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Swearing on Television - Gender, Language, and Power in the Thick of It

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Swearing on Television - Gender, Language, and Power in the Thick of It Swearing on television - gender, language, and power in the thick of it by Emelie Gustafson My master thesis investigated gender differences in the use of swearing in the Brit- ish television series The thick of it, a political satire known for its strong language. On the basis of material from four episodes, the use of swearing was studied through quantitative and qualitative analysis. The corpus used in the investiga- tion contains 21029 words, broadcast between 2009 and 2012. The study draws on, and challenges, previous research which claim that women swear less than men do (Coates 2004, Lakoff 1975). The study also discusses gender differences in how and whether the relative status of speakers influences their use of swearing, and finds that powerful women swear more than do other women. 1. Introduction The thick of it is a British political satire, known for its strong language. Television shows usually engage and entertain the viewer in one way or another, but scripted shows in addition present an opportunity to study how identity is constructed through language. Language can be used to deliberately construct characters who are at once gendered and assigned social status. This study will consider one aspect with this function in the television series The thick of it: swearing. Swearing in this television show is considered in terms of gender distribution as well as status distribution. Swearing is a linguistic and interpersonal activity and as such there are expectations, norms, and communicative functions of swearing. Swear words can be remarkably versatile, and the same swear word can 97 SWEARING ON TELEVISION — GENDER, LANGUAGE, AND POWER IN THE THICK OF IT EMELIE GUSTAFSON - RASK NO. 46 perform distinct interpersonal functions in different contexts (Trudgill and Andersson 1990; Stapleton 2003 and 2010; Beers Fägersten 2012; Baruch and Jenkins 2006). With scripted language, the writers can use the norms and expectations of for instance femininity, to create and present characters of interest to the viewer. In this study, some focus will be on social status and powerful and pow- erless speakers. Here, social status is seen as the status acquired through the professional position the character holds, as well as by how the person speaks and acts. That is, two characters who hold the same position might not have the same social status. Similarly, power is seen as something that is performed through what and how something is said. A character can be charismatic or invoke fear, and thereby display power. As the satire studied here is set in a political workplace, it is not surprising that the contextualized power that operates in this setting is used to form characters that promote and challenge norms and expectations. In The thick of it, characters can hold a socially powerful professional position, but still be the less powerful speaker in certain contexts. One example is Nicola, who as the leader of a political party is powerful, but who sometimes is portrayed as powerless. This is context-based, and many aspects interact to create identity: gender, age, socio-economical background, as well as status. Several characters shift between being powerful and powerless speakers, depending on the situation. As we shall see in this study, swearing plays a part in the con- struction of characters, and had each swear word been coded for context in the corpus, stronger claims could have been made on the relationship between powerful speakers and swearing. Gender and language are not only performed by people, but are also concepts people are exposed to by society, through, among other things, the media. The thick of it, as a television series aired recently, should be able to give some clues to how the media portray men’s and women’s language today. One must bear in mind that The thick of it is a scripted television series, which means that the language cannot be seen as spontaneous speech. Furthermore, the writers of the series are male, and the language 98 99 SWEARING ON TELEVISION — GENDER, LANGUAGE, AND POWER IN THE THICK OF IT EMELIE GUSTAFSON - RASK NO. 46 is restricted to British English. There is also, supposedly, a fair amount of improvisation incorporated when recording the episodes (Addison 2009)1. This paper aims to discuss and answer two questions: How do men and women differ in their use of swearing in The thick of it? Are there any gender differences in how and whether the relative status of speakers influences their use of swearing in The thick of it? 2. Background The following brief background brings up earlier research on relation- ships between gender, swearing, and workplace, gender and social power, communicative functions of swearing and on fictional language. Robin Lakoff’s Language and woman’s place (1975) is a starting point for much of the