What Our Swear Words Say About Us (Part 2)

(Continued from here). A few interesting thing about The Seven:

• There are 3 themes that are found taboo in The Seven: excretion, intercourse, genitalia (possibly incest as a fourth). Two of the 3 are non-sex-positive.
• Very few of these have changed meaning (only cock getting a new context), the others have all meant the same things throughout their usage in English
• What has changed is only the connotations of the word. Some have always been taboo despite being no different to non-taboo words meaning the same thing. Others have arbitrarily slid in and out of tabooness. Nothing inherent in most of these that suggests anything particularly offensive (which is why most of these seem silly when viewed from a distance). And of course the extensive list of swear words outside the seven that was listed shows how pervasive sex-as-a-negative is.

Obviously other languages have different criteria for swearing (naturally the unpleasant will get the curse words). Here are some other trends (more here), but all of these are present in English too:

• insulting family (quite important to Chinese swearing)
• curses (a plague o’ both your houses!)
• comparing people to animals (We have the dog/cow/bitch, other languages have a more elaborate system. Interesting to note who these apply to.)
• disease and mental illness
• homosexuality (Romanian has 5 insults, even English has quite a few — the fact that some areas like excrement get only 1 or 2 words as well shows the high degree of comparative disdain)
• religious curses (heathen or even good old sacre bleu)

Some languages pride themselves on an extensive and colourful swearing vocab, eg. Russian.

What does this brief survey of world swearing suggest? Seems that a lot of concerns are largely universal. However, each language still shows different cultural priorities in what’s considered bad. I think this is strong evidence that the use of genitalia and sexuality as pejoratives in English is a measure of cultural disdain.

So what’s the solution? Personally I don’t want to subscribe to the preconceptions inherent in most English swearwords. On the other hand I do need to swear just like like everyone else (it’s no coincidence swearing is such a universal thing). One thing that’s made it easier is: once I looked closely at what many of the words meant they lost their force naturally. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call anyone a cunt, because the whole idea is ludicrous if you think about it. The abracadabra, the almost-supernatural power of swear words is largely arbitrary and many have lost their power over me. There’s something in the process that reminds me of the demystification of religion…

I still love the word fuck because of its sheer versatility. Unfortunately it’s hard for people to start alternate swear words since anything that hasn’t already acquired abracadabran mystery will sound very silly. A broad consensus is needed for it to work (a little bit like John Searle’s argument that some concepts are entirely built through consensus, eg. a person is the president only because everyone in the country agrees they are president).

What of the future of swearing? If I’m to be optimistic, as societal values change and things that used to be considered pejorative aren’t (sex, genitalia, homosexuality, religious non-conformism) I think these words themselves will no longer be taboo, just as hell doesn’t quite have the same bent to it. Due to the slow evolution of language, it’s hard to imagine a word like cunt not being taboo but it happens all the time. eg. Bernard Shaw’s use of bloody in Pygmalion was groundbreaking and risque, and that was as late as 1913!

What will replace words like fuck? Whatever is considered odious in the next decades and centuries of culture. Perhaps words relating to fanaticism, ignorance, bigotry and hypocrisy. A world where fundie is censored as opposed to human anatomy? I dare hope.