( b. from Norway writes: "If you are still working on your blog, may i suggest an entry concerning your views on the use and effects of swearing on language and awareness?")
"Billions of blue-blistering barnacles!" This verbal outburst is typical for Captain Archibald Haddock from Herge's incomparable TINTIN adventure series. Does it count as profanity? What really IS an obscene term?
In English we use swear words interchangably with profanities. We lump together the language of fierce oaths & lower bodily functions, curses, and Divine Names taken in vain. These are the core obscenities -- shit, fuck, cocksucker, asshole, pussy, cunt, Jesus Christ, God Almighty, etc. To these we add also the wide field of partial profanities such as political incorrections (Nigger!), soft swearing (Jesus H. Christ!), absurdist substitions (Jumpin' Jehosophat!) and various inarticulate noises of rage, elation and disgust.
Most important, immediately, is that these words are NOT descriptions. Their content is largely immaterial and we no more expect that "Oh God! Oh God!" is a Biblical allusion than we anticipate that "You asshole!" depicts a verbal addressing of a literal talking anus. In fact a word like "shit" loses much of their offensive charge as soon as it is employed to describe real feces.
Over time, and between cultures, the specific obscenities variety while the general function of swearing persists. Rage, sexual coitus & astonishment are the usual sites at which human beings reach out for a specia
l range of charged expressions that are often, but not always, connected to higher religious entities and lower bodily functions.
l range of charged expressions that are often, but not always, connected to higher religious entities and lower bodily functions. That "God" and "Fuck" can be used interchangably in some situations is very revealing. The common principle shared by both higher and lower terms of this kind is their extra-verbal intensity. "Godammit!" is seldom a petition to the Divine, just as "Fuck off!" does not actually describe the manner in which we expect our adversary to exit the scene. Frustration is being voiced. Intensity. A willingness to commit to action and a threat to operate outside the socio-linguistic realm. Conversely, in sexual passion the ability to overwhelm the socio-linguistic realm with bodily intensity is hoped for, reached toward.
Swearing an oath of fealty, likewise, is a verbal pledge which asserts a committment beyond the power of words. Since these are "just words" I could be lying to you -- thus I must convince you with the more-than-words words. The surplus charge is inevitably an expression of the potential to become physically engaged.
Thus swear words have a double-function. They are a way in which the boundary condition of language attempts to language itself & they are an invocation of physicality. If culture is very broadly defined it becomes the entire set of novel outcomes derived from the ongoing 'matching' of symbol to energy, word to life, form to substance, theory to fact, etc. The merger of the semantic and energetic is the ongoing concern of poets, philosophers, psychoanalytic patients, scientists, politicians... everyone. It is THE continuing event which characterizes human History. My bestial nature may which to scream at you but I have the words with which to say, "I disagree." Language is creatively mapped upon our channels of feeling and action.
"Fuck it!" represents an incomplete mapping. So does "Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrgh!" So does "God only knows!" We may, in good company, prefer one term to another but essentially they all indicate that the operation of langauging has gone off the rails -- as surely as do H.P.Lovecraft's classic use of "unspeakable, indescribable cosmic horrors."
We are languaging the failure of languaging. This has two sides, as mentioned earlier: a disconnect, or twist, relative to our symbol system & a breaking free of the partially-languaged bodily energies.
The symbolic disconnect -- words for non-speak -- is what I call "the blank tile." This intensely ambiguous half-symbol is found on television as the BLEEP of censorship. Interestingly, one does not even have to BLEEP a real obscenity to get the same effect. The signal of "necessarily cancelled signal" on its own can provoke human excitement.
A metaphor for understanding this process can found in the graph displays of digital music. When the levels are functioning properly they do so within given limits. A very loud noise or a disruptive feedback effect will cause the levels to "spike" off the chart. There is still sound but the function has become impaired. Listening to a uneducated street punk employ a phrase such as "That fuckin' Fuck was all up in my face 'n' shit!" we readily observe that his linguistic register is failing. Each attempt at description exceeds the useful limits of his terminology, creating a rupture which is patched over with cursing.
