Profanity

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A common cartoonish depiction of profanity substituting symbols for words.

Profanity is “the quality or state of being profane” (see sacred-profane dichotomy). It can also relate to using profane language, or desecration or disrespect toward an object of religious veneration.[1] It can be a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, or vulgar. Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: cuss, curse, derogatory language, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscene language, and blasphemous language. In many cultures, it is less absurd for an adult to curse than it is for a child, who may get reprimanded for cursing.

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[edit] Usage

A profanity will have an original meaning (which may change across time and language) which in itself may give some cause for offense. Additionally, many profanities will have applied meanings of their own, usually associated to their context and which therefore may vary significantly depending upon the intended purpose of the word in the sentence. For example, "fuck", a common (often considered strong) profanity in English, is a verb for the act of sexual intercourse and may be used literally in this sense ("I fucked her all night long."). It could be used in this state as well ("He fucked her all night long.") It is also used in the context of an exclamation ("Fucking hell!") or to refer to acts of violence ("I'll fuck you up!"), or to an error ("He fucked it up."). It can also be used to add weight to a sentence ("That was fucking cool!") or ("Let's get off this fucking bus!")

The incredible diversity of these profanities and their multiple connotations is pointed out to humorous effect in Troy Duffy's film The Boondock Saints, where one character discovers a room full of assassinated Russian Mobsters and proclaims, "What the fucking fuck did you fucking fucks fuck this fucking... FUCK." To which one of the two main protagonists of the movie replies "Well, it certainly illustrates the diversity of the word." This particular string of profanity was used solely for humourous value.

The degree to which a profanity is offensive is a highly subjective matter as it relies upon how the use of the word affects an individual or group of individuals. Some will consider the original meaning of a word (for example, the sexual act) as being offensive or as a subject not fit for polite conversation (sexual acts, sexual references or reference to bodily parts, or religiously sensitive subjects) whilst others will have no objection to these subject matters and therefore words used to describe them.

Some will feel that certain words, having an established social taboo associated with them, are simply offensive by themselves, regardless of any context in which they are used; others will find profanities offensive mainly when used in a way deliberately intended to offend or insult, but less offensive in other contexts, such as a neutral exclamation.

Furthermore, some people may be in the habit of using highly insulting language (which may include profanity) for style or comedy purpose, especially amongst friends or familiar company where the intention is either not to insult or is to apply only a very mild insult. Thus, otherwise highly offensive insults can be used as terms of endearment, such as "How's it going, motherfucker?"

A 2007 peer reviewed study by the University of East Anglia found that banning profanity in the workplace and reprimanding staff for using it could have a negative impact on morale and motivation. According to the study while swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and relieved frustration, stress or other feelings.[2]

Finally, profanities may cause offense, regardless of context, if they have some religious meaning which may cause their use to offend those who follow a particular religion. The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying the Abrahamic God's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. Profanity in this context could be represented as a secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a direct attack on them, often interpreted as such, even when the intent was not to do so. Such religious profanity is referred to as blasphemy.

As the concept of a profanity has been extended to include expressions with scatological, sexist, derogatory, racist, or sexual interpretations, the broader concept of 'socially unacceptable' language has emerged, with religious meaning playing a varying role, and the more vague and inclusive interpretation blurring the distinction between categories of offensiveness. This modern concept of profanity has evolved differently in different cultures and languages. For example, many profanities in Canadian French are a corruption of religious terminology (the sacres), while many English obscenities tend to reference sexuality or scatology. A term which functions as a profanity in one language may often lack any profane quality when translated into another language.

[edit] Western history

Terms of profanity have historically been taboo words. Some words that were originally considered profane have become much less offensive with the increasing secularity of society. Others, primarily racial or ethnic epithets, can be considered part of hate speech.

William Shakespeare hinted at the word cunt in Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Henry V: Hamlet makes reference to "country matters" when he tries to lay his head in Ophelia's lap; Malvolio has the salacious line (although the term "cut" was an accepted euphemism for vagina in the early sixteenth century) "These be her very c's, her u's, and her t's, and thus she makes her great p's"; and the French Princess Katherine is amused by the word gown for its similarity to the French con. Interestingly, the word "cunt," while retaining its original meaning in America, has changed in meaning somewhat in Great Britain in the past thirty years. Where American usage of the word mostly refers to either female anatomy or (in extreme cases) an ill-tempered woman, "cunt" in the UK has attained the status of a gender-neutral insult, akin to arsehole/asshole etc.

