on its own, as no person can, through merely speaking, conjure
forth an espresso (as much as this might be desired). It does, at least in
most instances, set in motion a series of actions that ultimately lead to a per-
son having the desired beverage. One perlocutionary action accomplishes
outcomes that lead to subsequent acts, from the barista asking additional
questions (e.g. “Would you like a pastry with that?”), to the payment of an
agreed-upon sum, to the production of the drink and its delivery in a pre-
scribed manner, and so forth and so on. Rather simplistically, perlocutionary
acts initiate, but do not achieve, eventual outcomes.
Italian linguist Marina Sbisà revisits Austin and his understanding of the
ways in which power is exercised through illocutionary and perlocution-
ary languaging, distinguishing between no fewer than eight different pro-
files of action and significantly blurring the illocution-perlocution divide.
Firstly, she proposes that certain languaging acts change formal status, such
as pledges or swearing-in ceremonies, after which a person achieves a given
state (often being vested with specific authority); these correspond to classic
illocutionary moments, like that discussed previously. Other acts institute
rules and regulations, for example, promulgating laws that establish how
power and authority, along with physical and symbolic violence, are sanc-
tioned and applied; these are both illocutionary, as they produce effects, and
also perlocutionary, as initial effects are oriented toward distal outcomes.
Still more languaging acts involve the exercise of orders and commands, akin
to the perlocutionary conduit noted earlier; the evaluation and recommen-
dation of various possible outcomes, warnings or admonitions, announce-
ments, and explanations, as well as the authority invested or claimed by
such action; the exercise of exhibition, seen in asking questions, an act that
puts an interlocutor in the position of response; and a host of assertions
and proclamations (Sbisà, 2013). According to Sbisà, the performance
of any act and its embodied reception is a tacit expression and iteration
of authority, for it is through performative languaging that authority –
and any claimed power – is maintained or stabilized, accommodated and
tolerated, or in some instances challenged (2018, 2020).
American philosopher John Searle conceives of languaging from a diver-
gent perspective. Rather than focus on the effect of linguistic actions, he
distinguishes between performances and intents, as well as the roles of actor
and audience in a holistic languaging moment (1969, 1979, 1983). He
outlines four primary profiles of action: expressives, assertives, commissives
and directives. Expressives are used to show different emotions or states of
the mind, from sadness and anger to desire and need, whereas assertives are
used to state things, such as facts, opinions or descriptions. To return to
the previous example of a person ordering coffee, an expressive act might
be seen in the barista responding, “I’m so sorry!” should they confuse the
order, here demonstrating deference or frustration. On the other hand, an
assertive act might be seen in the barista stating, “We’re out of espresso
beans,” proclaiming a real or imagined state of conditions. Both expressives
and assertives share the goal of transmitting some representation of the
world from actor to audience, although the former requires more inter-
pretation on the part of the audience than does the latter, as it is grounded
in more canonical or prima facie forms and structures. More in line with
Austin’s view of perlocution, Searle’s definitions of commissives and direc-
tives go one step further, having as their basis an intent to incite subsequent
action. Commissives include vows and pledges, linking a speaker to an

action, for example, if the barista were to say, “but I’ll figure out a way to
use a different blend” as a means of assuring a customer that their request
will be met. On the other hand, directives order or request an audience to
take action, as might be the case were the customer to respond to this situ-
ation by demanding that the barista “go find more of the coffee I asked for
in the storeroom” or similar. Of course, any given moment may – and often
does – include several elements falling under different subtypes, moving
perhaps from expressive to directive and then to commissive.
Regardless of the framework deployed, any description of how languag-
ers accomplish different outcomes must involve intent, that is, the interpre-
tation of a goal or rationale that motivates the languager to act. Frequently,
languaging comprises a number of interleaved and even apparently compet-
ing intents, some of which can be easy and others difficult to tease apart. In
the preceding example, one of the more obvious goals of the hypothetical
customer is to obtain coffee (and to achieve the commensurate effects on
body and consciousness): this is an explicit goal, one that is stated through
conventionalized assertives and expressives, as noted earlier. However, addi-
tional intents might also be at play: they may wish to express politeness or
sympathy, as could be inferred from the use of “please” (or lack thereof) and
the construction deployed in the expressive ordering act. Were they to omit
the rejoinder (e.g. “give me an espresso”), use a different verbal modality
(e.g. “I want an espresso”) or choose a distinct structure (e.g. “Make me
an espresso right now!”), the intent inferred from the languaging act might
differ on the part of the barista and any others involved in this context,
such as a bystander. Crucially, any inference of intent requires individual
knowledge pertinent to conventionalized forms, structures and utterances,
as well as consensus as to how these should be or are interpreted, reverting
to questions of ideology and mythology. All participants must tacitly agree,
although typically without much conscious thought, upon the rules of the
languaging game, so to speak, in order for any outcome to take place.
In the Rutgers case, there was clearly a breakdown of or mismatch
between assumptions held by different languagers who participated in the
initial discussion, let alone those who observed the recording of this later.
While none disagreed about the communicative goal of the moment – to
discuss different legal points that were exemplified by the case being cited –
they did not concur about the ground rules of languaging, notably, those
involved in citational practice. This led to a differential understanding of
intent, although not at the surface level. On the one hand, there were those
who focused on the intent of the student who articulated the n-word in
citation, which was understood to respond to course requisites and bring
the relevant legal issues into the class discussion. On the other hand, there
were those who argued that any enlanguaging of this form, especially by a
non-Black person, is linked to past and present intents to harm, reflecting
Butler (1997) and the view that such languaging practices open or re-open
a space of prior violation.
Interpolation and Hailing

The definition of languaging introduced in Chapter 1 reflects theories
of performance: language is fundamentally inchoative, goal oriented and
interpersonal, involving languagers who deploy predictable scripts that are
woven into shared knowledge, allowing all parties to interpret each other
(see, e.g., Hall, 1999; Robinson, 2002). To this can be added the concept of
performativity: the relative capacity or potentiality of a given languaging act
to set in motion a chain of events that leads to one or more effects (see, e.g.,
Butler, 1997; Loxley, 2007; Pennycook, 2004). Performativity captures the
mundane things languagers do with all sorts of language ingredients – from
the forms they choose to the meanings they evoke, as well as the sentences
they construct and the utterances that are addressed to them. It also allows
them to apprehend what sorts of social realities are constructed by languag-
ers through languaging, including how these serve to construct the social
self and the selves of others. Performativity can thus be thought of as a wide
conceptual net uniting the mythologized illocutionary and/or perlocution-
ary potentiality of languaging and of languagers. Importantly, this is not
simply about “doing things with words” but about “making worlds with
words,” to loosely paraphrase Austin’s original formulation.
Reconsideration of the performative capacity of different languaging
actions goes a long way to better describe and interpret moments in which
there are differential views of transgression, that is, where different mental
realities are achieved by a singular languaging action. When it comes to such
moments of boundary crossing, it is not merely the case that certain forms
or referents are off-limits, that some structures are judged negatively, or that
specific utterances are viewed as offensive. Rather, transgressive languagers
and their actions are judged in one or another way because of the effects
they have upon others, their intent to do this, and the relative probability
that these outcomes can or may be achieved. Any assessment of performa-
tivity must therefore not only take into account what is done – and not
simply what happens after the initial doing – but consider the relative poten-
tiality of one or another languaging activity to accomplish a given outcome
in a specific context, on the basis of pragmatic and cultural knowledge.
Consider the well-worn example of shouting “fire!” in a crowded thea-
tre. Any assertion that this is transgressive depends upon the inferred intent
of the languager and the probabilistic outcome of the languaging act in the
context in which it was done. Were the languager to believe (even errone-
ously) that there was a real fire, they might be applauded for warning others
of a danger; should they know that there was no fire and solely desire to sow
panic, they will likely be held to account and subject to legal ramifications,
as innocent people could be trampled and suffer grave injury, even death,
as a terrified crowd rushes to exits (see Matsuda, 2019). The performativity
of this languaging act is both unique and uniquely variable. Regardless of
intent, it might result in injury to persons. However, it might also perform
the salvation of these same persons from a raging fire.
Clearly, it is important not just to examine the persons and contexts
involved in a given languaging moment but to consider the knowledge that
all persons possess that allows them to understand what is happening and
preconditions the ways in which they may or may not react. The shared
knowledge circulating within a given context allows audiences to under-
stand why they are being addressed, what they are being asked to do or
not do, how they are being asked to do it, and so forth. Importantly, this
knowledge includes factors such as identity, history, sociocultural institu-
tions and ideology. At times, audiences are able to contextually interpret
performances in a relatively straightforward manner, such as in the example
of a person shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre. Assuming that the lan-
guager is motivated by a real fire, the audience is primed to understand this
and to react in a scripted manner. The same discourses will inform all aspects
of response, such as assisting children and the elderly first; they also con-
strain reaction sequences, for example, offering aid to persons before saving
possessions. These and countless other instances of linguistic performativity
are moments in which a perlocutionary act takes an interesting turn, notably
when the causal lines between act and effect are not explicitly codified in
social and/or legal structures but are negotiated in situ, albeit in a way that
is hardly haphazard. One such profile of performativity is seen in moments
of interpolation – linguistic performances that Althusser (1967, 1971)
describes as “hailing acts.” Like the flagging down of a taxicab on a street,
hailing acts involve one languager who calls out and calls forth another
following pre-established, sometimes rigorously prescribed and enforced,
scripts. The classic example associated with Althusser’s definition is one of a
police officer hailing a person on the street; other examples include greeting
baristas in a coffee shop (as the earlier example), calling upon a student in a
discussion lesson, messaging a friend via text, and muttering “how are ya’?”
as a way of greeting a co-worker.
Hailing occurs throughout linguistic life, typically with little or no notice,
but it does not always transpire in the same way. Indeed, some interpolative
acts are highly performative and others far less so. Through languaging acts
that call out and call forth, interpolation brings into being a state or status
that facilitates the interaction of one languager with another, frequently

involving imbalances of authority and power. The police officer holds de
jure authority through which they are invested with vast forms of power –
including physical – over others, whereas the university professor has been
conferred authority to interpolate students and, through this, to enact
power upon them, especially through the assignment of grades. Interpola-
tion is thus obviously framed by preceding ideologies, themselves embodied
in a host of anthropologically specific structures such as political parties,
socioeconomic status and legal titles, all of which facilitate the interaction
between the hailer and the hailed. In the example of a police officer saying
“hey you!” to a person on the street, the officer is calling out and calling
forth another, who then is subjected or subjectable to the force of law and
the state-sanctioned exercise of power. Crucially, this finality can only be
achieved if the other responds to the hailing, voluntarily or involuntarily,
perhaps by turning around or by running away. While both individuals exist
before this moment, preceding structures and discourses (e.g. police, the
authority of law) establish how each may or may not interact as subjects, the
power they hold or do not hold, and much more.
Judith Butler revisits linguistic interpolation in her seminal work Excit-
able Speech (1997). She questions not only how performances might be
considered injurious or harmful but also the efficacy of censorship or pro-
scriptions of performances. She notes that most interpolative acts cannot be
considered dangerous or injurious a priori, because they do not accomplish
a state of aggrievement or injury. They do, however, mark off spaces in
which such states are accomplished or accomplishable, in large part because
similar outcomes have taken place through similar interpolations in the past.
In effect, interpolation is inherently perlocutionary and performative, but
this is bound to context, a key interpretive factor. To return to the example
of the police officer and the passer-by, such languaging and its effect are
predicted to be vastly divergent depending upon the individuals, spaces and
temporal factors involved. In the US and elsewhere, young Black men are
not hailed, nor do they respond to their hailing, by police in the same way
as an elderly white female – notably as the latter is not accustomed to fearing
for her life in such moments. A police officer hailing someone on an idyllic
sidewalk in an affluent neighbourhood would be likely to be understood in a
different manner than were they to do this on a bustling street in a working-
class urban environment. And the same can be said of acts occurring at dif-
ferent times of day, for example, midnight on a Friday or Tuesday at midday
(see discussion in Russell, 2022).
The performative nature of insults such as the n-word is steeped in
the historical and present-day realities of anti-Black racism in the US and
elsewhere. Re-examination of its languaging affords a greater understand-

ing of what is happening in examples such as those mentioned in the intro-
duction to this chapter. The student reading from a court transcript might
well be understood as interpolating something more than simply the cita-
tion from case law. Crucially, some languager-receivers, particularly those
whose pragmatic knowledge and anthropological experiences with similar
languaging moments include their subjectification, may interpret this in a
vastly different manner than it was putatively intended, particularly when
the languager-doer is a white female (as in this incident). Likewise, the very
same form being used in the kitchen of a celebrity chef – another white
female, who is also of an older generation and from the US South – might
well have been understood as not only calling out and calling forth a person
whom she perceives as Black but subjectifying them within and through
discursive forces that render that person much more than simply “less than,”
thus situating and resituating them in a long historical and contemporary
arc of racial prejudice and violence. In these and other examples, the linguis-
tic sign itself is not accomplishing anything – it is the languager who does
so using the n-word, intentionally or unintentionally, by hailing an audience
who cannot not interpret this (with purposeful use of the double negative)
in the light of past experiences and widely held knowledge.
Tying It Together
This chapter steps into the messy, controversial space of hate speech and
injurious languaging. By reconsidering examples involving the n-word from
the point of view of pragmatics and speech act theory, different moments
are interpretable as languaging moments that set in motion a series of events
that lead to states of offense and harm, in part by evoking the ghosts of past
instances in which such outcomes took place alongside physical violence.
Some of these end states match the intent of the languager-doer, whereas
others do not. While the same enlanguaged form can be seen as perlocu-
tionary, opening or re-opening a space of violation and subjection, the spe-
cific pathways of performativity and the profiles of different languaging acts
are far from uniform. Considering the ways in which languaging functions
in given contexts, as well as the ways in which different languager profiles
contribute to these functions through their inferred intent and objectives,
allows a clearer view of how hate speech is accomplished and, ultimately,
how it might be more effectively countered. This is yet again another act of
recentring the human actor and denying linguistic anthropomorphism, as it
is the languager – both as agent and as patient – who is the ultimate locus
of both animus and harm.
A Closer Look: N-Words in Context
How does this chapter lend itself to a critical reconsideration of moments

