Swearing in South Africa: Multidisciplinary research on language taboos
Channel: gerhardvanh
Date: 2021-12-08

Very little to no research has been done on swearing within the South African context, which is quite surprising, given that using certain swearwords (i.e., racial slurs) is punishable by law. To address this void, we established a multidisciplinary project with its primary roots in the digital humanities, and with inputs from and implications to (amongst others) linguistics, literary studies, communication studies, neurology, psychology, sociology, computer sciences, and law. This project (and specifically the topic of swearing) holds the potential to provide insights in human cognition and social interaction, while situating it broadly within the scope of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The project commenced in July 2019, and is currently ongoing.

This presentation was presented at the conference of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA), December 2021.

Publication about this project:
https://gerhard.pro/publications/vanhuyssteen2021a/

Project website:
https://vloek.co.za/

Other outputs from the project:
https://gerhard.pro/category/research-projects/what-the-swearword/