Strong Language 2: Swear Harder

Back in December I introduced Strong Language, a new group blog about the use, culture, and linguistics of profanity cooked up by James Harbeck and me. While some of you are now regular readers, others may be unaware of it or glad of a reminder or an update, so this post can address that. The language below may offend, so caveat lector.

Strong Language started well and this year has gone from strength to sweary strength. We’ve redesigned its appearance, partnered with Slate’s Lexicon Valley, and added more writers to the team of regular contributors. The @stronglang Twitter account ties in with the blog but does its own stuff too, such as film stills and swearwords of the day.

I’ve written ten posts for Strong Language and have as many more in various stages of completion or planning. Published posts look at filthy old songs, Irish English shite, multilingual swearing, and Rob Chirico’s book Damn!, among other things. I also compile ‘Sweary links’ – like the ‘Link love’ posts here on Sentence first, but swearing-related.

Other SLers have written about how many swears we have not given (Stephen Chrisomalis), the trouble with retard(ed) (Iva Cheung), rude phrases for cold weather (Karen Conlin), masturbatory slang (Jonathon Green), the intensifying affixal -shit, (Kory Stamper), a sweary primer on pragmatics (James Harbeck), DIY oathmaking (Daniel Sosnoski), mother _uckers in branding (Nancy Friedman), the culture of swear jars (John Kelly), St Patrick’s bad language (Terry O’Hagan), and when shit hits the newspapers (Ben Zimmer).

That’s just a flavour – there are over 80 posts so far, and new ones appear regularly, if unpredictably. That of course is part of the fun: it’s a constant pleasure to see what people come up with next and the enthusiasm and flair with which they pull it off. So if you’re interested in language that is rude, vulgar, taboo, and profane, go forth and visit, subscribe, bookmark, blog-roll (is that a verb yet?), and spread the bad word about Strong Language.