in which the n-word was uttered, be this by a celebrity chef or a law stu-
dent? How does an understanding of linguistic performativity reframe debate
around what is being accomplished and how this accomplishment occurs
when the n-word appears on a university exam or is shouted by fans at a
basketball match? And, given a closer examination of the contexts in which
these events transpire, and taking into account the historical and present-day
places of violation that for many speakers are triggered by the enlanguage-
ment of this form, in what ways are these or similar actions to be understood
as transgressive? Should these be considered as interpolative acts hailing and
subjectifying a person or community, as the unintentional re-opening of
wounds, as outright expressions of animus, as all of these, or as something
else entirely?
This chapter began with several specific examples, ones that to many likely
appear clearly transgressive. And yet, upon closer examination, there is little
in common about the performative content and potentiality of each instance.
In the Rutgers case, one languager read a quote from a court record, some-
thing that is part and parcel of law school curricula. Some may claim that their
languaging of the n-word here was akin shouting fire in a crowded theatre, and,
yet, neither this nor the University of Chicago example involved a person yell-
ing the epithet, which would be akin to the languaging of Ms. Deen, former
Senator Artiles, and the university basketball fans. In the Rutgers discussion
and in the case of Professor Kilburn, an overt denigratory intent appears to
be lacking, even if denigration did indeed occur. In the other cases, however,
specific intent can be reasonably inferred: Ms. Deen was noted as using this
to castigate employees and the basketball fans were understood to have been
taunting and debasing their rivals, whereas the Florida state senator claims to
have been making remarks in the heat of a political discussion. The discursive
forces that framed all such incidents cannot be ignored, however, as they con-
stitute a sort of unifying meta-pragmeme: these include discursive formations
of race, racial inequality and systemic injustice in the United States.
Certainly, it would not be wise to take a one-size-fits-all approach to
understanding how enlanguagement of the n-word plays out in contempo-
rary US society; to do this would be to fall into the trap of wilful ignorance
(or perhaps blinkered solipsism) that has coloured so much debate in the
US and elsewhere around who is allowed and not allowed to enlanguage
this form with seeming impunity.9 Much of this debate focuses upon the
form itself, as do so many other controversies surrounding transgressive
languaging, simultaneously ignoring most or all performative factors (while
also conflating two related forms, one that ends in the rhotacized -er and
the other in a low vowel, typically rendered -ah or -a in spelling). This wilful
interpretive naiveté does injustice, and not only to those who are targeted
by intentionally insulting languagings of the n-word but to the wider languag-
ing community in which these events take place. By focusing on the sign
and not on the wider ecosystem, languagers are frequently let off the hook
or not called fully to task, a prime example of which is noted in Deen’s
response. She admitted to using the n-word, but she also insisted that this
was a product of her upbringing in the South, while ignoring the very con-
text in which such past and present languagings transpired, as if there were
no links between the ways in which this sign might used and received now
and how it was used and received by prior generations. At the same time,
such all-or-nothing views fail to attend to any nuances, as the Rutgers case
demonstrates. In this example, there was widespread agreement as to the
lack of intent to harm on the part of the student who read the original
transcript: this was a languaging error, to be sure, and perhaps a lapse of
verbal hygiene (see Chapter 5), but it could hardly be compared to former
Florida State Senator Artiles’ outburst or the collective chanting of fans at
the Vanderbilt-Mississippi State game. It would be difficult to consider the
Rutgers example as one of intentional hailing and subjectification, just as it
would be difficult to ignore the fact that Artiles, Deen and the basketball
fans were anything other than naïve but in full possession of knowledge
about this form, its history and its present-day effect.
None of this is to say that the n-word – or any other form widely under-
stood to open up places of subordination and subjection – should be used
with abandon, or that apologies weren’t warranted by any or all involved in
the examples discussed previously. Indeed, there is no such thing as neutral
languaging or neutral languagers. All languaging is consequential (even if the
consequences are apparently innocuous or simply go unnoticed) and all lan-
guagers have illocutionary and perlocutionary potential (even if the ability
to deploy this potential, let alone any effect that this might have, is far from
equally distributed). It does, however, beg a more developed and more care-
ful view of how supposed acts of hate speech and linguistic animus are evalu-
ated, not to mention the ways in which other languagers might react to them.
The transgressive languaging act of the Rutgers class (involving the echoing
of past languagings) might best be understood as one that requires more

sensitivity and care in the handling of linguistic evidence; that of University
of Illinois administrators (whose admonishments of the use of euphemisms
for the n-word included this in uncensored form) as one of wilful ignorance
and flagrant hypocrisy; and that of the Vanderbilt and Mississippi State
fans (where there was little more than a passing acknowledgement of the
repeated languaging of this form in a public space) as complicit participation in
a subjectifying languaging act. Reacting in the same manner and insisting upon
parallel consequences in these cases do little to mitigate real harm or address
long-standing, injurious performativity by decentring the human languager
and affording too much power to the enlanguaged.
• Consider the ways in which you perform politeness in an everyday inter-
action, such as when you order coffee. How might you perform impo-
liteness in a similar context? How do others, such as a barista or server,
perform various stances in return?
• Contemplate some of the highly scripted linguistic moments in your life,
such as the ways in which you interact with close friends – especially if
this is different from how you would interact with parents, professors or
people with whom you’re not as close. Break down these scripts using the
pragmatic model outlined earlier.
• Reflect on a moment when you were offended by something a person
spoke, gestured or wrote. How can you understand the performativity
of your example? What mythologies and ideologies were involved in the
effect this had on you?
• Identify another form whose languaging is widely considered to be trans-
gressive. Comment upon the performativity associated with this form,
that is, what languagers who use it are able to accomplish through this.
How does this open up spaces of prior violation and hail a previously
subjectified person or group?
• Peruse a newspaper or other press outlet in your community, looking
specifically for recent examples of a prominent individual using (or being
accused of using) the n-word or another epithet. What occurred in this
instance? Using the terminology and approach of this chapter, describe
this event more carefully: consider the pragmatic action of this languager,
their inferred or explicitly stated goal, and the performativity that this
example demonstrates.
Further Reading
Few works have inspired more discussion of language acts than J.L. Austin’s
original How to Do Things With Words, the second edition (published in 1980)
of which includes many useful annotations. Additional foundational works
include John Searle’s Speech Acts: Essays in the Philosophy of Language, Judith
Butler’s Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, and James Loxely’s
Performativity. Other useful sources include Jonathan Culler’s Performative
Language and Douglas Robinson’s Performative Linguistics: Speaking and
Translating as Doing Things with Words; the latter also includes a useful dis-
cussion of cross-linguistic issues. Readers who wish to better understand the
history of the n-word are pointed to Jabari Asim’s recent book The N Word:
Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why, which affords a solid historical
background to the form and its past languaging in the American context.
Somewhat more controversial, if only because of its title, is Randall Kenne-
dy’s N ***er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word [the original title is
not censored and is presented as such in the References section of this book].
For a broad understanding of contemporary issues regarding the languag-
ing of animus and international perspectives on legal issues arising from this,
readers are pointed to Victoria Guillén-Nieto’s recent volume Hate Speech:
Linguistic Approaches and Caitlin Ring Carlson’s Hate Speech.
Notes
1 www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/nyregion/Rutgers-law-school-n-word.html;
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rutgers-law-student-shouldnt-have-
used-the-n-word-but-we-can-learn-from-the-controversy/2021/05/07/
cd1ba004-af67–11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html
2 www.thefire.org/lawsuit-professor-suspended-for-redacted-slurs-in-law-
school-exam-sues-university-of-illinois-chicago/
3 www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/logical-end-language-policing/
621500/
4 As initially reported in the Miami Herald (www.miamiherald.com/news/
local/community/broward/article145327079.html), with additional coverage
in the Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/
2017/04/21/a-white-politician-used-the-n-word-in-front-of-black-colleagues-
he-just-resigned/).
5 www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/showbiz/paula-deen-racial-slur/index.html
6 https://blavity.com/black-parents-of-student-athletes-called-the-n-word-
during-college-world-series-between-vanderbilt-university-and-mississippi-
state?category1=news
7 www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/hate
8 Chomsky wasn’t terribly interested in this part of linguistic life, something that
has been roundly criticized in his and his followers’ work.
9 See, e.g., https://ideas.time.com/2011/10/12/can-whites-say-the-n-word/,
www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/06/219737467/who-can-
use-the-n-word-thats-the-wrong-question
7
LANGUAGING CANCELLATION
The Ecology of Discourse and Hegemony
Key Concepts
• Cancel culture, cancellation
• Discourse (capital D and small d)
• Hegemony
In late February 2023, Scott Adams, creator of the popular Dilbert cartoon
series, hosted a live YouTube podcast, during which he commented at length
upon a controversial poll by the right-leaning Rasmussen agency. The data he
cited from this survey suggested that only a small majority of Black Americans
agreed with the assertion, “it’s okay to be white.”1 On the basis of this infor-
mation, Adams argued that the Black community constitutes a “hate group”
and warned white Americans to “stay away from them,” further expressing
his desire to live in a society with few or no Black residents.2 This podcast was
hardly unusual for Adams who, in the previous years, had publicly questioned
the origins of Covid-19, dismissed public health mitigation efforts and taken
a strong anti-vaccination stance. This time, however, it seemed that he had
gone too far: numerous publications ceased syndicating the Dilbert series,
and Adams’ distributor reportedly severed ties with him. In response, the car-
toonist claimed that his freedom of expression was violated and that he was
the victim of cancel culture, positioning himself within polarized ideological
stances pertaining to how languagers should behave and how they might be
held to account when transgressing shared norms of behaviour.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-7
Languaging Cancellation 123
This chapter examines cancellation and so-called cancel culture, illus-

trated by this and countless of other instances. It steps into the messy and
controverted ways in which languaging communities and communities of
languaging respond to boundary crossing, exercising counteractive forms of
power and laying bare their ideological underpinnings, often with unusual
frankness. The chapter begins by revisiting cancellation and its historical
antecedents, as well as tensions between this and ideologies pertinent to
freedom of expression. It then revisits the concept of discourse, focusing
on the ways in which governing regimes canalize knowledge and power,
while also facilitating the doing of knowledge and power. It then introduces
the concept of hegemony, highlighting the ways in which languaging acts
as both a conduit for and the output of hegemonic forces. Ultimately, the
chapter calls into question the very concept of cancel culture, a contempo-
rary cliché that is argued to act as a sort of stand-in for a competing form
of hegemony, one that might be considered integrative or emergent at the
community level.
Cancel Culture
As exemplified by the Adams podcast incident, any understanding that one
or another person can, might, should or should not be held to account for
their actions has become more recognized and controversial in recent dec-
ades. The terms cancel and cancel culture have been widely used in popular
press outlets and any number of social media platforms to refer to the con-
sequences triggered by specific transgressions, whether these be viewed as
merited or excessive, justifiable or oppressive. Other examples of languagers
having to pay a steep price for what they have spoken, written, tweeted or
otherwise enlanguaged are not hard to find – and this at any point on the
political and sociocultural spectra of contemporary life.3 In March 2003,
the Dixie Chicks (a female country-rock group that had been at the top
of the charts, now known simply as the Chicks) were removed from radio
playlists and lost myriad fans following their criticism of President George
W. Bush. Following his failure to condemn insurrectionists at the US Capi-
tol in January 2021 and his support of many of their positions, Missouri
Senator Josh Hawley’s contract with influential publisher Simon & Schuster
was voided.4 Four-time US National Football League Most Valuable Player
Aaron Rodgers was fined by the league and excluded from social media
following false claims regarding Covid-19 vaccination and his own status,
prompting him to assert that his fundamental rights had been violated in a
series of public tirades.5 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other cases could
be cited, involving languagers from any number of backgrounds. Impor-
tantly, these cancellations rarely, if ever, result in the definitive removal of
124 Languaging Cancellation
an offending languager from public space – in fact, cancellation can actu-

ally have quite the opposite effect, at least in the long term. The very same
person who is no longer able sing on a public stage or publish in widely
circulating media also enjoys support from fans and gains increased pub-
licity, perhaps even to the point where new stages are made available and
different outlets are opened up to them.
Despite its widespread use and cultural salience, the meaning and bounds
of what does and does not constitute cancellation, rather than merely an
expression of opinion, are far from agreed upon. Cancellation and cancel
culture are floating signifiers, forms whose semantic content varies between
communities of languaging, activating divergent, culturally emergent deno-
tations, connotations and associations (see Chapter 2). For some, cancel-
lation connotes ‘social justice’ and is associated with ‘activism’; for others,
it connotes ‘oppression’ and is associated with ‘dictatorship’. Spanning
these semantic particulars, cancel culture may best be defined as a collec-
tion of ideologies realized through coordinated social actions, a reaction
to the expression of views or opinions that are considered, by some if not
many, to be unpopular and offensive. These actions result in what Nor-
ris defines as “attempts to ostracize someone for violating social norms”
(2020, p. 2). Cancellation is thus a response to transgression, regardless
of whether opinions regarding the stimulus for reaction are a matter of
consensus, let alone whether specific consequences are deemed appropriate
or exaggerated. Cancellation is, however, more than just another retort of
distain or disapproval: it is one that calls the original languager to task for
the views that they have expressed and it results in identifiable punishment,
most often ostracization. In this regard, it is not uncoincidentally unlike the
ways in which those who violated a taboo, as it was originally defined, were
physically removed from a community and prevented from participation in
collective life.
As a loosely unified signifier, cancel culture is rooted in long-standing
debates concerning freedom of expression, political correctness and clash-
ing ideologies pertinent to the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable
behaviour, that is, the very notion of transgression (Perry, 1992). Closely
associated with US political and social debates, as well as the increasingly
broad rift between those on the left (progressive, associated with the Demo-
cratic party) and the right (conservative, associated with the Republican
party and, moreover, with former president Donald Trump), accusations
of cancellation and assertions that cancellation is tantamount to victimi-
zation are woven into the fabric of contemporary American linguistic life
(although this trope is also noted in other Anglophone linguacultures, and
not only those).6 Clark retraces the origins of this label to Black Twitter, a
subcommunity of the former social media platform currently known as X.
She understands “cancelling [to be] an expression of agency,” something

