If you have been a reader for long, then by now you know that those previous sentences were a set up to talk about ... why we use those swear words. After all, I am a dull boring college professor! ;)
This is not really a new topic here. Remember this post about "piss pot" and "piss proud," for instance? Or about "assholes"?
I tell ya, there is a lot we need to understand why we use such fucking language. I suppose my reputation in this has been established, which is why the friend got me a book titled, "What the F"
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So, why do we use such shitty language anyway?
Philosopher Rebecca Roache says that as well as the ingredient of offence, swear words tend to have a cluster of other characteristics. We will often use swear words "to vent some emotion", she says. "If you're angry or particularly happy, swearing is a catharsis. Swearing also centres on taboos. Around the world swear words will tend to cluster around certain topics: lavatorial matters, sex, religion."Ah, crap! ;)
So, the swear words are work with a fucking trinity: "lavatorial matters, sex, religion."
The Times leader writer, Oliver Kamm, author of Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English, says that the swearing lexicon now draws less from religion and more from body effluvia. "There's a hierarchy of effluvia, according to how disgusting we find them in public. 'Shit' is worse than 'piss' which is worse than 'fart' which is worse than 'spit' which is not a taboo word at all. It's an interesting linguistic hypothesis that the taboos relate to how disease-ridden or dangerous or disgusting we find the effluvia themselves."Are you thinking what I am thinking? What the hell is "effluvia", and who in this fucking world uses that? Google says it means "an unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion, or discharge" I get it--like what comes out of this fucking president's mouth! ;)
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