Let’s talk about profanity. Let’s talk about those nasty little words that, upon your mother’s hearing them come out of your eight-year -old mouth, would turn her face red and send her angry feet and legs to chase you around the house while she tries to beat you with a wire handled fly swatter.
What makes profanity…well, profane? It seems that the bulk of words that are called profane either stem from the body or its varying functions, or the Bible. That’s an interesting combination.
What can or could make the body and its parts profane? It seems that we can talk about the body’s parts and use the “proper” terminology without being seen as vulgar by others. It’s when we are deviant and vary from these culturally accepted terms and create our own slang terms; that’s when we get in trouble.
We also have slang words for our slang words that were previously noted as “profane.” If society deems one slang word unacceptable to be seen in literature or on television, then we cleverly devise another word to mean the exact same thing as the aforementioned banned slang word. With this new slang word, are we not still saying the exact same thing that our previously prohibited word was?
Perhaps the new word sounds cleaner and is less offensive to the eye when read. Though it may mean the same bloody thing that the other word meant, it is now socially acceptable to use this term in public places and around your great grandmother.
With these taboo words comes censorship. Apparently, we are told by censorship boards that the restriction of words and thoughts is done with the public’s greater protection in mind, which is a huge steaming lumpy load of uncastrated male bovine fecal material expunged from the alimentary canal.
The Bible also gives us many of our present day curse words. I’m sure that wasn’t the various author’s (nor God’s) intentions, but nonetheless, it has happened. This mostly shows the mutation of a word to fit a society’s desired intentions. The Bible says to avoid filthy communication, but doesn’t tell us what that means. What words, by biblical standards, can we not say?
What are the functions of profane words? If you are out in the woods looking for a squirrel to snack on and instead stumble and fall down a hill, you’ll probably curse. When you find that, at the bottom of this hill, you’ve landed on a porcupine, you might let out many tainted words.
Profanity appears to fulfill several linguistic needs. It seems that we curse when we are irritated, angry, incredulous about stupidity, relieved, and for many other reasons.
The construing of one word or another into having more profane meaning than another seems to be a linguistics problem. It can be nothing more than a classic semantics game. If you say a word that means the same thing as a socially accepted curse word, are you not saying the exact same thing with only another word? If you say “red”, you aren’t meaning “black.” If you say “crap”, you are, however, saying a word with the same meaning and connotations as one of our socially accepted terms having or carrying profane meaning.
It’s just a big game. We are told that we can say this word but not that one. We are told to hold this belief but not that one. There are boards of stiff-backed people that tell us what is acceptable or unacceptable for us to partake of, view, or hear.
Can you tell that I don’t believe in forced censorship?
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