While you hear somebody casually drop the phrase “fuck,” what’s your response? Offended? Shocked? Confused?
In any case, I’m pretty sure listening to somebody curse out of nowhere provokes some sort of instant response. We’ve a taboo on this tradition towards profanity and when somebody breaks that taboo, it will get your consideration.
However why is that, precisely? Swearing is all over the place. All of us do it. So why does it nonetheless have such energy? Regardless of the clarification, it goes past taboos and social norms. There’s one thing distinctive to swear phrases in our language.
Rebecca Roache is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway, College of London, and the writer of a brand new ebook known as For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Stunning, Impolite, and Enjoyable. This ebook is as amusing because it sounds, however it’s additionally genuinely fascinating in the way in which that works that deal with seemingly trivial topics in severe methods will be.
Roache explores the distinctive flexibility of swear phrases and tries to elucidate why they’re in a position to talk a lot greater than different phrases. She additionally asks how the identical phrases, relying on how they’re used, can both offend folks or construct belief between them.
So I invited Roache on The Grey Space to speak about all these puzzles and a number of other others. As at all times, there’s a lot extra within the full podcast, so hear and observe The Grey Space on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you discover podcasts. New episodes drop each Monday.
This dialog has been edited for size and readability.
Sean Illing
I assume we should always begin with the fundamentals: What makes a swear phrase a swear phrase?
Rebecca Roache
They are typically phrases that target taboo subjects — intercourse, defecation, faith, issues like that. And that’s fairly common. They’re phrases that we have a tendency to make use of to precise emotion, and the small quantity of philosophy that’s been performed on swearing has talked about that swear phrases are linked to expressing feelings. You should use a swear phrase to vent with out essentially attempting to convey data the way in which you usually would in a sentence. The linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has mentioned one thing like swearing is extra like a scream than an utterance.
Sean Illing
I do like this distinction you make within the ebook between swearing and utilizing swear phrases. While you’re swearing, you’re probably not utilizing phrases to explain one thing on this planet, you’re speaking feelings. So while you stub your toe and scream, “Fuck,” that’s not an outline of the occasion, it’s an expression of ache. It’s not about one thing in the way in which the phrase “I’ve a black truck” is in regards to the black truck in my driveway. However typically swear phrases are similar to another phrase, i.e., “There’s fowl shit on my truck.”
Anyway, to your broader level, it looks like context is the whole lot. If some phrases have extra energy than others, it’s not due to something inherent to the phrases themselves, it’s as a result of we’ve given them that energy and we maintain reinforcing it in our each day interactions with one another, which I assume is how tradition usually works.
Rebecca Roache
Yeah, I feel that’s precisely proper. One factor that basically brings this out, and that is the primary puzzle that bought me into this subject, is considering how asterisks work. You see this on a regular basis in information tales, as an illustration, the place among the letters in a swear phrase are obscured by asterisks. So that you get f**okay as an alternative of “fuck” and there’s this puzzle about how that works. If the offensiveness of swearing is the phrase itself, then that shouldn’t work as a result of everyone knows what phrase is being censored; it doesn’t disguise the phrase in any sort of significant manner. However I feel the explanation it really works to cut back offensiveness is fairly clear.
I discussed that, when swearing offends, it’s as a result of we’re signaling disrespect and once we censor swear phrases with asterisks or with bleeps on the subject of spoken swear phrases, that message of disrespect will get changed by a competing message, which is one thing like, “I really want to convey this phrase however I’m additionally fearful about how you’ll really feel about it, so I’m obscuring a few of it as a result of I care about your emotions.” So, you get this message of consideration while you censor swear phrases like that and I feel that story wouldn’t make sense until the offensiveness of swear phrases was in regards to the attitudes that we convey once we use them relatively than that individual association of letters or sounds.
Sean Illing
Why are curse phrases so uniquely versatile? Why are you able to achieve this rather more with a phrase like “Fuck” than you may nearly another phrase within the language?
Rebecca Roache
There’s a nice linguistics paper by the late linguist James McCawley the place he’s evaluating two senses of the phrase fuck, which he calls “fuck one” and “fuck two.” Fuck one behaves similar to a traditional verb or no matter that phrase is. It’s up for grabs, is it a verb or is it one thing else? You may speak about two folks fucking, for instance, after which it behaves in the identical manner as a traditional verb. However it’s also possible to use it on this extra uncommon manner, which is “fuck two.” That is once we say “fuck you,” or “fuck off,” or we simply pepper our dialog with swear phrases. Anthony Burgess has a fantastic instance of this the place he talks about a military mechanic attempting to repair a truck [who] says, “Fuck it, the fucking fucker is fucking fucked,” which makes full sense, proper? It really works as a result of we perceive that swearing is not only about conveying data, asserting truths and opinions, it’s additionally about expressing emotion.