Swearing is the application of ritualized units of contracted non-speak (the blank tiles) to indicate the limited adequacy of verbal expression.
However, ignorance is not the only motive for such a function. One may wish to emphasis one's body energies to another person by priviliging them over and above the descriptive syntax of speech. Lovers routinely employ profanities in a generally positive and loving fashion because it helps them to access a shifting realm of shared body energies occuring prior to speech.
Sensitive lovers often enter into the following dilemma: while desiring to access intensity through the free use of the cultural obscenties one simultaneously does not wish to resemble those who commonly employ and affirm such obscentities. I.e., How can we have porn pleasure without being porn people?
Another common conundrum relates to children's access to and employment of these terms. It is well known that the attempt to eradicate "bad, dirty, ugly" symbols is symptomatic of a corrupt cultural matrix. However, this knowledge does not entirely meet the needs of parents. Can we sear around the child? What do we do if the child swears? etc.
It is both trite and unrealistic to "not swear about the child" -- since this inevitably becomes the usage of idiotic faux-swearing with periodic interruptions associated with moments of actual extreme upset during which the language rules no longer apply. Daddy resolves to say 'bum' instead of 'ass.' As as result he sounds like a dork most of the time and says 'ass' only when he's really upset! However, none of this diminishes the importance of being attentive, positive and developmental with speech patterns in the home.
The key factor is to remember that all language is context specific. It is quite legitimate to enforce rules such as "words we don't say around granny" or "language we don't use at the dinner table." As soon as one tries to condemn or eliminate categories of expression all together one is destined for failure and ridiculosity. It simply does not matter how often a child says "Motherfucker!" but it certainly matters that a child can readily access more precise terminology, can switch fluidly between body-express and sociable speach, and can easily tailor its words to its circumstance.
n't say around granny" or "language we don't use at the dinner table." As soon as one tries to condemn or eliminate categories of expression all together one is destined for failure and ridiculosity. It simply does not matter how often a child says "Motherfucker!" but it certainly matters that a child can readily access more precise terminology, can switch fluidly between body-express and sociable speach, and can easily tailor its words to its circumstance. "Shut up, you cunt!" is a gesture of bad faith when speaking with most grannies, just as invoking "God's Will is often an equivalent gesture of bad faith in academic and rational discourse. Neither "cunt" nor "god" is always inapprporiate -- but out of context the terminology becomes weaponized (sic).
When we make a gesture of bad faith toward an appropriate discourse we also make such a gesture toward Language generally. Thus it may appear alarming that there is a tide of open profanity in the current age. The philosopher Martin Heidegger even claimed that Language has Language has withdrawn itself from the Modern world. Certainly the pandemic of "fucking," "whatever," and "like" can seem daunting but we are, at the same time, in the age most conversant with the principle of creative languaging.
There is a beautiful and musical usages of these bodily expressions of non-speak found cinematically in Cohen Brothers films, Tarantino films, "The Wire," etc. Here we see the playful languaging of the languaging of the apparent failure of languaging. Smooth and ironic. Lovely. However we must face up to the fact that most irony is really just ignorance and cynicism. I may be in love with the rhythms and language-exceeding shape of "Those fuckin' guys! This whole fuckin' thing!" -- but I confess also to the belief that most people swear as an inadvertant confession of the incomplete docking between their energetic experience and their socially acquired symbols.
In order to think rationally about language it is critical to have already exceeded your automated and irrational responses to the implications of terms. This is the precondition for sensible allowing and disallowing. The ready means of self-learning on this topic is simply to repeat, in a relaxed, attentive manner, any word which presents itself with a slight cringe. This bodily or emotional recoil may be great or small, may be obviously "your reaction" or vaguely "your idea that someone might react." Such attentive repetive proceeds rapidly to a spontaneous release of the negative implications.
On such a basis a rational attitude may develop.