akin to a reactive grasping at power that stands in contrast to dominant cul-
ture (2020, p. 68). The act of cancelling or that of calling for cancellation is
one in which counter-publics name a transgressor and solicit their punish-
ment, similar to practices of boycotting in other times and spaces (2020,
p. 69). Similarly, Norris understands cancel culture “as collective strategies
by activists using social pressures to achieve cultural ostracism of targets
(someone or something) accused of offensive words or deeds” (2021, p. 4).
In other words, cancellation involves a community of languaging united
by a recognition of some form of transgression and their collective desire
and willingness to react in ways that they understand to be meaningful and
impactful.
If, on the one hand, the inchoative act of cancelling or demanding cancel-
lation is understood to be a grasping of power, often by a minoritized or sub-
jected population, the ways in which cancellation is viewed from a broader
lens should be of equal interest, if only because the very same languaging
and counter-languaging can be (and often is) understood in starkly different
terms by counter-situated publics. Reviewing the case of Brendan Leipsic,
a former Washington Capitals hockey player who repeatedly languaged in
ways that were viewed as misogynistic and racist, Sailofsky (2021) analyzes
the intersectionality of masculinity, cancel culture and so-called “woke capi-
talism,”7 using the frameworks laid out by Ng (2020) and Norris (2020).
His analysis of Twitter data, including public reactions to Leipsic’s firing in
the wake of these scandals, demonstrates the degrees to which views of can-
cellation are shaped by discourses of masculinity, accountability, legality and
free speech, alongside group-specific discourses relevant to hockey culture
and its semiotic trappings. One unified act, while perhaps condemned by all
to varying degrees, is considered more or less transgressive in large part due
to truths held by different individuals and sub-communities.
Interrogating the ways in which power circulates in a number of high-
profile cases, Thiele (2021) makes compelling observations about who is
allowed to language without being held to account, despite any calls to such
reaction, focusing upon the ways in which potentially cancelled languagers
frame calls for their sanctioning. She highlights four messages common to
those who appropriate cancellation as self-defence and who refer to them-
selves as having been cancelled. Firstly, they recast reaction as an unfair
or unjust overreach, most often decrying this as an infringement on their
fundamental rights. Secondly, they assert that others’ speaking or writing
is equally or more wrong and bothersome, resituating transgression upon
their accusers and not themselves. Thirdly, they contend that past practices
(usually ones that align with their own) were better and that the way they
act is normal, refuting that any transgression might have occurred in the
first place. And, finally, they situate any consequential response as being
tantamount to censorship, proclaiming that they are the ones who have
been victimized. Cancelled or potentially cancelled languagers thus tend to
focus not on their own languaging and its effects but upon threats to their
individual freedom, a distaste for verbal hygiene, and assertions of their own
persecution. Any such retorsio argumentis or table turning demonstrates
just how uneven the playing fields of collective languaging can be in one
or another linguacultural context, especially those defined by differential
authorities and access to power (see Chapter 5). In subsequent work, Nor-
ris (2021) reframes the appropriation of cancellation as a conservative dog
whistle, a signalling action designed to prompt political support for those
targeted by reaction, while simultaneously provoking the ire of progressive
opponents. From the perspective of the transgressive languager, cancellation
is tantamount to silencing, and cancel culture can only be seen as an attack
upon democratic ideals of freedom and inclusion. Being cancelled becomes
thus both a badge of honour and a weapon with which to strike back at
accusers, reifying many of the power dynamics at play in these instances.
Despite surface appearances, it should be abundantly clear that cancel-
lation is more complex than meets the eye, transcending any buzzwords
or social media trends. Cancel culture and reactions to this cohere around
ideologies and mythologies pertinent to any number of stakes in languaging
and in the collective lives of languagers – notably, personal responsibility,
free speech and civic rights – alongside questions of power and authority,
as well as the perlocutionary effect of languaging as the doing of power and
authority (Riley, 2021). It should also be clear that these labels are not used,
let alone understood, in a uniform manner. In some moments and contexts,
cancellation celebrates the marginalization of a transgressive languager as a
form of social justice; in others, this amounts to accusations that a languager
has been treated unfairly and a revindication of the right to free expres-
sion. Importantly, cancellation does not usually imply an immediate physical
erasure, such as execution, imprisonment or banishment (this, despite some
of the more hyperbolic reactions in a number of cases). Rather, persons or
groups who are cancelled face a different type of exile: their deportation
from sites of power (e.g. blocking on social media and lack of access to
traditional media); a removal of their previously held authority, whether for-
mally or informally expressed (e.g. firing from positions of influence); and
their exile from physical contexts in which power and authority circulate, at
times in a subtle manner (e.g. revoked invitations to participate in prestig-
ious events). Cancellation is not a de jure act of punishment or reprisal but
a de facto response on the part of some, but hardly all, in a relatively well
defined political, economic and social community. It bears repeating that
few, if any, of those who have been cancelled completely lost their ability
to communicate with others – let alone to their supporters – and, in fact,

may have actually gained more authority in such circles by virtue of their
cancellation-qua-victimhood. This makes cancellation – and the even more
nebulous concept of a unified cancel culture – a rather distinct manifestation
of clashing powers and authorities, ideologies and mythologies, instigated
by, but eventually moving beyond, languaging, one that shares some of the
effective outcomes of other types of censorship and yet diverges from these
in important ways.
Obviously, it is not possible to fully tease apart elements that are mostly
or exclusively tied to languaging from other actions that might lead to a
person’s cancellation. In some examples cited previously, it is primarily or
exclusively what a person spoke or wrote that led to this outcome: languag-
ing was enough to provoke cancelling. In others, languaging co-occurred
with other forms of transgression, such as in the case of Milo Yiannopoulos,
a British hard-right media personality who long enjoyed a reputation as a
shock political commentator, only to face sanctioning after accusations that
he promoted paedophilia.8 Regardless of the nature of any particular trans-
gression that triggers reaction – the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s
back of social acceptability or inclusion – languaging is always involved in
cancellation dynamics. Writ large, cancel culture is intimately wrapped up
in linguistic life and in the lives of languagers. This implicates what is and
is not legitimate speech, what counts and does not count as freedom, and
what precisely the bounds of transgression are, may or should be, let alone
how or why these might be challenged. As with the examples raised in other
chapters, there is much more to any moment of cancellation than meets the
eye, ranging from what is being performed (rather than what is merely being
said), to the effects of this upon a wider cultural context, to the reaction of
those who participate within this space. For this reason, it is useful to step
back and reconsider a concept that is both theoretically broader and episte-
mologically distinct from languaging as it is used in prior chapters: discourse.
Discourse Two Ways

Obviously, cancellation and cancel culture cannot be reduced to a series of
words or sentences, and the transgressions that trigger cancellation or the
force of reaction to these cannot be captured by simply a series of utterances
and practices: these are best conceived of as discourses. This term is widely
used but also widely confused, in part because of multiple meanings associ-
ated with it (Laclau, 1993; Phillips & Jørgensen, 2002). For this reason,
it is important to begin any examination of cancellation discourses by first
stepping back and carefully reconsidering what is meant by the term, as well
as the practical and theoretical ramifications of one or another usage.
In what might be perhaps the broadest application of the concept, dis-

courses can be understood as “practices that systematically form the objects
of which they speak”; in other words, discourses are the means through
which ideational objects, including people and communities, are made real
in the lives of linguacultural participants (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). From this
point of view, a discourse constitutes a system of knowing and comprehend-
ing, reflecting Foucault’s articulation of these as regimes that govern not
only the formation of knowledge but the consequential mythologies that
are born of such knowledge. In other words, discourse shapes not only what
we know but what it means to know anything (1971). Accordingly, the
epistemological frame of a given discourse subsumes practically all experi-
ence and all possible experience, rendering it difficult to define or delimit
what is and what is not discursive in an actionable way. Perhaps because
of this, such uses of the term are frequently labelled “capital D discourse,”
capturing its more nebulous denotative qualities. If cancellation is viewed
from this perspective, it can be conceived of as a complex epistemological
archaeology that is both linguistic and supralinguistic, one that forms the
very concepts that it subsequently polices (pace Foucault, 1971). As such,
cancellation, either as action or as phenomenal result of an action, defines
and constrains both action and reaction, interpretation of any result of this
action and reaction, and any ability to understand all such action and reac-
tion as being part of a holistic cultural dynamic.
A series of distinct approaches, often labelled “lowercase d discourse,”
focus more on that which is evidentiary, notably as realized in specific
languagings and other semiotic acts (Gee, 2014; Kingfisher, 2007). Fair-
clough distinguishes three levels in this regard: social practice, discursive
or discoursal practice, and textual or material reality, the latter two being
primary sites of description and analysis (2013, pp. 58–60). Discourse prac-
tices arise from a cohort of languaging moments that cohere around a topic
or theme, involving the production and consumption of texts, a stand-in
for any enlanguaged materiality. Texts, on the other hand, are the specific
manifestations of these practices and need not be limited to the traditional
definition of textual product, also subsuming verbal and gestural communi-
cation and forms of digital languaging such as Twitter or TikTok, alongside
written manifestations of languaging common to more traditional outlets.
Of course, the neat division between the two theoretical and termino-
logical poles is not one of opposition but of complementarity: capital D
and lowercase d stances may in fact be resolved by recasting the former
as semiosis, or the ways in which meanings and knowledge are made and
contribute to other meanings (see Fairclough, 2012). This has proven use-
ful in many instances, as looking at both sides of the semiotic-discursive
coin affords a richer understanding of not only what languagers are doing
through discursive practices manifested in cohesive textual archives but how

this doing is both preceded by and contributory to the cultural underpin-
nings that render any action or performance meaningful, knowable and
comprehensible. One example of this is offered by Bamberg et al. (2011),
who take a distinctly lowercase d discourse approach by looking at specific
languaging events but also combine elements of capital D discourse, notably
their understanding of how these forces contribute to identity and ideologi-
cal formation (see also Wodak, 2012).
One of the most prolific critical discourse scholars, Fairclough developed
a multitiered model that casts discourses as both texts and practices; these
are produced and are destined to be received by a languaging community
and its members, a grouping that is realized in part through such praxes.
Anchored within the community, discourse contributes to the concep-
tion and realization of that community, while also shaping the identities
of and relations governing its constituents (Fairclough, 1992, pp. 73–81).
Discourse is thus simultaneously constitutive and constituted, creating at
the same time as it is created, while also facilitating the constitution and
propagation of subsequent discourses. Such a chicken-and-egg dynamic is
only realizable and understandable within the anthropological and lingua-
cultural setting and cannot be attended to outside of this human reality
(1992, pp. 86–96). Accordingly, discourse is both tangible (i.e. bounded to
and by language form and therefore subject to observation and description)
and local (i.e. bounded to and by cultural praxes and therefore interpret-
able only within a speech community and its cultural schemata). In effect,
Fairclough’s discourse is highly compatible with the human-centred under-
standing of language and languaging articulated in Chapter 1. Discourse
practices stand in relation to overarching discourses, that is, the social
practices that subsume, but are not synonymous with, discourse practices,
affording a degree of compatibility with Foucault’s and others’ stances (Fair-
clough, 2013, pp. 94–96, 1992, p. 73).
Fairclough’s model serves as the foundation of an ecological approach
to description, interpretation and analysis, labelled a discourse ecology in
Russell (2019, 2021). This captures the ways in which various and inter-
connected enlanguaged discursive realities function symbiotically, showing
how any number of participants are both framed and positioned within con-
ceptual, ideological worlds. Discursive ecosystems are also, perhaps confus-
ingly, supralinguistic, as their content and participants cannot be reduced to
enlanguaged ephemera. Regardless of perspective, although certainly align-
ing more with the lowercase d discourse frame, all discourses are necessarily
enlanguaged at some point and in some way. They are interactively, com-
munally manifest through canonically linguistic and other signifying actions
(e.g. gesture, visual semiosis), occurring over a relatively delimited time and
within a relatively bounded space, and cohering around some sort of iden-
tifiable topic or theme. Ecological discursive dynamics are bound to – often
to the point of constituting a delimitation or shibboleth – a linguacultural
context, guiding the ways in which different participants understand them-
selves, others and the ideational world in which they exist.
Consider, by way of example, the discourse of Sport,9 notably, how it
is lived out in any number of settings and manifested in any number of
specific languaging moments in contemporary society. This discourse is
of course made visible in forms and their associated referents (e.g. game,
player) and the metaphoric structures projected into specific utterances (e.g.
“Team A challenges Team B”), alongside the seated cultural knowledge
enlanguaged through complex performances (e.g. the narrating of a match)
and countless other moments. All of these govern the ways in which lingua-
cultural participants understand Sport, their own positionality vis-à-vis the
concept, the ways in which Sport ideologically canalizes their experiences,
and much more. Crucially, this heuristic exists in and is bounded by shared
cultural space, as well as in the individual imaginaries of its participants.
Sport is both active in the mind of a person and constitutes a sort of invis-
ible, albeit powerful, force distributed across the minds of many persons.
Sport does not exist in ideational or discursive isolation, either, but stands
in complex relation, at times sympathetic, at times antipathetic, with other
discourses, for example, Money, Masculinity and Cultural Identity.
Something very similar is at play in the case of cancel culture and at
specific moments of cancellation, both of which for simplicity’s sake may be
labelled Cancellation. This discursive constellation and the practices and
texts that render it visible and knowable frame how different linguacultural
participants understand themselves and others, subsequently constraining
the ways in which different languagers and languaging communities will
apprehend and interpret the actions and reactions of themselves and oth-
ers. Dilbert creator Adams putatively apprehends his world – specifically,
the world in which his languaging led to a loss of contracts and outlets for
his cartoon strip – through the discursive lens of Cancellation, framing
and positioning himself as a victim. His detractors also understand their
worlds through this discursive lens, albeit with a distinct cognitive real-
ity: his actions were framed as transgressive, and reactions that limited his
power were positioned as felicitous and justified. Still other participants, for
instance those who stand by Adams, understand him as yet another casualty
of errant ideological forces run amok, casting his cancellation as a form
of injustice. At the core of this discourse are the ecological constellations
within and through which it operates, involving ideologies that precede and
interact with Cancellation, notably, those labelled personal freedom, col-
lective responsibility, propriety and civic values.
Discursive Power and Hegemony

Discourses accomplish and precondition the accomplishment of power
through semiotic pathways, including, but not limited to, languaging.
However, the relationship of discourse to power is neither uniform, nor
static. Summarizing Holtzscheiter, Wodak identifies three dimensions
of this dialectic: power in discourse; power over discourse; and power of
discourse (2012). The first of these, power in discourse, involves the abil-
ity to determine how discourses will function, that is, “specific linguistic
codes, rules for interaction, rules for access to the meaning-making forum,
rules for decision-making, turn-taking, opening of sessions, making con-
tributions and interventions” (Holtzscheiter, 2005, p. 69; cited in Wodak,
2012, p. 217). This is most obviously operative in the case of cancellation,
which is triggered by a violation of discursive rules. Discursive power, on
the other hand, determines who will have access to discourse, such that
their discourse-making will be received, as well as the extent to which this
reception will impact others. Those with more power over discourse will
have, mutatis mutandis, more voice or access within a given ecosystem: they
will be attended to more often and more intently, reflecting the cultural
and symbolic capital that they hold (see Chapter 5). Here again, instances
of cancellation offer clear examples of clashing powers over discourse, as
noted in both the claims for and the reactions to attempts to hold trans-
gressive languagers to account. Finally, the power of discourse refers to the
relative transitivity of conceptual discourse over others, that is, the ways in
which discourses act upon individuals and communities. Accordingly, any
discursive ecology can be understood to be governed by power relations,
the unequal manifestation of capacity and potentiality that regulates the
symbiotic relationships between different participant-actors and concep-
tual frames (Russell, 2019). Within the wider ecology of cancel culture, the
power of discourse canalizes and constrains the very foundations that cir-
cuitously determine power in and power over discourse. This is, of course, a
particularly volatile ecosystem, if only because participant groups frame any
given discursive phenomena in diverging, even antagonistic ways.
All such power can be understood to operate within a discursive ecology
in a hegemonic manner, one that emerges from and reinforces hierarchies
involving different conceptual participants, relying upon a dialectic of con-
sent and coercion. A concept closely associated with the writings of Italian
communist and anti-fascist thinker Antonio Gramsci, hegemony was origi-
nally understood as the exercise of leadership by one group over another,
this being formulated along Marxist class lines (1933). Much of Gram-
sci’s original characterization relies on a traditionally hierarchical and an
explicit understanding of power, notably, one that is materially manifested.
It is, however, reconcilable with more contemporary views of power such as