In the U.S. today, terminology considered to be racist is often seen as more offensive than sexual or scatological terminology; this is most clearly shown in the attention given to use of the word nigger, now effectively banned in American public discourse, although many African-Americans use the word nigga as a casual reference, and in certain racist or racially-biased social groups, nigger as a casual reference to black people is still in frequent use. Some mistakenly associate the word niggardly (meaning "stingy") with 'nigger." [3] As with other types of profanity, context is very important; thus, Americans of African descent might use 'nigger' in informal situations among themselves, without being considered offensive.[citation needed] Slurs such as faggot and fag, though incidentally sexual in nature, are considered highly offensive and derogatory toward gay people.

Many of the words now considered most 'profane' are held to be so because they were created to insult and disparage a particular group (see pejorative terms). Some of the targets of these words have however attempted to reclaim them and reduce their power as insults. Other ethnic slurs like dottie (Indian person)[citation needed], chink (Chinese person), wetback (Hispanic), guinea(Italian/Greek), "kraut" (German--used especially during World War II), raghead (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like "fattie", "retard", and "redneck" aren't entirely profane to a society, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially accepted in polite settings or social situations.

The offensiveness or perceived 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 the King James Bible unblushingly employs it where modern translators would prefer 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). The word cunt has seen a similar evolution; its ancestor ("queynte") was not considered vulgar at all, but the word is now considered among the most offensive words in the English language.

[edit] Profanity as blasphemy, scoff, curse and insult at deity

The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying the Abrahamic god's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. Profanity represented a secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, and religious people consider it sinful.

Profanities in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults, which laughed and scoffed at the deity.[4][5] In the Middle Ages Europe the most improper and sinful "oaths" where those invoking the body of the Lord and its various parts, as the Italian Pote di Cristo! ("Christ's cunt")[citation needed], and these were precisely the oaths most frequently used.[6] An example from Gargantua and Pantagruel is "Christ, look ye, its Mere de . . . merde . . . shit, Mother of God."[7]

[edit] Severity

The relative severity of the various British profanities, as perceived by the public, was studied on behalf of the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority; the results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete Expletives". It listed the profanities in order of decreasing severity, the top ten being cunt, motherfucker, fuck, wanker, nigger, bastard, prick, bollocks, asshole, and paki in that order. About 83% of respondents regarded cunt as "very severe"; 16% thought the same about shit and 10% crap. Only about 1% thought cunt was "not swearing"; 9% thought the same about shit and 32% crap.

It is notable that there is a significant difference between the US and Britain in this regard: wanker and bollocks are known as swear words only to those familiar with British English, and are completely unused in the US.

[edit] Interlanguage

The situation is rendered even more complex when other languages enter the picture. Merde in French, and Mist or Scheisse in German (both usually translated as shit) are also quite common, as well as Italian and Portuguese Merda or Spanish Mierda. While German and some other languages' profanity seems to focus on elimination, profanities in many Romance languages tend to make reference to religion, and English profanity tends to be sexual in nature. Italian represents an exception here, due to the massive use of Cazzo and Fica (translated as dick and cunt, with the latter being less insulting than English) in common speech; both are very common in the Italian language and both have, for the most part, lost their vulgar meaning. Likewise, in European Spanish, coño (usually translated as cunt in English) is in some places very common in informal spoken discourse, meaning no more than "Hey!". Its frequent use by Spaniards led to the labelling of the class of Filipinos with Spanish ancestry as konyos. However, In different locales the word has a much stronger negative connotation.