research on gender and language, and many researchers have both agreed and disagreed with her. Talbot (2010) points out that ‘the value of [Lakoff’s] early exploration of issues in gender and language lies not so much in the identification of particular speech characteristics as in the political argument that she was making, namely that “women are systematically denied access to power, on the grounds that they are not capable of holding it as demonstrated by their linguistic behaviour”’ (Lakoff 2004:42, quoted in Talbot 2010:41). Lakoff (1975) claimed that certain features are typical of women’s speech and that one of these is its lack of swearing. Though not invariably found, Lakoff’s claims have been corroborated by other researchers (e.g. Coates 2004). Holmes and Schnurr (2006) discuss the issue of gender in the workplace, and as The thick of it is set in a professional environment, Holmes and Schnurr’s discussion on gender is relevant. They claim that ‘in all workplaces in- dividuals unavoidably enact gendered roles, adopt recognisably gender- ed stances, and construct gender identity in the process of interacting with others at work’ (2006:33). Power and politeness in the workplace are also discussed in Holmes and Stubbe (2003), and gendered talk at work has been further elaborated upon by Holmes (2006). Baruch and 98 99 SWEARING ON TELEVISION — GENDER, LANGUAGE, AND POWER IN THE THICK OF IT EMELIE GUSTAFSON - RASK NO. 46 Jenkins (2006) discuss swearing in workplace discourse and conclude that different domains dictate the use of different speech modes, which sometimes include the use of swearing. They describe that confrontational language which violates taboos is viewed as a powerful style of speech in Western culture, and that swearing is considered powerful because it challenges the societal class codes. The fact that social power often is a more important factor than gen- der has been shown in Vivian de Klerk’s early research on social power in South African adolescents’ use of expletives. Her results on swearing supported the hypothesis that ‘high-intensity language is associated not only with sex of informant but with other factors, all of which can be linked to the idea of ‘social power’ in some way’ (1991:165) and showed that adolescents ‘test the strength of taboos in direct proportion to the amount of social power they appear to have’ (1991:166). Romaine (1999) discusses gendered play, and how boys tend to have more hierarchically organized groups, where high value is placed on obscene language and swearing. The image that women should not swear has been defended many times. This norm is changing but was firmly held historically. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) describe earlier studies showing that older respondents in a study by Vincent (1982) thought that swearing was more ‘ugly’ in a woman than in a man, and that men especially held this view. The view that it is not ‘ladylike’ to swear has been corroborated in Beers Fägersten’s quite recent interviews (2012:140). Swearing fills certain communicative functions, and these can be high- ly versatile. The same swear word can be used in several ways, as well as perform different interpersonal functions in different contexts (Trudgill and Andersson 1990). Stapleton identifies four categories: ‘expressing emotion; humour and verbal emphasis; social bonding and solidarity; and constructing and displaying identity’ (2010:290). Research on rudeness also shows that it can display pragmatic competence. Beebe (1995) argues that rudeness has two functions: to obtain power and to vent negative feelings. Even though rudeness, or impoliteness, is beyond the scope of 100 101 SWEARING ON TELEVISION — GENDER, LANGUAGE, AND POWER IN THE THICK OF IT EMELIE GUSTAFSON - RASK NO. 46 this study, it can be tied to the use of swearing. Jay (2000) suggests that the primary purpose of swearing is the expression of an emotional state and that the cathartic function of swearing is to substitute for physical aggression - something that is linked to notions of power, dominance and masculinity (de Klerk 1991). The fact that The thick of it is fictional language is also of importance. Richardson (2010) discusses how dramatic dialogue on television shows audiences that characters behave in different ways in their various narra- tives, and brings up The thick of it as one example of a comedy that is in the business of language display: ‘This behind-the-scenes sitcom about British politics has been described as offering “a masterclass in creative swearing”’ (2010:58). Bednarek (2010) argues that ‘while TV dialogue may well in general be more “emotional” than naturally occurring conversa- tion, different series and genres are distinguished in how they express such emotionality’ (2010:87). She mentions the fact that many series, being aimed at a certain type of audience, use or refrain from using swear words or taboo language: this, however, does not mean that they do not use any emotive interjections.
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