English profanities (i.e. potentially offensive words, including swear words) have been in use for decades in the Nordic languages – Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish – and offer a multitude of opportunities for linguistic expression, along with the domestic, heritage profanities in each language. The Nordic countries present an interesting context for studying the impact of English on languages in remote-contact settings, where many, especially young people, are bilingual but English has no official status. While previous studies have mostly focused on the function of such words and investigated their appearance in each Nordic language in isolation, this study utilizes social media data from the Nordic Tweet Stream (Laitinen et al., 2018) to compare the forms and frequencies of the English profanities fuck, shit, ass, damn, bitch and hell across the Nordic languages, shedding light on the factors which are conducive to their use. Surprisingly, the English profanities were many times more frequent in the Icelandic material compared to the other languages, although Iceland has a strong tradition of linguistic purism and frequencies were expected to be lower than in the other languages. Contrastingly, the profanities were found to be morphologically and orthographically adapted to a higher degree in Icelandic, reflecting the purist tradition in other ways. Frequencies in the other four languages did not quite match the findings of previous studies on loanwords in the Nordic languages, while degrees of adaptation were more similar to previous results. Comparing the frequencies of the English profanities in this study with the frequencies of heritage profanities on Twitter found by Coats (2021) showed that, although especially fuck and shit are on par with and sometimes more frequent than the most frequent heritage profanities, they do not seem to be replacing domestic equivalents. Finally, through exploiting the geo-location tags that accompany each tweet in the Nordic Tweet Stream, the frequencies of English profanities were found to be higher among users tweeting primarily from large cities in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, while in the Norwegian data no significant difference was found. Nevertheless, this supports Vaattovaara & Peterson’s (2019) claim that English borrowings carry social indices of globalism and urbanicity that promote their use among people in certain social groups. / Engelska fula ord (dvs. potentiellt stötande ord, inklusive svärord) har varit i bruk i årtionden i de nordiska språken – isländska, norska, danska, svenska och finska – och tillhandahåller en stor mängd språkliga uttrycksmöjligheter tillsammans med de inhemska fula orden i varje språk. De nordiska länderna utgör en intressant kontext för studier av engelskans inflytande över andra språk i distans-kontaktsituationer, där många, speciellt unga, är tvåspråkiga emedan engelska saknar officiell status. Då flertalet tidigare studier har fokuserat på denna typ av ords funktion, och undersökt deras förekomst i de nordiska språken var för sig, använder denna studie data från sociala medier, nämligen Nordic Tweet Stream (Laitinen et al., 2018) i en jämförelse av form och frekvens för de engelska fula orden fuck, shit, ass, damn, bitch och hell mellan de nordiska språken, för att därigenom synliggöra faktorer som gynnar deras bruk. Överraskande nog var de engelska fula orden långt mer frekventa i det isländska materialet jämfört med de övriga språken, trots att Island har en stark språkpuristisk tradition och frekvenserna därför förväntades vara lägre än i de andra språken. Däremot uppträdde de fula orden i högre grad i morfologiskt och ortografiskt anpassad form i isländska, vilket påvisar den puristiska traditionen på annat vis. Frekvenserna i de andra fyra språken skiljde sig något från resultaten av tidigare studier av lånord i de nordiska språken, medan anpassningsgraden var mer jämförbar med tidigare studier. En jämförelse av de engelska fula ordens frekvenser i denna studie med inhemska fula ords frekvenser på Twitter i en studie av Coats (2021) visade att medan fuck och shit mäter sig i frekvens med de vanligaste inhemska fula orden, och överträffar dem ibland, verkar de inte ersätta lokala motsvarigheter. Till sist påvisades, genom att utnyttja den geografiska platsdata som åtföljer varje tweet i Nordic Tweet Stream, att de engelska fula ordens frekvenser var högre bland användare som twittrar främst från stora städer i Danmark, Sverige och Finland, medan ingen signifikant skillnad kunde ses i den norska datan. Icke desto mindre styrker detta Vattovaara & Petersons (2019) tes gällande att lån från engelska bär med sig globala och urbana sociala indikationer som främjar deras bruk bland vissa sociala grupper.

The aim of this study is to analyse and categorise reports of swearing in public service media for the past ten years, as well as analysing the approach taken to the private persons making the reports and the reports themselves by the governing body Granskningsnämnden. Additionally, the language norm conflicts displayed were analysed. The methods used to accomplish this included directed content analysis of the reports and their context, and analysis of interpersonal communication as well as legitimation analysis of the written response provided by the authority. In total, 46 reports and two versions of the response letter were analysed. Finally, the language attitudes and associated norms of both sides were analysed and compared to distinguish conflicts. The results indicate that the private persons who report swearing have different expectations of public service than the media company or the governing body has, which is the cause of the language norm conflicts. The results also indicate that the presence of swearing in a public service media context appears more offensive that the swearing itself, as most of the swear words were not defined. Further, the analysis of the approach taken to the private persons making the reports indicates an authoritarian stance and an impersonal, distanced approach.