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; such words are called false friends. Fuck sounds like the French words for seal (phoque) and jib (foc), the Spanish words for seal (foca) and lightbulb (foco) or the Irish word for words (focail), as well as the Latin and Romanian words for do (I do can be facio in Latin or fac eu in Romanian, which sounds a lot like the English fuck you). Arabic for "think" sounds just like "you fucker". Also, Croatian phrase fakat sounds similar to English "fuck at" when it actually means "factually". 'Fuck' also sounds like the Latin imperative singular form of "do" or "make" ("fac"), the Swedish word for union (fack); shit sounds somewhat like the Russian for "shield" (щит). The Cantonese words for "flower" and "bridge" when said together ("fa kyu") sounds vaguely similar to "fuck you". Also, the Latin singular imperative of "say" ("dic") and the Dutch word for "fat" ("dik") are pronounced like the English "dick". The German word for "fat" is both spelled and pronounced as the word "dick" in English. And the Dutch word for "cook" or "chef" ("kok") sounds exactly like cock. Several European translations of the English word "bassoon" sound very similar to the American English swear word "faggot", such as the Albanian "fagot". 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 fairly common Thai name is Porn. In Bengali, Fukeer is a personal name. In Latin, cum means "with", but it can be a profane word for "ejaculation" in English. Both cum and precum are prepositions in Romanian but can have profane, explicitly sexual meanings in English.

A particular coincidence is the Hungarian and Spanish and Italian words for curve: Spanish curva sounds like a Slavic, Romanian and Hungarian kurva meaning "prostitute" (or, more offensively, "whore"), and Hungarian kanyar sounds like coño, mentioned above. The word con is a profanity in French, but simply means "with" in Spanish and Italian. Apparently, L.L. Zamenhof chose kurba as the Esperanto word for "curved" to avoid the Slavic profanity evoked by the more etymological *kurva. See another example in Laputa. Additionally, puta is genitive and accusative case of two often used words in south Slavic languages; but in Portuguese and Spanish, means "whore", and filho da puta (Spanish: hijo de puta) is an offensive word, similar to son of a bitch, but actually worse: "son of a prostitute". In Finnish, katso merta means look at the sea, but to Italophones it sounds very similar to cazzo merda; cazzo is the English equivalent of cock or dick, and merda means shit. While cazzo merda does not make much sense grammatically (they are just two nouns put one after the other), hearing such a thing would be funny for Italians, to say the least. Even more for Spaniards, since the same sentence, katso merta, sounds just like the offensive expression cacho mierda (piece of shit) in Spanish. The Spanish word puse (the first-person past-tense of to put) sounds similar to the English pussy. This is often a source of discomfort for Spanish teachers and humor for Spanish students when the conjugation is being taught, at least in North America ("pussy" simply means "kitten" in Australasia[citation needed]). (The previous sentence may also be considered a meta-joke using a pun on the word "conjugation".) The chemistry term gel, which means the same thing in Spanish as in English, sounds like the English "hell" when said by a Spanish speaker.

In at least one case in Spanish, one word with one connotation in the native language of one of its colonies (in this case, the Philippines) was adopted with another profane connotation in Spanish. The Tagalog word pinga (which means a pole, particularly the one used as a whip to strike or otherwise drive a stray horse into walking on a straight line) is regarded as an equivalent of dick in some Spanish countries, particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico. Yet the word pinga in Portuguese is the slang name for Cachaça, a Brazilian alcoholic beverage.

The American pronunciation of the English word follow is almost identical to the Spanish word falo (penis), a non-profanity cognate with phallus.

Canadian 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. Some of these terms have euphemistic alternatives which are also religious terms, but not Catholic ones.

The German and Finnish interjection for surprise or admiration Hui! sounds completely like the Russian and Polish swear word literally meaning "penis" (Polish chuj, Russian and Bulgarian xyй). The Maori word hui, meaning a meeting or gathering, is very similar in pronunciation.

"Fáklya", Hungarian for "torch", sounds pretty much like English "fuck ya". The British pronunciation of "fast" sounds like Hungarian "faszt", which is the accusative form of "dick" or "cock". The Polish word "być", which is the infinitive for "to be" (in terms of location), is pronounced exactly like the English word "bitch".

A more exotic example of interlanguage profanity is the English word "Carry" which sounds exactly the same as a Sinhala (Spoken in Sri Lanka) expletive, literally meaning "semen". It is originally a Semitic loanword (cf. keri).

In something of a coincidence, the Afrikaans word "kak," pronounced like cock, an English slang term for penis, literally means "shit." In this case, both words are profane. In Dutch, the source of Afrikaans, "kak" means excrement as well (especially animal excrement), but is not particularly offensive. The English word wife is very offensive to the Dutch and Flemish, the word "wijf" is a highly derogary term for a vulgar, offensive women, to the point that it is almost exclusively used by natives cursing someone with disease: "teringwijf" implies tuberculosis, "klerewijf" cholera.

