Profanity
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.
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.
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).
The relative severity of the various English 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 severity, the top ten being "cunt", "motherfucker", "fuck", "wanker", "nigger", "bastard", "prick", "bollocks", "arsehole", and "paki", in that order. 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".
The situation is rendered more complex when other languages enter the picture. In French, merde as well as ScheiÃÂe 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, coño (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 coño, 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.
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.
Profanity is, according to most linguists, virtually nonexistant in Japanese language except for dialects of words with a meaning of "stupid". Instead, profanity is expressed by intentionally using disrespectful forms of words and sentences and slight change in accents and facial expressions. Words that could carry implied profanity are too numerous to list and they change at a rapid pace. Words deemed profane by internal policies on TV are canceled with a loud electric beeping sound but many performers turn the table by intentionally having out a part of their talks canceled with beeping sounds or saying beep themselves to make a joke.
One of the reason of the nonexistance of profanity is because of the belief of Kotodama (言霊), lit. word spirits. Kotodama appear when spoken, written, or even thought and they can eaily be "tainted" with ill intentions and evil spirits. Even today, Japanese avoid mentioning directly or with words that implies harms to keep away tainted evil Kotodama. This can, of course be reversed to bring about harms to someone or something and common everyday words are used profanely in this case.
Another reason is that Buddhism and Shinto that Japanese believed, offered equal rights and protections to female and male. Prostitution, shamed in many religions, is merely a job and virginity, praised in many religions, is just a condition in a female's life. In Kojiki, to lure out the highest deity in Shinto, Amaterasu, a female deity performed a dance either unclothed or took off clothes as a part of performance infront of other deities. Some of those that study Kojiki have gone as far as to claim that this implies that an actual sex was performed.
This causes an unique problem when translating other languages' profanities used in a book, a movie, etc., they come out much too mild or when religious profanities like "Damn!" appears, translating its meaning will make it a meaningless and unconvincing gabble. This makes most movies rated "R" for use of obscene and offensive words perfectly suitable for even a young kids as offensive meanings cannot be translated well. When translating from Japanese into other languages, however, words will come out too gentle and circumstancial.
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.
Definition
History
Severity
Interlanguage
Russia
Japan
Computers
External links and references