Global Swearword, local ideologies: The Re-semiotization and indexical field of Fuck in Taiwan

This study examines how the English swearword fuck is taken up in Taiwan—a context where English functions as a foreign language—by analyzing metapragmatic commentaries on a controversial moment in which a prominent actress uttered fuck during her acceptance speech at a major awards ceremony. While swearing in official settings, especially by a woman, is conventionally viewed as inappropriate, public reactions to this incident were mixed, with a majority supportive. Drawing on Christie's (2013) discursive-pragmatic approach to swearing and on the linguistic-anthropological and sociolinguistic notions of indexical order (Silverstein, 2003), indexical field (Eckert, 2008), and language ideological assemblage (Kroskrity, 2010), the analysis identifies multiple, and at times conflicting, indexical associations in the metapragmatic discourse: fuck as inappropriate/vulgar, genuine/authentic, cosmopolitan/sophisticated, performative/professional, gendered, and class-oriented. These associations function as micro-instantiations of broader ideological regimes of moral order, gender propriety, cosmopolitanism, and affective performance. By linking micro-level evaluations to a heterogeneous yet traceable ideological assemblage, the study shows the analytic value of a language ideological perspective for socio-pragmatics research and demonstrates how global linguistic hierarchies are re-semiotized through local moral and affective dynamics.