Sean Illing
So when is it okay to swear and when it isn’t okay to swear?
Rebecca Roache
There are a couple of dimensions right here. One is that simply chucking in a swear phrase into your fucking sentences as a type of fucking punctuation like I’m simply doing right here is comparatively benign in comparison with wanting anyone within the eye and saying “fuck you” or “you fucking fool,” one thing like that the place it’s directed at anyone, you’re weaponizing the phrase, you’re utilizing it to accentuate your unfavorable angle in direction of one other particular person.
I feel that that directedness performs an element in aggravating the shock worth of swearing. Loads is determined by who we’re with and who we’re swearing in entrance of. Even people who find themselves very liberal about swearing are inclined to wish to tread fastidiously round kids, particularly different folks’s kids. Should you’re simply letting off steam and anyone’s bought their child with them, then itÆs like, “Oh, God, sorry.”
I feel we additionally get slightly cagey round energy imbalances. Swearing at a police officer, as an illustration, or a instructor, the type of factor the place there’s one one who is free to do what they like and the opposite one who has to obey the principles or they get into hassle. However extra typically talking, there are some contexts which are extra casual than others, not simply with regard to the language we use, however issues like how we costume, how now we have to deal with one another, whether or not you may name folks by their first names, for instance. And I feel it’s useful to view swearing as simply a part of this fairly wealthy and sophisticated community of norms. The extra formal a state of affairs is, the extra dangerous it’s going to be to swear in that state of affairs.
Sean Illing
Numerous this boils all the way down to a social or emotional intelligence, or a fundamental capability to learn the room and know the place you might be, who you might be, who you’re with and choose appropriately. Should you can’t try this, then you definitely’re in all probability going to run into hassle.
The purpose about parenting and youngsters is attention-grabbing. My spouse has needed to verify me loads at dwelling as a result of she doesn’t need our son, who’s now 5, listening to a bunch of curse phrases. And on the one hand, I get it however, however, why can we care? They’re simply phrases and loads of them, as we’ve demonstrated, are objectively nice and the one motive for not wanting him to listen to them isn’t that they‘re inherently unhealthy, it’s that we don’t need him to make an ass of himself in well mannered society. And if we‘re being trustworthy, we in all probability additionally fear about being judged by different individuals who hear our child. However is {that a} adequate motive, actually?
Rebecca Roache
We wish our youngsters to develop up understanding find out how to navigate the norms of the tradition they’re in, however we do appear to take an extremely precautionary method right here. If we had been to take this similar angle to different norms, then we’d have our youngsters not say “mama” or “dada” and as an alternative say “mom” or “father,” or we’d make them deal with all people tremendous formally simply to ensure they don’t slip up in some social state of affairs. We don’t actually try this, although.
I feel a part of it’s in all probability that individuals choose breaches of etiquette that need to do with swearing extra harshly, and choose the dad and mom extra harshly, than different breaches of etiquette. Nevertheless it’s additionally bizarre that now we have this angle that we have to shield our youngsters from swearing however, on the similar time, if you’re to satisfy anyone who took that to the acute and mentioned, “I’m taking steps to make sure that my child by no means learns to swear, they’re going to have a chaperone with them always to ensure older children don’t educate them impolite phrases,” this type of factor, that may be actually sinister. Even these of us who’re involved with our youngsters being well mannered, it’s not that we by no means need our youngsters to study these phrases, perhaps it’s that we simply by no means need them to study them from us.
I feel this explains the squeamishness now we have about swearing in entrance of different folks’s kids. There’s additionally the concept that it takes a village to boost a baby and we expect, “Nicely, the dad and mom is likely to be actually working onerous to deliver their children as much as be well mannered and but right here I’m dropping F-bombs left, proper, and middle ,undoing all their good work.” So we simply wish to be supportive of different folks’s efforts to boost their kids.
Sean Illing
How do you stroll that line between avoiding swear phrases in order to not offend folks on the one hand, and utilizing the phrases you wish to use and easily not caring about offending people who find themselves offended by the flawed issues?
Rebecca Roache
If I feel individuals are going to be offended by swearing, I don’t swear. Usually, we should always keep away from inflicting folks to really feel offended if there’s no good motive to do in any other case, and I feel typically there’s a good motive to do in any other case. So, for instance, when you have a relative who’s offended by mixed-race relationships, in that circumstance, it’s the relative’s drawback and you’ve got a superb motive to simply ignore what they discover offensive. However I feel with swearing, often there’s nothing to achieve by swearing within the firm of people who find themselves upset by it, and my view is that I’d relatively be good and have all people pleased.
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