those outlined in Chapter 5, notably those that understand power as diffuse
and rhizomatic, lacking precise nodes but interconnected in myriad ways
and from which regulation, punishment and reward systems emerge (see,
e.g., Foucault, 1973, 1980). Importantly, hegemonic power is not always
or even often expressed through raw physical force, although it is perhaps
more noticeable when this does occur: such power is a capacity to create and
deploy knowledge, which in turn begets further power.
Mouffe provides an important rearticulation of hegemony, asserting
this as a “point of confluence between objectivity and power” or a way of
constructing and rendering understandable different identities, including
the relative affordances of power and positional authority that are ascribed
to them (2000, p. 21). Hegemonic relations are “then about the ways
that chains of equivalences and differences are articulated in the field of
politics”; in other words, these are ways of understanding which groups
or identities stand in relation to which other groups and identities and,
more importantly, what these ideological frames mean in daily life (Ives,
2004, p. 159; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). According to Bourdieu, such
positionalities and their effects become largely unseen and expressed as
inevitable, often through discourses of biology and nature, all of which
are framed as being merely “the way things are” or its equivalent (1995,
p. 73). Examples of hegemonic configurations are never difficult to find,
ranging from the socioeconomic pathways of neoliberal capitalism to gen-
der roles to educational institutions, dynamics that may be viewed not so
much as structures but as the ontological output of structures ultimately
serving to reinforce themselves. Gramsci understood hegemony to account
for the seemingly self-defeating dynamic of millions of powerless workers
at the hands of a ruling elite; for Foucault, it makes much more sense to
refer to hegemonies in the plural, going beyond political states and govern-
mental relations; for still others, specific hegemonies are born and reborn
of dominance, exerting coercive forces on both sides of the gender equa-
tion through each participant’s consent (Connell, 2005). Summarily, any
hegemonic configuration requires simultaneous consent and coercion, the
uneven distribution of potentiality and capacity, and buttresses that allow
those with more access to power over and through discourse to shift their
positionality and rearticulate such configurations in a way that naturalizes
its outcome (Fox & Alldred, 2017, p. 17; see also Deleuze & Guattari,
1980; Massumi, 1988).
Hegemonic configurations are operative in any number of dynamics in
which consent and coercion operate symbiotically and semiotically (see,
e.g., Daldal, 2014, for a succinct overview). Importantly, language has
always been understood as a space of hegemonic mediation, whether this

be through contestation or as means of fostering new, more integrative or
“bottom-up” hegemonic dynamics (Ives, 2004). It is even feasible to view
languaging as the ultimate expressions of hegemony: operating largely sub-
or unconsciously and performed quasi-autonomically in the vast majority
of instances, languaging canalizes potentiality and capacity via the contin-
ual reiteration of forms, structures and patterns that constrain that which
would otherwise be a priori possible (Russell, 2021, pp. 110–112; pace
Prince & Smolensky, 1993). This constraint is generally rendered invisible
through acquisition and use, being propagated and repropagated from the
languager-doer to the languager-receiver in a continual circuit that effec-
tively forecloses other pathways (at least, in the vast majority of instances).
The result of this dynamic is that few languagers ever question or apprehend
the ways in which prior languagings constrain present and future languag-
ings, let alone grapple with the forces that canalize and obviate other linguis-
tic and communicative potentialities. Language behaviour is naturalized, its
forms and structures are rendered inevitable and unquestionable, and those
who do not acquiesce to shared standards or pathways are branded defi-
cient, or much worse. This again reflects one of the defining – and certainly
more nefarious – qualities of hegemonic dynamics: their invisibilization and
their naturalization to the extent that participants (here, languagers) rarely,
if ever, challenge the ways in which things are done, even when these are
contrary to their own interest or potential betterment.
Cancel culture and the complex interplay between transgression and
cancellation are, from this perspective, rather obvious examples of hegem-
onically distributed accesses to power. Any capacity to affect cancellation
depends upon and is manifested through the ability to remove a person
from sociocultural and sociocommunicative space, limiting their ability to
participate in any number of venues and outlets. This capacity is not evenly
circulating and is, like all other power dynamics, highly contested. A person
subject to cancellation can and often does fight the hegemonic actuation
of power with a distinct actuation of power. At the same time, power is
operative throughout the broader context in which cancellation takes place,
pushing wider audiences and distal participants to take part in cancellation.
These include students, readers, viewers and others who indirectly partici-
pate in cancellation, either as proponents or opponents. Rather than simply
being an example of “us” versus “them,” or however such groupings might
be defined in a given space and time (see, e.g., Wodak, 2008), cancellation
is a bumping up of one hegemonic configuration against another – it is
one way of expressing the power of coercion and the regulation of consent
clashing with another.
Critical Discourse Studies

Any description, let alone interpretation, of a particular discursive ecology,
particularly one with distinct and contrastively framed hegemonies at play
such as cancel culture, requires a set of analytical tools that supersede those
of linguistics as it is more traditionally defined. Discourse analysis developed
as a separate subfield in the latter decades of the twentieth century, distin-
guishing itself from conversation analysis, which considers interaction in situ
(see, e.g., Sidnell, 2010). Rejecting the notion that the only components of
human semiotic productivity and exchange that could be analyzed were
those immediately present, discourse analysis specifically affords a place for
those hidden or opaque elements that were introduced in Chapter 6: power,
authority, prior knowledge and shared cultural schemata. Soon after this, the
subfield of critical discourse analysis (CDA) – now more often, and perhaps
more appropriately, labelled critical discourse studies (CDS) – emerged in
its own right, quickly becoming associated with engaged scholarship look-
ing at pressing social issues like poverty, racism and violence (Wodak, 2013;
Wodak & Meyer, 2016). According to Luke (2002), CDA/CDS is “a prin-
cipled and transparent shunting back and forth between the microanalysis
of texts using varied tools of linguistics, semiotic, and literary analysis and
the macroanalysis of social formations, institutions, and power relations that
these texts index and construct” (2002, p. 100). This formalization anchors
CDA/CDS and any specific line of inquiry to an anthropological frame,
where discourses stand in a bivalent relationship between ideologized col-
lectives, mediating the ways in which power and capacity are conceived and
transmitted within them. In effect, the study of discourse is the study of
hegemonies as they are accomplished through practice and text.
Discussing how to apply CDA/CDS to real-life examples of discourse
in the world, specifically instances that a critical stance understands to have
negative impacts on the social order or society, Fairclough outlines four
steps (2012, p. 13):
Step 1: Focus on a social wrong, in its semiotic aspects

Step 2: Identify obstacles to addressing the social wrong
Step 3: Consider whether the social order ‘needs’ the social wrong
Step 4: Identify possible ways past the obstacle
In the first moment, a problem or concern is identified and its semiotic

or meaning-making and meaning-negotiating components are made clear.
Next, attention is turned to the ways in which the social order is structured,
such that the issue at hand is not normally attended to and thus persists.
Subsequently, the question is asked as to whether this wrong or problem is
inherent to the social order in question. Finally, through transdisciplinary

exposition of the structuring of different aspects of this dynamic, includ-
ing power and hegemonic configurations, paths of change are pointed out.
From this rhythm or approach, CDA/CDS need not be simply descriptive
but can also be disruptive: the dynamics of power and authority, hegemo-
nies and ideologies are all situated as objects not just to understand but to
challenge and undo.
The four-step outline can be readily applied to the case of cancellation
and cancel culture – and this, from either side of the ideological equation,
although it should be clear at this point that the affordances of the one
are not equal to those of the other (indeed, the objects of cancellation are
often persons or communities who have long maintained outsized access to
power, quite frequently naturalized in hegemonic configurations). Consider
again the case of Dilbert creator Adams and his podcast. In a first step, the
analyst might identify the social wrong as the languaging of a form that, to
paraphrase Butler, re-opens a long-standing wound, one that few would
deny. In this instance, the wrong can be summarized as the promotion of
pro-white racism, albeit masked under a dubious cover of scientific verbiage
afforded by a clumsily articulated, rather obviously biased poll. Obstacles to
addressing this social wrong are, of course, numerous but also much more
controverted. These include interleaved discourses (e.g. Freedom, see dis-
cussion to follow) and competing ideologies, such as resistance to political
correctness. These obstacles work in such a way as to render the problem
less visible to many and any structural and institutional underpinnings of the
dynamic mythologically normalized, if not uncontroverted.
The next step is where analysis becomes much trickier, as it requires
interrogation not only of the participants in this setting but of the entire
discursive system in which this setting is integrated. Does the social order
require that there be differential access to the rules of languaging, such
that a few can and most cannot achieve powerful ends through their own
outsized transitivity? Is the disparate access to power – the conventions that
govern how different languagings and languaging practices will be under-
stood, for example, as transgressive or acceptable – a foundational hegem-
ony of the wider system of relations active in this anthropological situation,
both locally and more globally? Obviously, an answer to these questions is
far beyond the scope of the present chapter, one that seeks to introduce
ideas rather than to provide a full analysis. It is, however, crucial that analy-
sis take these into account, if only to avoid blindly replacing one top-down
hegemony with another. This leaves the last step, that of outlining mecha-
nisms that might allow participants to move past these obstacles, for another
work and for other researchers. By proceeding through each of the steps,
a critically grounded understanding of what is happening in the moment
of cancellation (i.e. following transgression and perhaps provoking subse-

quent transgression) becomes much clearer, as do the theretofore largely
hidden hegemonies that are involved in the broader dynamic. The question
of whether this is justified or whether this is little more than collective vigi-
lantism also becomes clearer, as the very question of what is wrong – that is,
what is transgressive – cannot be left unaddressed.
Tying It Together
Through a closer examination of the discursive ecosystem in which cancel-
lation takes place, it is possible to reconsider what is occurring in moments
like those reviewed earlier. Most obviously, these begin with a languaging
act, one that is judged to be transgressive and is then met with a response.
All such languaging is preceded and scaffolded by discursive knowledge,
ranging from Freedom, involving mythologies and ideologies pertinent to
individual and collective powers as potentialities of action, to Political
Correctness or those shared, but held-in-tension schemata of cultural
knowledge pertaining to what is and is not considered reaction-worthy, as
well as by whom it might be so understood and the scope and justification
of any reaction. In sum, cancellation is one of many realizations of the inter-
nally held, widely shared, hegemonically configured ways of apprehending
and interpreting languagers and their languagings, countering these when
they are believed to have transgressed different ideological boundaries, while
also subsequently reacting to this initial reaction. These are little more than
discursive battlegrounds, ones in which surface manifestations of contesta-
tion and power belie long-standing tensions regarding who should “call the
shots” when it comes to not just languaging but the very nature of languag-
ing and its assumed effects.
What is distinct – and distinctly interesting – about instances that have
been subsumed under the heading of cancellation and cancel culture is not
primarily the original transgression that motivates this label (regardless of
what one thinks or how one feels about this moment). Rather, it is what hap-
pens next and the ways in which languagers, languaging communities and
communities of languaging do power and accomplish hegemonies through
these reactions. By enacting cancellation, or at least calling for such, they
make both real and observable those hierarchies of power and authority, as
well as their ideological underpinnings, that are normally invisible or unac-
knowledged. When Dilbert creator Adams crossed lines of shared decorum
by labelling Black Americans a hate group, different communities enacted
power by de-platforming him. When he labelled this response as cancella-
tion, he summoned additional forces, ones that are preconditioned to dis-
cursively frame such consequentiality as victimizing. More than a simple
confrontation of distinct perspectives as to what does or does not constitute

legitimate public languaging (although such is certainly also part of the
discursive ecology), this is a clash between two ideologically bounded com-
munities and a destabilization of pre-existing hegemonies: an ecological col-
lective within which there are two sub-ecologies, operating with their own
mythological truths and ideological perspectives, through which powers
and configurations of possibility are naturalized. Seeing the clash of these
two discursive sub-realities for what they are – competing consequentialities
of consequence and reactive reactionaries – does much to make this world
more visible and, perhaps, more easily disrupted in the future.
A Closer Look: Political Correctness and Cancel Culture
Cancel culture, at least as it is being lived out in much of the Anglophone

world at present, can be understood as a discursive tension arising from the
simultaneous proximation of different discourses and cultural actors. On the
one side are discourses that might labelled under the heading Freedom, an
umbrella used here to convey shared ideologies pertaining to individual lib-
erty and rights, including the right to voice opinions contrary to mythological
propriety or normativity. On the other are discourses of Responsibility and
of Civility, particularly those arising from the very same ideological ground-
ings that frame that which does and does not constitute appropriate, harmful,
respectful or otherwise damaging semiotic action (see Chapter 6). Of course,
these labels should be understood heuristically, as should be their discussion
and representation.
These are hardly new tensions, in this or any other linguacultural set-
ting, echoing controversies of at least three decades prior, notably, those
surrounding discourses more widely labelled Political Correctness (PC).
Although a bit dated to present readership, many of the issues raised by
Andrews (1996) continue to resonate, notably how cultural sensitivity, taboo
and understandings of PC entwine and are reflected in contemporary views
of cancellation. Revisiting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, American linguist
Peirce notably resituates this by observing that the central concern of PC
discourses is intent, notably, the intent of those promoting or resisting lan-
guaging practices labelled in this way (see also Bush, 1995, for a history of
political correctness). This is similar to what Halmari (2011) makes clear in an
analysis of “people-first” enlanguaged structures in print media, for example,
the use of “person with a disability” versus “disabled person.” Distinguishing
between people-first and -second practices, she notes that the former, cast
as a euphemism, approximates these to positive values, whereas putatively

undesirable values and connotations (e.g. applicable to prisoners) are pro-
jected through the latter. In effect, it is not only the fact of PC but its shape
that demonstrates intent and contributes to broader discourses (in this case,
Inclusiveness and Equality).
Fairclough considers PC an enactment of cultural politics, attending to
examples from the United Kingdom. He observes that controversy about PC
is partly a controversy over languaging practices and enlanguagements, this
given an assertion that linguistic change is frequently a precursor to cultural
change. Following Williams (1981), he asserts that “culture [is] a ‘signifying
system’ constituted as an articulation of representations, values and identi-
ties” (2003, p. 18). Much like consumer goods, language is “now consumed
for [its] cultural or ‘sign’ value rather than just [its] ‘use’ value . . . [serving as]
embodiments of cultural values and discourses, targeted with ever greater
precision at culturally differentiated ‘niche markets’ ” (p. 19). Cultures thus
exist as language action or what he refers to as discourses (following a small d
understanding, as presented earlier), and, although culture, language and eco-
nomics are analytically separate (i.e. are different but not discrete), they act
collectively as a form of cultural governance. Accordingly, controversy over
PC is situated within a shift in cultural politics, one that has moved beyond
class structures of the past to a politics of recognition, identity and difference
(what he refers to as both genre and style; p. 20).
Fairclough distinguishes two forms of politicocultural action and their dis-
cursive reflexes: overt, akin to PC, at least according to those who critique it,
which is illocutionary and involves asking, urging and demanding; and covert,
which relies on power systems and is more aligned with neoliberalism, spe-
cifically the notion that any accomplishment can be done through individual
agency (p. 21). Labelling and criticism of PC from the neoliberal right have been
effective against the backdrop of other covert discursive moves, for example,
the relabelling of ‘bank accounts’ as ‘financial instruments’ (pp. 21–22). Lan-
guaging and discursive representations are positioned within social practices,
also giving rise to understandings of not just how things are but how they
can be, at all levels. These imaginaries become enacted, often involving new
discursive genres and languaging habits; they also become inculcated, involv-
ing new styles and the construction of new identities. Confrontation with the
internal rigidities of structures and institutions can make discursive change
difficult, thus making social change both fraught and controversial. Indeed,
and taking a cue from Bourdieu, Fairclough notes that “socially constructive
effects of discourses are contingent upon the resistances of structures and

