The Power of Language (Part 1)

Here's some thoughts (scattered over the next week) about language.

First up, let’s discuss swear words.

(Nitpicking note: there are two broad categories of swear words: profanity and vulgarity. Of course, in common usage, ‘profanity’ usually refers to all swear words, even though technically speaking it only properly refers to ‘profane’ language, or language that is 'degrading or contemptuous towads sacred things', while vulgarity refers to language that is ‘gross’, ‘coarse’, or ‘offends good taste or propriety’. Broadly speaking then, profanity is taking the Lord’s name in vain—and any and all related words and phrases—while vulgarity is everything else.)

Let’s put aside the ‘profane’ stuff for now, and just focus on the ‘vulgar’ swear words…

Question: what makes a word a swear word?

Consider the word this: T-H-I-S. Pretty innocuous, and in fact very common. It’s doubtful that anyone gets offended when the word this is used in a conversation. Yet, switch its letters around and you get a word that is widely considered to be vulgar and coarse and banned from common conversational usage. Obviously, then, the definition of a ‘swear word’ has nothing to do with the letters it is composed of (i.e. there are no letters that are individually considered to be ‘refined’ or ‘vulgar’…). Neither can you say it is the composite sounds of the word because there are hundreds of words that have an I-T suffix, or a S-H prefix and are no more vulgar than this is.

Going beyond the word composition then—is it the meaning of the word? Now we seem to be closer to the mark, since the meaning of swear words are almost universally something gross, coarse, or dirty. Still, there are other English words that have the same meaning, though, and while you probably wouldn’t use those words very often in casual conversation either, they aren’t usually considered offensive.

What’s left, then? Well, here’s another question: How many of you have ever heard someone use a swear word where they really didn’t know that it was a swear word—say, a child, or a foreigner just learning English? Was hearing the word used by that person different in any way from hearing someone who knows that it’s a swear word say it?

In my view, there is a detectable difference between the two: the feeling is different, even if the sound is the same. A person who is knowingly and purposely swearing has a negative and ugly outpouring of emotion behind their words, of which the actual swear word is just a manifestation. Someone from the ‘ignorant’ group may be using the actual word (and may have somewhat of an idea what it means), but the actual negative, ugly expression of feeling attached to it is lacking, since they didn’t really have that negative feeling when using that word to begin with. Consequently, I’d imagine most people (subconsciously, at least) would be significantly less offended by hearing someone in the ‘ignorant’ group swear than in the ‘deliberate’ group—although you’d still quickly correct the former group and encourage them not to say it again...

Here’s our current theorem, then: swear words are swear words not because of their inherent composition but because of the angry/dirty/gutteral feelings behind them. The words themselves are meaningless (to an extent), but the true ‘ugliness’ and hence the ‘offensiveness’ comes from the outpouring of negative emotion associated with them.

How, then, does this apply to ‘fake' swear words—you know, the ‘fetches’, the ‘freaks’, and the ‘flips’ of the world—sometimes called ‘Mormon swear words’ even though, of course, they are used frequently by non-members too. Here we have a phenomenon where the use of ‘fake’ swear words is judged to be superior than using the ‘real’ equivalents, even though according to our theorem, merely substituting one word for the other leaves the underlying ugly emotion behind them the same. Are the ‘fake swear words’ really better than the real ones in some substantive way? Or are they merely abstract ways of packaging the same bad emotions (the real problem) into slightly more socially acceptable forms?

Let’s hold on, though…we’re still missing a few things from our analysis.

Here’s question #2: How many of you have seen a movie (from England or Australia, perhaps) featuring ‘foreign swear words’—English words that are used as swear words in other cultures, but not in the U.S. (“Sliding Doors” from 1998 with Gwyneth Paltrow is one of my favorites—that’s got tons of “British profanity”) How do you feel when you hear foreigners use words that you know they consider to be swear words, yet you do not. If you’re like me, you probably don’t find it offensive at all—often quite amusing, actually. Yet, the situation is exactly the opposite from question #1 above—here we have a person who is purposefully swearing (with the inherently ugly emotions that entails), yet it still fails to register on most foreigners' 'offensiveness’ scale. Shouldn’t we be having the same reaction to the underlying negative feelings, even if the words are unfamiliar?

This implies that there is a receiving component to some words that needs to be present in addition to the giving in order for swearing to be swearing. This is almost certainly culture based, and not easily changed: an Australian may explain to you exactly what ‘bloody’ means in certain contexts and why it’s not a good thing to say, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to start being personally offended whenever you hear it from that day forward. Compare this dual aspect to vulgarity to someone who’s throwing handfuls of mud in your direction versus someone who’s throwing it in the completely opposite direction from where you are standing. The mud is just as dirty in both cases, but you only really care about it when it’s close to you—and, in fact, might find it rather fun or interesting in the second case.

Back to ‘Mormon’ swear words, then—if society has found ‘fake’ equivalents to be acceptable from an offensiveness standpoint and we, in fact, don’t have that ‘receiving’ component in play—then maybe we have found a substantive difference between the two.

Personally, I don’t like ‘fake’ swear words any more than real ones and don’t use them myself nor will I encourage my children to. Then again, I have yet to turn off a TV show or movie for using the word 'freak'... I think this analysis shows that the issue is somewhat more complex than you might originally think—neither obviously okay or obviously not okay.

More tomorrow…