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Profanity is a word choice or usage which many
consider to be offensive. The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or taking God's name in vain
(profane speech, or swear word), especially expressions such as "God damn it", "go to Hell", and "damn
you". The word bloody may belong in this category. They are sometimes made
mild, resulting in less recognizable forms, such as the minced oaths.
However, the meaning has been extended to include scatological, sexist,
homophobic, racist, or sexual terms (in English, primarily shit, piss, fuck,
cunt, cock, dick, tits, twat, faggot, and, frequently, bitch and bastard). The list includes words that are
merely vulgar as well as those thought obscene. Compare the concept of the four-letter
word.
Definition
There has always been great difficulty in defining profanity. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in response to complaints about a 1973 broadcast
comedy routine by George Carlin
called Seven
words you can never say on television, ruled that such language could not be broadcast "at times of day when there is a
reasonable risk that children may be in the audience." The Supreme Court of the United States upheld this act of censorship in 438 U.S. 726 (1978). The words occurring in Carlin's monologue were: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Carlin's routine using these words has since been broadcast, however. In the early
1960s, Lenny Bruce had been taken to
court for using some of these same words in his own comedy routines.
History
Terms of profanity have historically been taboo words. Some words
originally considered profane have become much less offensive with the increasing secularity of society, while others, primarily
racial or ethnic epithets which can be considered part of hate speech, have
become increasingly taboo.
The word cunt maintains much of its taboo status at least partly due to the influence of feminism, though other feminists are attempting to "reclaim" a neutral or complimentary status for this
word. Shakespeare hinted at the word in Henry V and Hamlet:
Hamlet quips about "country matters" when he tries to lay his head in Ophelia's lap; and the French Princess Katherine is amused by the word gown for its similarity
to the French for cunt, coun.
Many people today consider the word nigger much more
offensive than sexual or scatalogical terms. (Although it depends on the context in which it is used -- people of African descent sometimes use the term among themselves, typically dropping the r and
ending on the vowel: nigga.) This sensitivity to the word nigger has even extended to the point of attempting
to ban the use of the word niggardly (meaning "stingy"), which many mistakenly believe to be related to the word
nigger.
Psycholinguistic studies have demonstrated that profanity and
other taboo words produce physical effects in people who read or hear them, such as an elevated heart rate.
This fact is seen by some as evidence that reclaiming of words such as queer
is a valid way to remove its power. See also the article on nigger, as well as Drum and Bass for the
reclaiming of the word jungle.
The offensiveness or peceived intensity or vulgarity of the various profanities can change over time, with certain words
becoming more or less offensive as time goes on. For example, in modern times the word "piss" is usually considered mildly vulgar
and somewhat impolite, whereas it appears in the King James Version of the Bible where modern translations would use the word "urine" (2
Kings 18:27; Isa 36:12) or "urinate" (1 Sam 25:22, 25:34; 1 Kings 14:10, 16:11, 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8).
Interlanguage
The situation is rendered more complex when other languages enter the picture. In French, merde as well as Scheiße in German (both usually translated as "shit") are also quite common; in over 50% of airline crash recordings,
these are the last words uttered by the crew in the cockpit; these words are expletives meaning little more than "Damn!". It is
also interesting to note that while German and other languages' profanity seems to focus on precipitation, English seems to have
an issue with sexuality in this respect. Likewise, in European Spanish, coņo (usually translated as "cunt" in English) is very common in informal spoken
discourse, meaning no more than "Hey!" or "Christ!"
Some scholars have noted that while the French and Spanish are comfortable hearing native speakers use these words, they tend
to hear the "stronger" meaning when the same words are spoken by non-native speakers. This may be similar to the differences in
the acceptability of queer or nigger depending on who is saying the words. Or it may be an example of how it is
easier to learn swear words in a new language or dialect than to learn the fine shades of intensity which accompany their
use.
A profane word in one language often sounds like an ordinary word in another. Fuck sounds like the French words for
seal (phoque) and jib
(foc), as well as the Romania word for 'do' (I do = eu
fac); shit sounds like the Russian for "sewn". Even names
in one language may appear as vulgar words in another linguistic community, which causes many immigrants to change their names
(common Vietnamese personal names include Phuc and Bich). A particular coincidence is the Hungarian and Spanish words for "curve": Spanish curva sounds like a Slavic and Hungarian kurva meaning "prostitute", and Hungarian
kanyar sounds like coņo, mentioned above. In Romanian "curva" means "prostitute". See another example in
Laputa. Additionally, "puta" is genitive and accusative case of two often used words in
south Slavic languages.
Quebec French can string a few basic terms from Roman Catholic liturgy into quite impressive strings of invective of up to a
minute or more. This is known as sacre.
Russia
Profanity took a very interesting form in Russia where there exists a language of
sorts, most of its words based on four basic profane roots - nouns penis, whore, cunt and verb
fuck. At least two hundred derivative words exist in this language, plus countless word combinations. It is possible to
sensibly communicate using just these four basic roots. Due to countless very fine nuances (stress on a different syllable
changes the meaning of certain words etc.) it is not easy to master that language which is very widely used in Russia, especially
in rural areas. Before the 1990s these words never appeared in print (except special
articles published in universities) and they remain officially banned on TV and
in the movies.
Computers
A computer programming language called f*ckf*ck has been devised using the same idea. There is also another computer language
known as Brainfuck with similar aspirations.
External links and references
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