habituses” (2003, p. 24).10
In a similar vein, Thiele (2021) reconsiders the ways in which contro-
versies surrounding language forms and their use are inherently steeped in
issues of power and privilege (see previous discussion). Crucially, the ques-
tion of individual or collective liberty is not uniform but is entrenched with
inherited privileges and freedoms, a reconsideration of freedom as absolute
and neutrally distributed that is also echoed in Nelson (2021). One person’s
freedom can be seen as another’s constraint, if not outright enslavement, a
tension that echoes throughout the history of the US – and certainly not
only the US. Calls for freedom, whether they involve languaging or economic
activity or any other domain of civic life, can thus be recast as assertions of
power over those who must acquiesce to the purported freedom of another.
In other words, freedom and discourses of freedom are intimately associated
with symbolic power and symbolic violence and, at times, with outright physi-
cal power and violence. Freedom can never be rightly viewed as a neutral,
aprioristically framed ideology applicable evenly or to all.
Discourses such as PC and Freedom are intimately woven into the dis-
cursive construction of Cancellation and reactions to it. Those moments
of transgressive languaging that trigger cancellation and all that this entails
are not merely languagers “gone rogue,” although this is certainly part of
the discursive ecosystem in question. Rather, these are moments in which a
languaging community and communities of languaging are required to act and
react in ways that are predicated by meta-discursive knowledge and under-
standings. Cancellation restricts the ability of the languager to participate
in linguistic life and to be active in a social, cultural, economic and political
community. These are also moments in which dynamically structured webs
of symbolic violence and transitive power collide, and through which dif-
ferent hegemonies are laid bare. In the case of cancel culture, understood
in the broadest light, languaging functions much like a double-edged sword
of hegemony, being a manifestation of one dynamic (e.g. that which asserts
the right to speak), while reflective of another (e.g. an assertion of reactive
capacity, specifically the right to silence). It is thus possible to reconsider
instances of cancellation such as the controversy surrounding Adams’ pod-
cast and the responses it engendered as a clash not simply of antagonistic
discursive powers but one of competing hegemonies. On the one hand is a
power dynamic that would assert the right to speak one’s mind, even if the
ideas expressed transgress widely shared boundaries of propriety and civility,
one that is predicated on the ability (i.e. access to power) to speak to an

audience that is already primed to listen and receive this message. On the
other hand are assertions of the right to respond to such languagings and
to reassert boundaries that have been transgressed by removing access to
such audiences and the mechanisms that bring them into contiguity with the
original languager (i.e. a denial of access to power). Cancellation is, in effect,
a type of interpolation, pace Althusser (1967), by calling out a languager-doer
who is, through this, rendered less capable of doing, while also calling forth
languager-respondents. This further aligns with the ways in which other con-
troversial languaging moments have been viewed, for example, those labelled
hate speech, as discussed in Chapter 6.
• Cite another instance of cancellation – one that has been labelled this way
in the press or other media sources or one that you understand in this
way. What languagers and languaging acts were involved in this moment
and in the reaction to it? What controversies about the original languag-
ing event and any reactive moments arose? What broader discourses pre-
ceded this moment, allowing it to be understood (by some at least) as a
justified or unjustified cancellation?
• What are some additional ideologies and mythologies involved in can-
cel culture (accepting this as a heuristic for discussion)? Do these differ
between communities of languaging and within a broader languaging
community? How might these different discourses contribute to contras-
tive or complementary understandings of cancellation?
• Consider Fairclough’s four-stage approach to CDA/CDS. Using this
approach, outline a possible critical discourse project of study. In what ways
might concepts evoked in this chapter – cancellation or the consequential
reaction to transgressive languaging – be implicated in your project?
• How can you describe and possibly attenuate the tension inherent to
critical approaches to discourse and languaging with questions of your
own power and position? How might a specific incident of cancellation
be recast as a manifestation of symbolic violence, perhaps in reaction to a
preceding act of symbolic violence?
Further Reading
Those interested in more general background to cancel culture will find no
end of possible readings, written from points of view spanning the sociopo-
litical spectrum. Examples of these include Ernest Owens’ essay The Case for
Cancel Culture: How This Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us all and Dan
Kovalik’s Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture.
A distinctly academic approach is offered by Eve Ng, whose work Can-
cel Culture: A Critical Analysis offers particularly helpful insights into the
question from a more critically grounded basis. Those who wish to explore
CDA/CDS will find Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer’s edited volume,
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (third edition), a particularly useful
and approachable foundation to the field, as it includes many of the most
prominent scholars in its table of contents. Additional foundations can be
taken from Norman Fairclough’s compendium Critical Discourse Analysis:
The Critical Study of Language. For questions of hegemony, particularly as
these intersect with language, Ives’ Language and Hegemony in Gramsci
offers an invaluable re-reading of Gramsci’s life and work, as well as a useful
connection to contemporary thinking around both the term and its histori-
cal precedents.
Notes
1 https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1628460192932237313
2 www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159605012/dilbert-cartoonist-scott-adams-
rant-rebuke
3 Other examples of cancellation, such as that applied to film producer Harvey
Weinstein or comedian Bill Cosby, involve, in the first instance, allegations of
physical transgression and, in both cases, sexual assault and rape. As important
as those events are, discussion here is limited to transgressive languaging.
4 www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/books/simon-schuster-josh-hawley-book.
html
5 www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/sports/football/aaron-rodgers-fined-by-
the-nfl-over-vaccination-rules-says-he-will-stay-with-the-packers.html
6 See Rizzacasa d’Orsogna (2022) for a useful perspective from outside the these
contexts.
7 Woke capitalism is used to refer to the practice through which corporations
“purport to take stands against social injustice by removing a person from a job
or releasing a statement, without making any substantial changes to the systems
that allow those behaviours or beliefs to perpetuate” (Sailofsky, 2021, p. 4, see
also Lewis, 2020).
8 www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/21/516473521/after-comments-
on-pedophilia-breitbart-editor-milo-yiannopoulos-resigns
9 By convention, relatively bounded discourses are presented in small capitals,
in this instance using Sport as shorthand referring to a broader construct that
encompasses both professional and amateur competitions, athletes, indirect
group participation (e.g. fan clubs) and much more.
10 Fairclough also notes that many of the issues commonly associated with politi-
cal correctness arise from hard-headedness and arrogance that are commonly
associated with the left, that is, with the proponents of such discursive and
languaging hygienic practices (2003, p. 25).
8
LANGUAGING REBELLION
When Pussy Grabs Back
Key Concepts
• Language rebellion
• Reclamation and reappropriation
• Resignification
• Liberation
In early August 2020, Atlantic Records released “WAP,” an acronym for

Wet Ass Pussy, by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.1 The track (and its cor-
responding music video) was a nearly instantaneous hit and remained at the
top of charts, eventually becoming one of the most popular musical num-
bers of the decade. Given its lyrics and frank celebration of female sexuality,
it is unsurprising that the piece and its two artists were also the object of
controversy, meeting stern criticism from social and political conservatives
such as US Congressional hopeful Deann Lorraine, who went so far as to
claim that “WAP” had set “the entire female gender back by 100 years.”2
Others, such as shock-jock and arch-conservative commentator Ben Shap-
iro, drew unflattering comparisons between this song and the controversies
surrounding former president Trump’s use of pussy, as presented in Chap-
ter 2.3 This chapter examines “WAP” and similar examples of wilfully trans-
gressive, provocative languaging. These are reframed as acts of linguistic
rebellion, akin to revolts taking place in the non-semiotic sphere. Alterna-
tively labelled reclamation, re-appropriation and rehabilitation, all of these
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227427-8
Languaging Rebellion 143
actions amount to open revolt against entrenched systems of power and

established authority, as well as the often-hidden hegemonies that govern
the ways that doing language and doing power differentially affect languag-
ing communities, communities of languagers and any number of persons
within them.
It is fitting that the last chapter of this book returns to pussy, a form that
perhaps more than any other has exemplified linguistic transgression over
the past decade. This nearly derailed a presidential campaign and became a
powerful unifying force against its eventual administration, and yet it has
resurfaced in ways that arguably have not yet been fully digested. The chap-
ter begins by describing “WAP” and its linguacultural background, particu-
larly how this might be interpreted as an act of rebellion against prevailing
norms of conduct regulating Black female sexuality. It then turns to specific
concepts allowing for the description of linguistic rebellion: reclamation and
re-appropriation, resignification, and liberation. Along with other examples
involving pussy, several additional contemporary cases are presented, includ-
ing those centring around the use of slut and woke/wokeness. The chap-
ter concludes by stepping into the question of successful or unsuccessful
examples of linguistic rebellion, showing how “WAP” and other events can
be understood as acts of defiance against deep-seated hegemonies and as
attempts to disrupt established discursive ecologies.
Transgression at the Top of the Charts

Already famous (or perhaps infamous) for provocative lyrics and visual
performances that unashamedly challenge mainstream ideologies pertain-
ing to female sexuality, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion did not pull any
punches when it came to languaging transgression in “WAP.” From the very
first line, the number presents a series of unabashedly open and celebratory
representations of sexual intercourse, especially ones that situate females as
agents of their own pleasure and men as tasked with providing it.4 Few, if
any, proficient audience members have any doubt as to the type of activ-
ity referenced in these lyrics, let alone how the artists frame these actions.
Produced and distributed within a cultural backdrop where discourses of
sexual propriety intersect with those pertaining to race and gender (among
much else), “WAP” centres the Black female, making nearly unmasked ref-
erences to the importance of women in their own sexual gratification and
the seemingly dominated, subservient role of men as instruments of this
(Bahn, 2021; Mackay, 2021; Pereira, 2022).
Cardi B’s fans were quick to point out that this song, like much of her
opus, can be read as both feminist and anti-racist. Her work represents
females and female sexuality as both empowered and empowering, candidly
144 Languaging Rebellion
referencing bodily acceptance and desire, while also questioning the pre-
sumed supremacy of male sexual authority (see Crooks et al., 2019; Mat-
thews, 2018). Beyond mere musical innovation, Guardian commentator
Betsy Reed suggests that “WAP” constitutes a provocative transgression of
masocentric and racist cultural tropes, observing that “there is something
rebellious and subversive in women, especially oft-oversexualized black
women, openly discussing enthusiasm and predilections for intercourse.”5
Detractors, never far to hand when it concerns this genre (let alone female
artists who openly challenge status quo power dynamics) focused much of
their outrage on the imagery accompanying the equally successful music
video and, especially, the artists’ linguistic choices. These included dozens
of dysphemisms referring to sex and genitalia, for example, fucking, king
cobra and make it cream, racially loaded terms, most prominently nigga, and
blunt, if somewhat euphemistically dysphemistic evocations of sexual acts,
conveying frank images of oral sex and obliquely referencing mythologies
pertinent to the size of Black men’s penises (Grov et al., 2015; Poulson-
Bryant, 2005).
Clearly, “WAP” represents a form of linguistic boundary crossing – and
one that was subject to explicit control at that. It could not be played in its
original, uncensored form on most radio stations and even many satellite
networks, nor could journalists or critics openly cite different portions of
the piece. At the same time, the very performance of “WAP” was under-
stood by all – fans and detractors alike – as an act of purposeful provocation
and a contravention of normative pressures on languaging, as if the artists
were thumbing their noses at the boundaries that they crossed and, most
notably, at those authorities who were understood to have drawn such lines
and enforced their regulation. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion offered
no apologies, not even an equivocating expression of regret similar to that
provided by erstwhile candidate Trump upon the release of the Access Hol-
lywood tape; instead, they performed the song at the 63rd annual Grammy
Awards to a packed house.
Linguistic Rebellion
Like more canonical forms of rebellion, such as ones that recall images of
protesters defying tanks in Tiananmen Square or Black Lives Matter activ-
ists forcibly removing the statue of a Confederate general, acts of linguis-
tic rebellion reject established authorities and seek to upend entrenched
systems of governance and the hegemonies that buttress them. These can
be thought of as uprisings targeting dynamics that dictate how languagers
are supposed behave and that inaugurate the physical and moral institu-
tions to which they are expected to acquiesce. When languagers refuse to
comply with coercive pressures and reject – perhaps even eventually over-
turning – the authorities enforcing them, it is as if they have declared war
on established discourses and hegemonies, as well as upon any languagers
who stand by all that is conventional and accepted. In many ways, linguistic
rebellion is not unlike more familiar insurgencies taking place in the physi-
cal realm. Rebels who burnish arms or launch pipe bombs do so with the
goal of upsetting established orders, frequently inflicting physical injury on
or even causing the death of their adversaries and others in their path. At
times, such a rebellion is highly planned, with committees and other insti-
tutions calling the shots; at others, it takes on an ersatz quality, such as
the events of 6 January, 2021, when pro-Trump insurgents storming the
US capitol wielded fire extinguishers and other homemade weapons against
overwhelmed police. In all cases, regardless of whether a given uprising is
ultimately successful or is quelled, rebellion involves a call to and picking up
of arms, identification of a target or targets, and action directed toward and
upon this target with the ultimate goal of upending some facet of “the way
things are.” Rebellion thus manifests and even concretizes the ideological
lines between one and the other side, frequently forcing those who might
otherwise wish to be neutral to align themselves in one or another manner.
Unlike other forms of protest, however, linguistic rebellion takes place in
the semiotic spheres of languaging and is manifested through enlanguage-
ment. Rather than guns and fists, linguistic rebellion wields forms and struc-
tures, most often deploying these in innovative and controversial utterances
and performances. Frequently, such agitation points to the underlying dis-
crepancies and imbalances that allow some actors a greater impact, while
affording others limited or even non-existent roles in languaging. Linguistic
rebellion as such is far more common than physically and materially mani-
fested acts of revolt, occurring around dinner tables and in friend groups,
office meetings and social clubs, as well as across any number of other lingua-
cultural spaces – and this on a nearly daily basis. Indeed, many of the exam-
ples of controversial transgression and reactions to this – notably instances
that have prompted cancellation (see Chapter 7) – can also be considered
moments of linguistic rebellion: a languager or community of languaging
demands changes to the ways in which another languager or community
acts, at times bringing the weight of various institutions (e.g. social media)
and structures (e.g. publication contracts) to bear on those whose power or
authority they wish to see diminished or eliminated (Jeshion, 2020).
Most readers are already familiar with linguistic rebellion, although per-
haps not under this heading. This is in part due to the inherent instability of
languaging as both verbal and ideological action. The forms, structures and
other patterned components of linguistic life are always changing, usually
in ways that go unnoticed but at times in ways that are explicitly associated
with power, authority and the very ideological systems in and through
which languaging is accomplished. However, not all acts of linguistic rebel-
lion are the same in either scope or content. For this reason, it is helpful to
tease apart some of these differences, while also reviewing how they are pre-
sented in antecedent literature. Primary focus in this discussion is given to
linguistic forms, in part because these are often the most visible instruments
of rebellion and are often readily acknowledged as such by supporters and
detractors alike; of course, this should not be taken to mean that other facets
of languaging are not implicated in such dynamics.6 Additional distinctions
are motivated by terminological conventions, as well as from a more explicit
acknowledgement of the inchoative nature of rebellious acts, from which
three broad tendencies can be observed: reclamation and re-appropriation,
rehabilitation, and resignification.
In instances of reclamation, a form or other enlanguaged element is tar-
geted to be “taken over” or repossessed. This goal is broadly similar to that
of re-appropriation, when forms are “taken back,” often involving those that
are or were used to denigrate or demean a person or group (Cervone et al.,
2021; Galinsky et al., 2013; Godrej, 2011; Popa-Wyatt, 2020). Reclamation
and re-appropriation are actions through which languagers assert or re-assert
propriety over a definable target, such as a form, a way of speaking or gestur-
ing, or the ability to participate in discursive action. Of these, actions directed
at forms are perhaps the most common. In Anglophone linguacultural spaces,
for example, recent years have seen the re-appropriation of queer, once a
slur deriding homosexual men and now more often used to refer to persons
who celebrate their non-heteronormativity (Brontesma, 2004); slut, which
retains much of its previous denotative content, while having, among some
communities of languagers at least, shed several of its negative connotations
(Montell, 2019; Washington, 2020); and crip, a truncation of cripple that is
increasingly used as a form of positive group or self-identification (Slater &
Liddiard, 2018). In each case, persons and groups once denigrated by the
form stake a claim over it, one that invalidates (at least for some) its nega-
tive connotations and associations. The line between reclamation and re-
appropriation is hardly neat, as it is rarely, if ever, clear how or in what man-
ner a particular form might “belong” to a particular community of languag-
ing or how it might rightly assert or re-assert supposed “ownership” over
such components of linguistic life. From a practical standpoint, it can be
useful to allow this blurring to stand and, at least as a means of describing
the ideological component of this rebellious act, to allow labelling to emerge
from those accomplishing it. Some languagers and communities of languag-
ers will view a particular action as “taking over” and others as “taking back.”
Regardless of these tensions, what is compelling in instances of reclama-
tion and re-appropriation is the teleology manifested by such languagings,
a notable example of which involves yet again pussy.7 In the months that
followed the election of Trump in 2016, hundreds of thousands – very
likely millions – of women, as well as men and persons who do not identify
within traditional gender binarities, asserted a claim on the form in a spe-
cific, simultaneously semiotic and embodied manner: they donned pussyhats,
pink knit caps that stood in as an act of protest against the incipient admin-
istration and its policies. As interesting as the object and its use might be,
focus can be turned to the way in which languagers both “took back” and
“took over” pussy and, in so doing, asserted their right to incorporate this
into what might otherwise be understood as a banal component of linguis-
tic activity. No longer limited to the masocentric confines of locker rooms,
whether literal or metaphoric, pussy was put on display for all to see. Cer-
tainly, this involved the activation of semantic denotations, notably ‘female
genitalia,’ but it also very explicitly involved the form, itself, as a mix of
banalization and radicalization on display in the streets of cities around the
country and world, as seen in the linked image available in the endnotes.8
In these and other acts of linguistic (and, more broadly, semiotic) rebel-
lion, pussy and snatch, with all of their semantic weight and pragmatic import
(remaining at the very least connoted to femaleness, in general, and to
female genitalia, specifically), exit the semiotic locker room that is restricted
to only certain languagers (most often male), appearing on the street in
a way that might have been considered vulgar, crass or insulting in other
circumstances. Still transgressive, if only because any rebellion is a priori an
act of boundary crossing, the foundations that allow the languaging of these
forms to be considered taboo are undermined. Communities of languaging
asserted a right to use these openly and, in so doing, to undermine power
structures and established authorities that have theretofore confined them,
while also asserting counter-dominant discourses aimed at Trump, his sup-
porters and all that his movement and election represented.
Something quite similar occurred in the case of slut, a form typically
denoting a person of suspect sexual morality and behaviour, with strong
connotative links to women and femaleness (entrenched enough, in fact,
that this might actually be best considered a denotation, evidence for which
includes use of the compound he-slut or male slut when referring to a man,
albeit with greatly attenuated negative connotations). Given the increased
attention to the ways in which women, and particularly their bodies and
sexualities, are policed in contemporary society, such as the salience of acts
of slut shaming, it is not surprising that this form has also been the object
and instrument of linguistic rebellion. Slut shaming is not a defined legal or
even moral concept, but it generally involves the overt and covert judge-
ment, at times to the point of harassment, of an individual perceived to have
transgressed sexual norms and ideologies. While not the exclusive purview
of religious circles or conservative groups, it is closely associated with these,