[edit] International languages

International auxiliary languages are often assumed to have little or no profanity, but this varies from one language to another. The basic criterion for inclusion in Interlingua is widespread international use, and this is as true of a profanity as any other word or phrase. Thus, expressions such as cunno, 'cunt', merda, 'shit', and pipi, 'pee-pee', may be freely used in Interlingua. Culo, 'ass', 'butt', 'culo', and its derivative incular, 'to butt-fuck', are also Interlingua expressions. Fottar, 'to fuck', is used much as in English: Fotta te! 'Fuck you!' Mi auto es fottate! 'My car is fucked!'

[edit] Profanity in different languages and religions

For reasons of differing cultural, linguistic and historical backgrounds, the profanities of different languages place emphasis on different subject matter. In briefest summary, here is a list showing main differences or emphasis for some common languages:

  • Arabic: sacrilege/blasphemy, excrement, sex, homosexuality, gender identity, and reproductive organs
  • Chinese: sex, insults to family members, cursing (e.g. Cantonese: "Hum Gah Chan" which literally means "Your entire family gets wiped out").
  • Dravidian languages: equating people with animals
  • Dutch: reproductive organs, diseases, self-damnation and blasphemy supplemented with English swearwords.
  • English: sex, excrement, homosexuality, religion, incest, increasingly bigotry, racial/ethnic hatred, prostitution, prejudice.
  • French: sex, excrement, religion, racial/ethnic hatred.
  • German: Equating people with animals, (e.g., Schweinehund), sex, excrement, bigotry/prejudice, Nazi terminology.
  • Indo-Aryan languages: insults to family members, esp. incest
  • Indonesian: sex, reproductive organs, excrement, animals, racial
  • Interlingua: sex, excrement, religion.
  • Irish: religion (damnation, blasphemy), some sexual terms, and some excrement
  • Italian: blasphemy, some sexual terms, personal insults (e.g. "your mother").
  • Japanese: sex, violations of politeness protocols, discriminatory language, mocking status, insulting intelligence.
  • Korean: Impolite responses to people, esp. family and authority, references to animals, sexual terms
  • Modern Hebrew: Yiddish loanwords having sexual meaning
  • Norwegian: Predominantly religion/blasphemy in the south, but more genitals and sexual acts with animals further north in the country
  • Polish: sex, prostitution, homosexuality, diseases, excrement, comparing people to pigs and dogs
  • Portuguese: sex, homosexuality, prostitution.
  • Russian: sex and foul language, excrement, mental illness, equating people with animals, ethnic hatred.
  • Scots Gaelic: sex, excrement, religion, English-Scottish tensions
  • Spanish: religion, incest, homosexuality, excrement, prostitution.
  • Swedish: sex, excrement, homosexuality, blasphemy and use of English.
  • Tagalog: sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, incest, political insults.
  • Welsh: sex, excrement, English-Welsh tensions

[edit] Severity of profanity types in European languages

In European languages the three basic types of profanity (religious, sexual, and excretory) have differing levels of severity. The type generally considered worst is listed first, down to the type generally considered least offensive.

  • French, Italian, Provencal: religious> sexual> excretory
  • Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish: sexual> religious> excretory
  • English: sexual> excretory> religious
  • Welsh, Swedish: excretory> religious> sexual

[edit] Books containing famous uses of profanity

[edit] References

  1. ^ ”Definition of Profane”, emphasis on original, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, retrieved on June 5th, 2007.
  2. ^ Swearing at work boosts team spirt, morale October 17, 2007
  3. ^ For example, in a highly publicized incident in 1999, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony A. Williams, pressed for the resignation of his staff member, David Howard, because Howard used the word "niggardly" in a private staff meeting (Washington Post).
  4. ^ Bakhtin 1941, "introduction", p.5-6
  5. ^ Meletinsky, Eleazar Moiseevich The Poetics of Myth (Translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky) 2000 Routledge ISBN 0415928982 p.110
  6. ^ Bakhtin 1941, chap.2 "The Language of the Marketplace in Rabelais", p.188-194
  7. ^ François Rabelais, Gargantua book, chap. XVII; Mere de and merde has a close sound to (mierda) which means (shit) when translate from Spanish. Full text of Chapter 16, Rabelais and His World at Google Books.
8. Me

[edit] Bibliography - sources

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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