Profanity

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In cartoons, profanity is often depicted by substituting symbols ("grawlixes") for words, as a form of non-specific censorship.

The original meaning of the adjective profane (Latin: "in front of", "outside the temple") referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings".

As a result, "profane" and "profanity" has therefore come to describe a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rudeness, vulgarism, desecrating, or showing disrespect.^[1]

Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: cuss, curse, pejorative language, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscenity language, choice words, blasphemy language, foul language, and bad or adult language. In many cultures it is less profane^{[citation needed]} for an adult to curse than it is for a child, who may be reprimanded for cursing.

[edit] Statistics

Tape-recorded conversations find that roughly 80–90 spoken words each day—0.5% to 0.7% of all words—are swear words with people varying from between 0% to 3.4%. In comparison first person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words.^[2]

Research looking at swearing in 1986, 1997, and 2006 in America found the same top ten words were used of a set of over 70 different taboo words. The most used taboo words were fuck, shit, hell, damn, goddamn, Jesus Christ, ass, oh my God, bitch, and sucks—these ten made up roughly 80% of all profanities. Two words, fuck and shit, accounted for one third to one half of them.^[2]

[edit] Types of profanity

Steven Pinker's book The Stuff of Thought breaks profanity down into five categories:

• Dysphemistic profanity – Exact opposite of euphemism. Forces listener to think about negative or provocative matter. Using the wrong euphemism has a dysphemistic effect.
• Abusive profanity – for abuse or intimidation or insulting of others
• Idiomatic profanity – swearing without really referring to the matter. Just using the words to arouse interest, to show off, and express to peers that the setting is informal.
• Emphatic swearing – to emphasize something with swearing.

• Cathartic profanity – when something bad happens like coffee spilling, people curse. One evolutionary theory asserts it is meant to tell the audience that you're undergoing a negative emotion^{[citation needed]}.

According to Pinker, the content of profane language can also be broken into five categories of negative emotion:

• The Supernatural – Evokes emotions of awe & fear.
• Bodily effluvia & organs – Evokes disgust, since effluvia are major disease vectors.
• Disease, Death, & Infirmity – Evokes dread, fear of death or disability. These are words which are normally avoided or treated euphemistically.
• Sexuality – Evokes images of revulsion at depravity. Profanity of a sexual nature conjures images of illegitimate or exploitive sexuality, jealousy, etc.
• Disfavoured people or groups – Evokes hatred and contempt. Such groups include infidels the disabled (e.g.: gimp,), enemies (e.g.: sand monkey), or subordinated groups. These include racist words and/or insults based on gender or sexual preferences.

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[edit] Western history

Terms of profanity have historically been taboo words, because of a person's reaction to hearing such an unaccepted term. 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 and are now considered more profane than they once were.

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 cunt was an accepted euphemism for vagina in the early sixteenth century^{[citation needed]}) "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^{[citation needed]}. Interestingly, the word cunt, while retaining its original meaning in the United States, has changed in meaning somewhat in Great Britain in the past thirty years. Where in the US the 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.

In the U.S. today, racial slurs are uniquely profane words in that they are considered highly offensive and hurtful. This is most clearly shown in the attention given to use of the word nigger, now effectively banned in American public discourse, and although many African-Americans use the word nigga context is very important; thus, Americans of African descent might use 'nigger' in informal situations among themselves, without being considered offensive. However, many blacks are becoming more sensitive to the word being used even amongst themselves and may still be offended. The word in mention, in certain social groups, as a casual reference to black people is still in frequent use. Some mistakenly associate the unrelated word niggardly (meaning "stingy") with 'nigger." ^[3] As with other types of profanity,^{[citation needed]} words such as faggot and fag, though incidentally sexual in nature, are considered highly offensive and derogatory toward gay people, yet have undergone similar changes to nigga when being used by the gay community. The most famous example of this is prominent sex advice columnist Dan Savage originally having his readers send letters with the salutation "Hey Faggot".^[4]

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 coon, porch monkey, spear chucker, spade, spook, tar baby, darkie (African-American), paki, dottie (Pakistani/Indian), chink, gook (Asian), beaner, wetback, spic(k), greaser (Hispanic-American), guinea, wop, greaseball, dago (Italian), honky, peckerwood, blue-eyed devil whitey,gringo,paleface, coyote, wiggers, whitetrash, trailertrash, cracker (Caucasian), kike, hymie, hebe (Jewish), kraut, jerry (German—used especially during World War II), polack(Poles or Polish), bohunk (Slavic people), frog (French people), sand nigger, raghead, towelhead, rug merchant, dune coon (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like fattie, retard, and redneck or hillbilly aren't entirely profane at all times, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially acceptable 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 in the English language.

[edit] Profanity as blasphemy

The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying God's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. In other words, "Oh my God" is often viewed as unaccepted or offensive amongst adherents of the Abrahamic religions. Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, and considered 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 or deities.^[5][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 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, arsehole, and paki in that order. About 83% of respondents regarded cunt as "very severe"; 16% thought the same about shit and 10% about crap. Only about 1% thought cunt was "not swearing"; 9% thought the same about shit and 32% of crap.

[edit] International auxiliary languages

Distinct international auxiliary languages usually apply different strategies to coin or borrow profane words and expressions.

In Interlingua, the fundamental criterion for inclusion is widespread international use, and this can be 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 used in Interlingua. Culo (ass or butt) and its derivative incular (to butt-fuck) are also Interlingua expressions. Futer (to fuck) is used much as in English, e.g., "Fute te!" ("Fuck you!") or "Mi automobile es futite!" ("My car is fucked!").

[edit] Books and movies containing famous uses of profanity

• Ulysses by James Joyce^[8]
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger ^[9][10]
• Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet^{[citation needed]}
• Various books by François Rabelais^{[citation needed]}
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", said in 1939, was the first use of profanity in a major American film.^[11]
• "MASH (film)", first major motion picture to use the word "fuck".^{[citation needed]}

[edit] See also

Look up profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Blasphemy
• Profanum
• Damnation
• Spanish profanity
• Profanity by language
• Category of English profanity
• Latin profanity
• List of ethnic slurs
• Minced oath
• Obscenity
• Profanity in American Sign Language
• Profanity in Science Fiction
• Seven dirty words
• Swear filter

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World, [1941]. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Bulcke, Camille (2001), written at Ramnagar, New Delhi, An English-Hindi Dictionary (3 ed.), S. Chand And Company Ltd., ISBN 81-219-0559-1.
• Almond, Ian Derrida and the Secret of the Non-Secret: On Respiritualising the Profane Literature and Theology 2003 17(4):457-471; doi:10.1093/litthe/17.4.457

[edit] External links

• Urban Dictionary: A slang/profanity dictionary with user-submitted definitions.
• The Profanisaurus: A dictionary of profanities, aptly called a Profanisaurus, from Viz magazine with user-submitted definitions.
• Video Games Suck: Example of a website that uses profanity for entertainment.