in part because of the relatively rigid understandings of sexuality shared
by many faith leaders and adherents, as well as because of the differential
association of gender to sexuality and sexual life (see, e.g., Montell, 2019;
Sweeney, 2017). Reclaiming and re-appropriating the label slut thus sub-
verts the ability of some to label women as objects of shame, a particularly
powerful manifestation of linguistic rebellion in societies in which male and
female sexualities are distinctly connoted and in which discourses surround-
ing these ideological divisions are simultaneously entrenched and powerful
(see, e.g., Armstrong et al., 2014; Van Royen et al., 2018).
If reclamation and re-appropriation involve the assumption of enlan-
guaged substance and its linguistic deployment in new ways, often tak-
ing place in spaces and at the hands of actors whose ability to do so was
theretofore excluded or constrained, rehabilitation describes the realized or
desired result of linguistic rebellion. Rehabilitation is thus both a distal goal
and a tacit outcome. In the case of a rehabilitated person (very likely the
origin of the metaphor in question), this can be thought of as the restora-
tion of access to and participation in broader society; for enlanguagements,
something similar holds true. Rehabilitating a form, for example, involves
moving it from limited space into a broader, more collective one, such as
the process whereby Black, denoting African American racio-ethnic identity,
has emerged in broader usage in North American linguacultural contexts
than in past decades (Coles, 2016). This, of course, begins with reclamation
and efforts at re-appropriation specific to a linguacultural context but goes
beyond it, as rehabilitation reverses some, if not most, of the taboos that
might otherwise be associated with a given form. This is notably the case
for queer, now widely used in a positive manner in a wide variety of settings,
ranging from academic departments and disciplines (e.g. queer studies,
queer theory) to slogans appearing in daily life (e.g. “queer and proud”).
Pussy, for all the efforts to reclaim it, does not seem to have been fully
rehabilitated, at least not to the extent seen in the case of queer. Languagers
are undoubtedly using this in wider and less tightly constrained domains
than before, but it would be specious to assert that (at least at the time of
writing) it has been fully emancipated and broadly assimilated, such that
pussy could be enlanguaged in diverse and varying circumstances (even when
not referring to female genitalia). In effect, it is still a relatively taboo form,
with one notable exception being ludic contexts such as stand-up comedy,
where linguistic transgression is often the primary catalyst of humoristic
action and reaction (Blake, 2018; Ross, 1998). It remains highly unlikely
that pussy could be seen as anything but transgressive when uttered in wider
society, let alone in a gynaecologist’s office, a university lecture or a family
meal (see “A Closer Look,” further in this chapter).9
If reclamation involves asserting rights to enlanguaged substances and

rehabilitation the movement of these into broader or at least less negatively
valued domains, resignification presents a distinct but parallel profile of lin-
guistic rebellion, this due to the target of any such action. Resignification
a priori concerns not access to or ownership of a form or structure but its
meaning, including denotations, connotations and associations. Resignifica-
tion occurs in fact on a daily basis, constituting one of the many changes that
can be said to define the life of languagers and communities, while also aris-
ing from the understanding of language-as-verb (Chapter 1) and language-
as-ideology (Chapter 4). Because languagers and languaging communities
are constantly shifting and changing, the semantic qualities and properties
that they deploy and to which their ideological realities are subject are also
dynamic. This can be seen in several rather banal examples, such as the
shifting meanings associated with douche. Borrowed from French with the
meaning ‘shower,’ this form underwent resignification and currently points
to two denotations: ‘vaginal cleansing technique’ and ‘person of little worth
or value’ (the latter is often enlanguaged within the compound douche-
bag, sometimes euphemistically rendered d-bag; Moor, 2018). Of course,
resignification is also seen in much more impactful examples that have or
continue to be understood as transgressive, as in the example of retard.
Originally ascribed to a person whose cognitive and developmental matura-
tion was delayed vis-à-vis a fixed norm (reflecting the form’s original mean-
ing, borrowed from Latin via French), it came to take on highly pejorative
connotations, even when referring to a person whose behaviour is seen as
petulant, unworthy or bothersome (Rix, 2022).
All examples of resignification are necessarily examples of semantic
change; however, not all semantic changes may be labelled resignification.
This is because resignification involves purposeful action by languagers. Of
course, and as is often the case when languagers grasp at power and confront
authority, it is not always the case that these goals are explicitly acknowl-
edged. One example that, at least as of the moment of writing this chapter,
is of great interest in contemporary US political culture concerns the mean-
ing and content of meanings linked to woke. For previous generations, this
form likely signified something along the lines of ‘awakened’ or ‘no longer
sleeping,’ typically as a verb (e.g. “they woke at 6 am for an early flight”).
Woke underwent a collective resignification during the Obama presidency,
becoming understood as referring to a person who is ‘aware of and actively
attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial
and social justice)’ (as codified by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Saying
“they’re woke” in reference to a specific person thus came to signify their
cultural, political, economic and social positioning, with clear associations
to progressive stances (Gil, 2023; Richardson & Ragland, 2018). Soon
enough – and perhaps inevitably given the neoliberal capitalist meta-frames

active within US (and not only) linguacultures and related sociopolitical
discourses – many prominent corporations took on wokeness as a means of
demonstrating their commitment to diversity, climate sensitivity and other
social concerns typically associated with the political and cultural left.
As with all areas of languaging and any avenue of enlanguagement, but
particularly those adjacent to symbolic capital in the domains of politics and
cultural powers, the resignification of woke did not end with this moment, as
such change can be and very often is cyclical, particularly when taking place in
discursive ecologies characterized by polarized ideological camps and respec-
tive communities of languaging. In the second decade of the twenty-first cen-
tury, a distinct and distinctly antithetical resignification became layered atop
that just noted, this time emerging from the political and cultural right wing
in the very same linguacultural backdrop. Woke became understood to signify
‘politically liberal (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way
that is considered unreasonable or extreme,’ again according to Merriam-
Webster. Politicians and other cultural pundits lament wokeism as something
distinct from the prior resignification, seeing this instead as a type of tyranny.
This is amply demonstrated in press conferences and other moments, such
as those in which Florida governor and social conservative activist-politician
Ron DeSantis appeared at podiums bedecked with overt messaging to “stop
woke” as a means of preserving putative freedoms.10 Through such linguis-
tic and visual semiotic action, the semantic content of woke and wokeness is
called into question. Far from having positive connotations, these are explic-
itly framed as negative and dangerous, something that needs to be stopped –
with codified and specific governmental intervention.11 In this and many
other instances, one act of linguistic rebellion prompted an act of counter-
rebellion at the hands of those whose access to symbolic (alongside social,
political and economic) capital was directly challenged.
Transgression as Liberation
A foundational assertion taken from the beginning of this book is that lan-
guages do not exist but are done. What, then, does this have to say about
the types of rebellious linguistic behaviour described here, let alone the
likely infinite number of similar examples that might be cited in various and
different linguacultures, spaces and times? How can any scholar conceive
or reconceive of these rebellious acts and do so in a manner that coheres
with the understanding of language-as-verb, taking into account the hid-
den dynamics and structures that are understood as being accomplished
and accomplishing through languaging and by languagers, as outlined in
preceding chapters?
One possible avenue for understanding such moments and actions, like
any rebellion, is to reframe these as liberatory acts that seek to free lan-
guaging and languagers from the outsized transitivity of those who hold
authority and the power that they wield, as well as the hegemonic dynamics
that govern and reinforce these patterns. While not all rebellious acts have
defined goals – sometimes, rebellion is simply an act of defiance, without
a clear vision of outcome or finality – they all come from a place of reac-
tion and revindication: something or someone is felt to stand in the way of
a person’s or a community’s ability to accomplish something. When teen-
agers push back against the authority of their parents, demanding more
autonomy, they are rebelling against a specific institutionalization of power
and authority. When languagers who do not identify within traditional man-
woman gender binaries coin and promote the use of innovative forms, such
as the English Mx or ze, French iel or yelle, or the Spanish elle, they are
engaging in linguistic rebellion for the purpose of self-liberation, that is,
for the ability to be effable and legible (Knisely, 2020; Knisely & Russell,
2024; López, 2019; Russell, 2024; Zimman, 2019). And when Cardi B and
Megan Thee Stallion rap the lyrics of “WAP,” they insert themselves into
a discourse ecology and assert women as agents within spaces from which
they – like so many others – have been excluded. Men are allowed to enlan-
guage pussy; men – and especially white, affluent men like former president
Trump – are afforded centrality in the embodiment and enlanguagement
of sexuality; men – and very notably those in positions of authority – are
excused, sometimes explicitly, much more frequently implicitly, when they
transgress mythological and ideological lines that scaffold sexuality and con-
strain its accepted enlanguagement. For proof of this, one need only recog-
nize that former president Trump suffered precious few consequences for
asserting that he could “grab [women] by the pussy,” perhaps because, in
his own words, “when you’re famous, they just let you.” Cardi B, Megan
Thee Stallion and others, on the other hand, are still branded as linguistic
mercenaries, certainly famous for some and celebrated by many, but quite
obviously denigrated by and infamous in the eyes of many more.
It is impossible to know with any certainty whether or to what extent
Trump’s languaging inspired the rebellious acts of Cardi B, Megan Thee
Stallion and their colleagues, but it is certainly possible to interpret the pro-
liferation of enlanguagements of pussy (and not only) that followed his elec-
tion and inauguration as very explicit rebellions, having as their ultimate goal
the liberation of this form and, more importantly, all that is enlanguaged by
it. This is nothing less than an attempted emancipation of those who have
pussies from the unquestioned grasp of male physical, semiotic and socioeco-
nomic authority, as well as the liberation of languagers from the bounds put
on languaging itself, ones that dictate that certain acts (notably, enlanguag-
ing pussy) are reserved for certain actors (notably, powerful men who, more
often than not, are white and straight). Of course, all of this is ideologi-
cally grounded and discursively bounded. One person’s freedom is another’s
oppression, although we are often left wanting to recognize it as such, par-
ticularly when the other is someone who has long been oppressed. Maggie
Nelson elegantly makes this point in her 2021 collection of essays, noting
that freedom is always a tenuous signifier, perhaps what in this book might
be best defined as a signifier that is more than just slippery, but elusive and
always contested. Recognition of this does not deter from the ability to criti-
cally approach linguistic liberation, in its varying forms and practices, even
if it does call those of us who examine languaging and enlanguagements to
hold all concepts of liberation and liberatory action in a difficult tension.
Linguistic rebellion – languaging activity that specifically and purposefully
transgresses extant frontiers, be these of prudence, possibility or politeness –
constitutes nothing less than social action through enlanguaged reaction.
This is a sometimes mundane, sometimes explosive form of activism that
works through the mechanisms of both language-as-verb and language-as-
ideology. On the former end of the equation, linguistic liberation requires
languaging – certainly the doing of language, but also the doing of language
in certain spaces and configurations, among certain publics, and in certain
manners or following certain pathways. To language rebelliously is to speak
or sign, write or tweet with the goal of not just crossing boundaries but
upending and eventually erasing these. In the latter sense, that of language-
as-ideology, language liberation requires a boundary crossing of a different
sort, one operating in the individual and social collective of schemata and pat-
terns and one that seeks not only to disrespect these conceptual formations
but to upend and even destroy them, regardless of whether it replaces them
with something else or simply does away with them in the ideational spaces
and places of collective and individual reality. This “burn it down” and “blow
it up” component of liberation (Knisely & Russell, 2024) involves that which
Halberstam and others refer to as acts of queer failure and queer destruction,
doings that purposefully seek to undo and not explicitly redo (see especially
2011, 2021). This is, in effect, an upending of hegemony, a ‘de-tabooing’
and ‘re-legitimizing’ through languaging and through enlanguagement.
Tying It Together
The preceding discussion centres around several signs, particularly pussy, that
are normally considered to be transgressive and understood by most lan-
guagers as forms that should not be enlanguaged and referents that should
not be evoked, at least, not outside of the metaphorical locker rooms of
linguistic life. These strictures are of course a matter of power and authority,
integrated as they are within discourses and hegemonic dynamics to which
the vast majority of languagers consent, most often with little thought or
concern. And yet, some languagers have risen up and sought to disrupt these
dynamics. In many instances, languaging rebellions have been successful; in
others, the entrenched ideological foundations of languaging and of lan-
guaging communities seem impervious to any such subversive action. What
is clear, whether it concerns the lyrics of a prominent rap artist or the banner
held by a protester on city streets, is that pussy is no longer the same linguistic
sign it was in 2016, when the Access Hollywood tape was leaked to the press.
Of course, it is also the case that various languagings of pussy diverge, for
reasons that have been made clear throughout this book. It is not simply the
form nor its denotation that counts when it comes to judging an act as trans-
gressive, let alone the content and scope of the transgression, its effect and
its affect. Pussy in the mouth of a 70-some-year-old white, conservative male
whose source of power is rather conventional, deriving from money and social
standing, is not the same thing as in the mouth of a 20-something female of
colour, whose power emerges from a small, often marginalized, racial, eth-
nic and cultural community, as well as from their challenging the power of
people like the aforementioned white male and his entourage. Whereas the
former enlanguagement of pussy is an act that reiterates authority and power
from above, the latter can be understood as an act that attempts to reclaim
authority and power from below. It is no less than an act of linguistic rebel-
lion. And like other rebellions, such as those that take place in the political
or economic realm, linguistic rebellion always testifies to complex dynamics
that precede and enact it, as well as to the instabilities that gird its reception.
Where more familiar forms of rebellion involve hurling Molotov cocktails or
smashing windows, these implicate languaging in what might be considered
its purest and most agentive state – the hurling of forms and utterances, the
smashing of meanings and their content.
By reclaiming forms that have been subject to prior social constrictions,
and by resignifying the semantic content of these, languagers are subvert-
ing largely hidden, but widely felt power structures, as well as their ideo-
logical and mythological underpinnings. They are refusing to consent to
prior coercions and, in so doing, are throwing a wrench in the workings
of long-standing hegemonic configurations, shifting the discursive ecology
of societies through such action. After all, it is not really the form pussy or
one of its meanings (be this ‘female genitalia’ or ‘cowardly person’) that
appears to be the primary focus of rebellion; it is the broader and more
entrenched semiotic weight of these languaging realities. When Cardi B
and Megan Thee Stallion rap without shame – indeed, when they do this
in celebration – and rise to the top of the charts around the world, they are
very openly calling for the upending of an entire discursive and linguisti-
cally realized world. When feminists and their allies reappropriate slut and
render this as connotatively linked to something other than ‘shameful,’ they

are disrupting the power structures that would ensmall and diminish female
sexual and physical agency. And when well-intentioned callers to a promi-
nent podcast deny the negative connotations of pussy (see following), those
that languagers use to denigrate persons suspected of a lack of bravery or
tenacity, instead insisting that this form connotes ‘strength’ and ‘life,’ they
are seeking to modify far more than languaging habits, but an entire world.
A Closer Look: Pussy Two Ways
Obviously, reclamation, rehabilitation and resignification can all be considered

transgressive languagings in their own right, albeit ones that are distinct from
those transgressions examined in Chapters 2–7. When feminist activists reclaim
pussy, they transgress often unseen boundaries that have long given men claim
to this form. No longer simply a component of so-called locker room talk, they
assert (or perhaps more pointedly, they re-assert) a form of ownership – pussy
belongs to those who have pussies, not just to those who wish to grab them.12
Other actions, such as the overt insertion of these forms into the public domains
of hat-wearing and slogan-brandishing, constitute a somewhat different form of
transgression, one that crosses the boundary of what is and is not languaged at
the same time that it inverts the power structures determining such ideologi-
cal boundaries. Especially in the first area of languaging, but also in the second,
the insertion and assertion of a linguistic sign that theretofore was ideologically
limited to the locker room or similar domains of privacy, with its semantic con-
notations of vulgarity and lowbrow manners as well as its strong associations to
misogyny, certainly cross many discursive and ideological confines. But has pussy
undergone complete resignification, a change in its meaning or components of
meaning, akin to woke or any number of other examples that might be named?
That is certainly a matter that is far less clear, especially given the vast counter-
evidence as to the status of this form and the entrenched power structures that
render it off-limits in the vast majority of languaging contexts.
An interesting example of proposed resignification concerning pussy was
put forth in sex and advice columnist Dan Savage’s podcast, The Savage Love-
cast.13 In episode 27, originally aired on 25 April, 2007, an anonymous caller
first showers Savage with praise for his program and work, and then turns
their attention to the meanings activated by this:14
[caller objects to] when you are criticizing someone, often very rightfully so
and you . . . instead of telling them to muster up some courage
or, I don’t know, we have to figure out a better way of saying this
you say ‘stop being such a pussy!’
and I mean pussies are this large network of really strong muscles
they can clench dicks they can push . . . out babies
they are very strong
telling someone to not be a pussy is telling them to be
strong powerful in charge life giving
I mean it doesn’t get much better than that
I think it’s a confused criticism
And I dare you to come up with something better than calling someone a
pussy
Or: start calling them a pussy when you want them to be courageous
Say ‘be a pussy!’ ‘be strong get it on!’
In this moment, the caller is inviting an act of resignification, challenging Sav-

age not to simply stop calling persons he finds to be lacking in courage puss-
ies, thus activating the meaning ‘cowardly’ (see Chapters 2 and 3; it is worth
nothing that Savage denies referring to people in this way). Instead, they call
for an inverted resignification of the form, based in part on one of the other
polysemous denotations of pussy, specifically ‘female genitalia.’ In so doing,
the connotations of this referent come into play, specifically the caller’s asser-
tions of connotations ‘strength’ and ‘life-giving’. This moment has to do with
the ideological component of language and its bases in authority, as the caller
is asserting a right to language in a certain way, specifically to activate or not
activate particular components of signification associated with pussy, while
also inviting Savage to follow along.
Is this a successful instance of resignification? Has pussy lost its semantic
denotation of ‘person lacking in courage’ and concomitant connotations of
‘weakness’? Perhaps this has transpired in small circles and with a handful
of languagers, but it does not seem to have taken wider hold, an assertion
that is bolstered by the very instances in which pussy has been the object of
reclamation and rehabilitation, as discussed previously. Were pussy to denote
‘a person of courage and strength, one who is life-giving and powerful,’ as
suggested by the podcast caller, would such acts of formal reclamation and
rehabilitation be necessary or even possible? These queries must remain, at
least at present, unanswered. It is also unclear whether any attempts at con-
notative resignification might or even could mitigate the taboo associated
with this sign. Regardless of whether female genitalia are connoted as strong
or life-giving, broader discourses surrounding sex, sexuality and the body
appear to preclude such finalities at present. In short, evoking genitalia, either

to celebrate or denigrate it, continues to be a transgressive languaging act in
the vast majority of contexts.
A distinctly different example of resignification, one that can be under-
stood as at least partially successful, even if short-lived, also finds its ori-
gins in Savage’s work. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,
US political and cultural discourse was dominated by questions of LGBTQ+
rights, notably the right for same-sex couples to marry. President George
W. Bush successfully used this possibility as a wedge issue in his 2004 re-
election campaign, drawing on the moral panic that followed the legalization
of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, as well as similar events taking place
in Europe and elsewhere (Campbell & Monson, 2008; Lewis, 2005). Among
the many cultural and political figures calling for marriage bans was erstwhile
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who openly derided gay and lesbian
couples, drawing parallels between same-sex relations, bestiality and pae-
dophilia, and also referred to the legal recognition of any non-heterosexual
and heteronormative couple as a cause in the downfall of civilization. Out-
raged by these and similar remarks – Santorum is also openly retrograde as
concerns women’s rights and much else – on 15 May, 2003, Savage called
upon his readers to come up with a new denotation (in his words, “a new
definition”) for the form Santorum.15 Among the many possibilities, Savage
selected “the frothy mixture of lube and faecal matter that is sometimes the
by-product of anal sex,” in a clearly transgressive and provocative act. But
did this act of resignification take hold among the wider community of US
Anglophones?
Interestingly, it is possible to answer yes, albeit tentatively (in part because
the now retired senator has faded into the sociopolitical background). For
years, and including at the moment of writing this chapter, the first return in
a google.com search using the input “Santorum” is the Wiktionary entry with
Savage’s innovative definition.16 It should be noted, however, that the search
also produces as its second return Santorum’s Wikipedia page, suggesting
that rebellion is not an all-or-nothing enterprise. Of course, it may also be
the case that some of the apparent importance of the resignified Santorum
derives from the transgressive act itself, specifically the pleasure many on the
political left took from not only changing the meaning linked to a person’s
name but changing it to a referent that is presumptively anathema to this
very same person. Examples such as this demonstrate just how difficult a task
resignification can be, particularly when it collides with entrenched power
structures and dominant discourses.
• Think about some language forms that you and your friends use that
were relatively more taboo for older generations in your languaging
community, such as your parents or grandparents. What cultural changes
led to their rehabilitation? Did these changes affect only you and those of
your generation, or have they affected others as well?
• Identify one or two meanings that were not as readily evoked – whether
avoided outright or confined to euphemisms – by older generations, but
that are more salient in contemporary culture. How have these been
rehabilitated? Who considers this liberatory, and who considers it to be
something else, perhaps problematic? How might you begin to analyze
this as an expression of power and authority?
• What moments of linguistic activism are operative in your speech com-
munity, perhaps on your campus or in the political arena of your commu-
nities? How is verbal hygiene involved, and how could you re-interpret
this, for example, as liberatory, proscriptive or something else?
Further Reading
There is, somewhat surprisingly, a dearth of literature specifically dedi-
cated to linguistic rebellion, including acts of reclamation, resignification
and rehabilitation. The sources cited throughout this chapter are some of
the more important ones, especially pertaining to Anglophone contexts.
Less academically oriented press outlets do, however, provide important
perspectives that testify to these tendencies, particularly with regard to
the topics explored here. Readers are encouraged to consult Inga Mus-
cio’s Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Amanda Montell’s engaging
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, Regena
Thomashauer’s thought-provoking, although only tangentially linguistically
oriented, Pussy: A Reclamation, and Karen Finley’s humorous Grabbing
Pussy. For more academically framed arguments, perhaps the most informa-
tive literature on topics pertinent to these matters can be seen in feminist
linguistic scholarship: excellent sources in this vein include the foundational
work by Robin Tolmach Lakoff Language and Woman’s Place (rereleased
in 2004 with a critical introduction by Mary Bucholtz) and Deborah Cam-
eron’s The Feminist Critique of Language.
Notes
1 Cardi B is the professional name of rapper, musician and songwriter Belcalis
Marlenis Almánzar Cephus and Megan Thee Stallion is that of Megan Jovon
Ruth Pete. The success of both artists represents a significant challenge to the
music industry, both in general and more specifically to rap, in which women –
and notably women of color (Cardi B is of Hispanic and Trinidadian origin,
Megan Thee Stallion is Black) – have been marginalized.
2 www.complex.com/music/2020/08/cardi-b-megan-thee-stallion-wap-essay
3 www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/ben-shapiro-reads-censored-wap-
lyrics-cardi-b-megan-thee-stallion-9432034/
4 For copyright reasons, the lyrics cannot be presented here; readers are invited
to consult these at https://genius.com/Cardi-b-wap-lyrics.
5 www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/12/cardi-b-megan-thee-stallion-
wap-celebrated-not-scolded; see also www.npr.org/2020/08/14/902659822/
hip-hop-that-made-the-grown-ups-uncomfortable-the-controversy-around-
wap
6 One interesting example of which involves so-called vocal fry, closely associated
with young, white female Anglophones in North America, which has engen-
dered no end of controversy (see Chao & Bursten, 2021; Winn et al., 2022).
7 Of course, it was not only a reaction to Trump, although this quite reasonably
can be considered the conjunctural moment in which a critical mass of lan-
guage rebels took up pussy in new and interesting ways.
8 For more information and the history of the pussyhat, see: www.pussyhatpro-
ject.com/our-story
9 For evidence of this, consider a 2016 skit featuring comedienne Amy Schumer,
in which the setup involves a gynaecologist using the form pussy, along with
many others, in reference to her genitalia. www.cc.com/video/m3lqh2/
inside-amy-schumer-gyno. Other comediennes have also made moves toward
rehabilitation, albeit only within limited domains, a fact reflected in Netflix’
broadcasting of “Female Comedians and their Vagina jokes” (www.youtube.
com/watch?v=fVot-SXNy18).
10 www.tallahassee.com/stor y/news/politics/2022/11/17/stop-woke-
stopped-federal-court-ron-desantis-florida-presidential-race/10720135002/
11 For more on the multimodal, especially visual, description and interpretation of
images such as this, readers are pointed to the work of Kress and van Leeuwen
(1996 and especially 2010).
12 The “Pussy Grabs Back” movement, perhaps most famously captured in an im-
age by Amanda Duarte and Jessica Bennett, is one prime example of this play-
on-linguistic signs (see www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/
pussy-grabs-back-movement).
13 The Savage Love podcast, aired since 2006 and since rebranded the Lovecast,
emerged from Savage’s column in Seattle alternative biweekly The Stranger.
Each episode lasts between 45 minutes and one hour (including commercial
inserts) and comprises call-in questions, comments and responses from the host
and selected guests, all centering around questions of sex, sexuality, gender,
politics and related cultural issues. See https://savage.love/lovecast/
14 The entire podcast can be accessed at https://savage.love/lovecast/2007/
04/25/its-the-long-awaited-asshole-edition/. The portion in question begins
at approximately 23:13 and ends one minute later; the transcription here is
mine and begins at approximately 23:26, with boldface type showing emphasis
and suspension marks indicating a pause or hesitation.
15 www.thestranger.com/issues/14254/2003-05-15
16 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/santorum
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INDEX
Note: Page numbers followed by “n” with numbers refer to notes. Page numbers in
italics indicate a figure on the corresponding page.
Academic English (AE): English with Bamberg, M. 129

an Accent (Lippi-Green) 78, 100; Barthes, R. 66, 68
gender in 75–77; languaging beliefs 61–63; collective 45; shared 30,
and race 69–73; languaging rules 66, 69
63–65; ideology and mythology Benjamin, W. xiv
65–70; open questions about 73–74 Bhasin, T. 82
accent: British 68; ideologized and Birner, B. J. 106
mythologized 68–69 Black Americans 103, 122, 136
acceptable language (in private vs. in Boas, F. 45
public) 7, 50, 69, 71, 135 boundaries/boundary crossing xiv, 50,
Adams, S. 122, 130, 135–136 72, 114, 123, 144, 147, 152
AE see Academic English Bourdieu, P. 52, 85–86, 132
Agar, M. 45–46 Burridge, K. 23–24, 93
agency 7, 40, 95; and transitivity 2 Bush, B. 11–12
Alim, H. S. 71 Bush, G. W. 10n5, 123
Allan, K. 23–24, 93 Butler, J. 59n8, 79n2, 104, 110, 114,
Althusser, L. 105, 115, 140 135; Excitable Speech 116
Andrews, E. 137
Anglophones 18, 49, 68 Cameron, D. 93, 96–97
animus, linguistic 104–105 cancellation and cancelling 123–127;
aristocracy, European 86 critical discourse analysis/studies
Artiles, F. 102, 118–119 CDA/CDS 134–136; clash of two
association 38, 149; plural form- ideological communities 136–137;
meaning 20; semantic 5, 39 as Discourse/discourse 126–133;
Austin, J. L. 111–112, 114; How to do and hegemony 131–133
things with words 109 cancel culture 123–127, 133–136;
authority: de jure 116; linguistic 93; political correctness and 137–140
positional 132; and power 83–86; capitalism 73; neoliberal 132; woke
verbal hygienic 95; see also power 125, 141n7
176 Index
Cardi B xv, 142–144, 151, 153, enlanguaging: clichéd stereotypes

157n1 34; cultural and personal values
censorship: de facto 91; de jure 90–91; 103; female genitalia 23; name of
efficacy of 116 deceased 15–16; the n-word 108;
Centers for Disease Control and and patterened structures 25;
Prevention (CDC) 77 enlanguaging and enlanguagement:
Chomsky, N. 110, 121n8 and Academic English 63–65;
civility 137, 139 and cancel culture 137–138;
Clark, M. D. 124–125 categorizing 54–55; as fighting
Clinton, B. 29 words 26; graphological conventions
community: African-American 86; 8; impossibility of being context-
anthropological 68; cultural 68, free 92–93; mythologized 68–69;
153; danger 82; ethnic 153; habitual n-word 101–102, 118–119;
actions of 43; Hispanophone pregnant people vs. pregnant
48; languaging (see languaging women 77; relative similarity of 48;
communities); liberal-leaning 35; signifier-signified link 18–21; and
marginalized 153; of practice 34, taboos 14–16; textual and power
47, 49; racial 153; speech 34, 48, 85; Trump’s, in Acccess Hollywood
129; university 108 tape 24–25; utterances as 27; woke/
communities of languaging 47–50, wokeism 150
110, 123–125, 145–147, 150; see enlanguaging and enlanguagement,
also languaging communities definition 8
complex signs: structure 13, 22, 42, 53; enregisterment 53–55
utterance 27, 29, 54, 109–110 ethical bounds 14
connotation 33, 38–42, 149; negative ethnicity 53, 70, 73, 95
146, 154; of racism 103 euphemisms 23, 26, 28, 31
Cooper, C. 98
critical discourse analysis/studies Fairclough, N. 62, 128–129, 134,
CDA/CDS 62, 134–135 138–139, 141n10
Cuomo, A. 99 fighting words, definition 26
Flores, N. 71
Deen, P. 102, 118–119 form 17, 25; dysphemistic 24;
Deleuze, G. 46 functional 22; graphological 8;
denotation 33, 38–39, 103–104, 124, of hostile 42; of injustice 130;
149; canonical 38, 64; semantic 147 linguistic 20; -meaning pairing
DeSantis, R. 150 37; orthographic 21, 64; phonetic
de Saussure, F. 18 21–22, 64; referential 20, 32n8;
dialects 1, 7, 70 -referent pairing 37, 39; of social
discourse/Discourse 127–129; justice 126
and cancel culture as 127–133, Foucault, M. 5–6, 84–85, 128–129, 132
137–140; Fairclough model freedom 139, 152; of expression
129–130; see also critical discourse 122–124
analysis/studies CDA/CDS
discrimination 80; object of 104; Gal, S. 92
systemic 82 Gámez, E. 72
Doll, J. 76 gender xii, 49, 54, 73, 88, 95; binary 2;
dysphemisms 23, 28, 31, 144 identity 104; marking 76–77
globalized/globalizing discourse xvii
Ebonics 86 Goffman, E. 92
economics 66 Gramsci, A. 131–132
education 66, 69, 71 Guattari, F. 46, 49
emic perspective xvi Gumperz, J. 48
Index 177
hailing 114–117 17–18, 23, 103, 117, 133; English

Halberstam, J. 152 30–31; French 21; human 6;
Halmari, H. 137 identity of 7; Indigenous and non-
hate speech 102–106, 108–109 white 72; legitimate 47; meaning
Hawley, J. 123 and 40–42; native 62; original 124;
hegemony 131–133; configurations -receiver 17–18, 23, 36, 50, 54,
132, 135; double-edged sword of 103, 117, 133
139; dynamics 133, 151; forces 123; languaging: act 27, 54, 112; activity
foundational 135; male 54, 47, 52, 92, 152; beliefs and
75; power 132; ultimate expressions 61–63; bounds of 127; community
of 133 (see languaging communities);
Holtzscheiter, A. 131 context 50–53; controversial 109;
culture 42; digital 128; of form
ideology 61, 65–70; linguistic xv, 135; functions 54; hateful 106;
61, 69 ideological 6; illocutionary 111;
ideophones 20 linguistic 96, 143; meaning 35–40;
illocution 111–112 neutral 92; non-conforming 72;
indexing 53–55 non-normative 72; norms 48;
insults 102–106 perlocutionary 111; potential 89;
interpolation 114–117 putative 61; and race 70–73; in real
time 106–109; rules 63–65; sole
Jones, L.A. 82 locus of 6; structured 25–28;
see also race
Karens 81–83; Central Park Karen languaging communities 38–39,
98–99; and moral panic 96–99; 43, 47–50, 69–70, 72, 93, 107,
Pet Shop Karen 80–81, 86–89 129, 149; see also communities of
Kilburn, J. 101, 118 languaging
Knisely, K. A. xvi, 3, 8, 9n1 languaging, definition 7–8
knowledge: cross-cultural 72; cultural lexicon 2, 18, 48, 64
107, 130; individual 103; pragmatic Leyda, J. 82
92, 108–109, 117; semantic LGBTQ+ rights 156
37; shared 14, 23, 114–115; liberation 143; linguistic 152;
sociocultural 39 transgression as 150–152
Kramsch, C. 86 linguacultures 45–46, 49, 150
linguistic rebellion 144–150, 152–153;
labelling xv, 12, 70, 136, 138, 146 acts of 144, 146, 150, 153;
Labov, W, 48 powerful manifestation of 148
Laclau, E. 5 linguistic sign 16–21, 19, 22, 36–37,
language 3–4; ability to 84; activity 52; 36, 39, 69, 103, 153; function 68
behaviour 133; defective 72; doing Lippi-Green, R. 69
of 6–7, 44, 46, 49, 86–89, 152; literary criticism 66
ideology 70–71; liberation 152; Lodge, R. A. 16
transgression 108 Luke, A. 134
language-as ideology 5, 149, 152
language-as-thing 2 masculinity 12, 50; aggressive 42;
language-as-verb 4–6, 149, 150, 152; ideational 40; intersectionality
assertion of xv; implications of 6–7 of 125
language, definition 7–8 Matsuda, M. J. 104
languager: Anglophone 37, 40; meaning 18–20; constitutive of 5; in
-authors 36; co- 26–27, 38, 62; the service of power 5, 67; -making
cohort of 48; communities 69, 131, 134; -negotiating 134;
72, 146; contemporary 62; -doer semantic 40; social 66
178 Index
Megan Thee Stallion 142–144, 151, pronouns 75; masculine-marked 75;

153, 157n1 masculine third-person 75;
#MeToo movement xii, xvii non-binary 77
Mey’s Pragmatic Act Theory 107 Puar, J. 49, 95
Milroy, J. 84
Milroy, L. 84 race xii, 53–54, 70–73, 88, 143; and
Mouffe, C. 132 class 69
mythology 65–70, 113; radar (RAdio Detecting And
linguistic xv, 61 Ranging) 22
re-appropriation 142–143
Nagesh, A. 81 rebellion: languaging 153; linguistic
Negra, D. 82 (see linguistic rebellion)
Nelson, J. 139 reclamation 142–143
Nelson, M. 152 Reed, B. 144
Ng, E. 125, 141 referent 20; taboo 21, 35
non-binary persons 76 registers 1, 7, 70, 72
Norris, P. 124–126 rehabilitation 142, 146, 148–149
n-word 101–103, 105–106, 108, 110, religion 70, 107
113–114, 116–117; in context resignification xv, 143, 146; antithetical
118–120 150; collective 149; successful
instance of 155–156
obscenity 14–15 Reyna, M. 72
orthophemisms 23, 25, 28, 31 Robinson, D. 106
Rosa, J. 45
PC see political correctness Russell, E. L. xvi, 3, 5, 8, 9n1, 105, 129
performativity xv, 114; capacity
114; content 118; injurious 120; Sailofsky, D. 125
linguistic 115, 118 Santorum, R. 156
perlocution 111–112 de Saussure, F. 18
political correctness (PC) 124, 135, Sbisà, M. 112
137–139 Searle, J. 112
politics 66, 69, 107, 150 self-censorship 89–91
power 83–86; asymmetrical 105; semantic: content 150, 153;
of coercion 133; cultural 150; connotation 154–155; properties
-dependent 85; in discourse 131; 147; semantic change 149
of discourse 131; discursive 7, sexuality 12–13, 148; female 142–143
131–133; doing 86–89, 126, 143; Sharifian, F. 46, 52, 67, 106–107
dynamics 72, 86, 126, 133, 135; sign: linguistic (see linguistic sign);
embodied 88; hegemonic 132; signified 18, 21, 24; signifiers 18,
and language 86–89; meaning 21, 24
in the service of 5, 67; moral 7; Silverstein, M. 54, 69
over discourse 131; physical 87; socioeconomic status 54, 70, 95
socioeconomic 82; source of 153; sociolects 1, 7, 70
symbolic (see symbolic power); Southwest Flight 531 33–35, 38,
see also authority 40–42, 44, 47, 50–52
pragmatics 106–109; enterprise 108; speech act theory 109–114
foundations 108; knowledge Spencer-Oatey, H, 43
108–109, 114, 117; scaffolds 108; standard language ideologies 69, 72, 78
tensions 109 sterile cockpit regulations 34–35
privilege 63, 65, 139; bourgeois 81; symbolic power 70, 81, 85–87, 89,
racialized 97; white 81, 88 92, 95
Index 179
symbolic violence 70, 86–88, 90–92, United States xvii, 37, 51, 90, 118;
95–96, 112 capitol 34, 59n9, 145; cultural
contexts xvi
taboo xv, 13–14, 23–24, 32n4, 103,
124; forms 23, 35, 148; moral 15; Van Dijk, T. A. 52, 67–68, 89
referent 21, 35 verbal hygiene 35, 81, 101, 105, 126;
Thiele, M. 125, 139 facework and 92–95
transgression: cancellation as response violence: physical 67, 82, 89–90,
to 124–127, 136; as liberation 105, 112; sexual 12; symbolic (see
150–152; in music (Cardi B and symbolic violence); systemic 82
Megan Thee Stallion) 143–144; von Humboldt, W. 44–45, 52
example of “Pet Store Karen” 89, vulgarity/obscenity 14–15
96; question of culture/context
55–57; from raciolinguistic point Walensky, Dr. R. 77
72; Trump’s (Access Hollywood tape) WAP (Wet Ass Pussy) xv, 22,
24–25; two-way transgression (pussy 142–144, 151
example) 154–156; unintended Wenger, E. 49
34–35 whiteness 72; ideologies of 71, 73;
transgression, definition xiv–xv mythological 71
transgressive languagers/languaging Williams, R. 138
xiv, xviii, 21–24, 114–115, 126; Wittgenstein, L. 4, 109
describing 13–16; example of Wodak, R. 52–53, 131
pregnant people 77 woke/wokeness xvii, 143,
Trump, D. xv, 82, 144, 147, 151; 149–150
‘female genitalia’ 12, 17, 28; women 29, 53, 147–148; genitalia of
transgression (Access Hollywood tape) 13; white 98
24–25
truth 47, 55; consequence of 66; and X-phemy 23–25; dysphemisms 23,
falsehoods 25, 67; mythological 28, 31, 144; euphemisms 23,
69, 137; straightforward 103; 26, 28, 31; orthophemisms 23,
substantive 43; untruth 84 25, 28, 31

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Fighting Words! is a critical exploration of all kinds of “bad language” and

Eric Louis Russell is Professor of French & Italian at the University of

Eric Louis Russell

1 Rethinking Language: Foundations for Critique 1

2 Languaging Transgression: “Grabbing Pussy” and

3 Languaging Meaning: “Rolling Coal” and “Having Balls” 33

Meaning and Languagers 40

4 Languaging Worldview: Ideology and Mythology 60

5 Languaging Authority and Power: Karens in the Wild 80

6 Languaging Consequence: Linguistic Performativity

7 Languaging Cancellation: The Ecology of Discourse

8 Languaging Rebellion: When Pussy Grabs Back 142

Works Cited 159

and Dutch (languages of my academic formation), to Italian (encompass-

Thus, it was perhaps inevitable that I began to seriously consider the

Studying This Shit

What This Book Is (and What It Is Not)

taboo or of labelling, not simply one of defining boundaries and describing

A Final Word of (and Before) Beginning

abjected. In a similar vein, when it comes to language and to that which

fundamentals legible to readers at nearly any level of experience. For those

This is a book about language, so it may come as a surprise to begin with a

as speciated beings, living entities, anthropomorphized personae or even

If Not Existence, Then What?

or receptive communication. Language is done when we take in and process

Foucault’s understanding of discourse – concepts and ways of thinking or

are those accomplishing these actions, and, by extension of the previous

offered (plausible or implausible as it may have appeared), they moved on,

Describing Transgressive Languaging

a classmate, a family member or some random passer-by: we know that all

transgressive languaging acts are similar in this regard: what constitutes an

action on the part of both languager-doer and languager-receiver, as well as

a linguacultural environment. However, forms are only one part of what

from meaning-signified, one deriving from the material nature of languag-

combined, such as clusterfuck (cluster + fuck), dipshit (dip + shit) or bitch-

by languagers that are ultimately understood as transgressive and more the

vagina) or a euphemism (e.g. flower), Trump’s linguistic activity would very

Trump’s utterance can be argued to have transgressed a litany of social

Turning our attention to more complex, structured elements of languaging,

that this constituted a sort of half-hearted “un-apology.” Given the descrip-

her career as a sort of rebel conservative (www.cnn.com/2016/10/08/us/

On 12 March, 2021, the crew of Southwest Airlines Flight 531 prepared

complexification of the notion of culture, as well as the elaboration of two

procedures and aircraft performance; invectives lamenting slow drivers and

connection between the two halves of what languagers apprehend. That

FIGURE 3.1 Linguistic sign

referents interact and coalesce in the minds of languagers: denotation, con-

Meaning and Languagers

economic, ethnic, geographic, racial and any number of additional criteria.

field is constituted in no small way by this very circle. It is important, how-

adequacy that can be attained by looking solely to the enlanguaged con-

Languaging Communities and Communities of Languaging

Coined by the eminent linguist John Gumperz, a speech community is

can be considered the ways in which languaging is rendered both neces-

Indexing and Enregisterment

languaging, from the mundane to the consequential, points to more than

A Closer Look: Fucking Weirdos and Lowered Hyundais

O: it is (a) mandated county wide