When you hear somebody casually drop the phrase “fuck,” what’s your response? Offended? Surprised? Confused?
In any case, I’m pretty sure listening to somebody curse out of nowhere provokes some variety of quick response. We have a taboo on this tradition towards profanity and when somebody breaks that taboo, it will get your consideration.
But why is that, precisely? Swearing is in every single place. We all do it. So why does it nonetheless have such energy? Whatever the reason, 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, University of London, and the creator of a brand new e-book known as For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun. This e-book is as amusing because it sounds, however it’s additionally genuinely fascinating in the best way that works that sort out seemingly trivial topics in severe methods might be.
Roache explores the distinctive flexibility of swear phrases and tries to clarify why they’re capable of talk a lot greater than different phrases. She additionally asks how the identical phrases, relying on how they’re used, can both offend individuals or construct belief between them.
So I invited Roache on The Gray Area to speak about all these puzzles and a number of others. As at all times, there’s a lot extra within the full podcast, so pay attention and observe The Gray Area 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 must always begin with the fundamentals: What makes a swear phrase a swear phrase?
Rebecca Roache
They are typically phrases that concentrate on taboo matters — intercourse, defecation, faith, issues like that. And that’s fairly common. They are phrases that we have a tendency to make use of to specific emotion, and the small quantity of philosophy that’s been executed on swearing has talked about that swear phrases are linked to expressing feelings. You can use a swear phrase to vent with out essentially attempting to convey info the best way you usually would in a sentence. The linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has stated one thing like swearing is extra like a scream than an utterance.
Sean Illing
I do like this distinction you make within the e-book between swearing and utilizing swear phrases. When you’re swearing, you’re not likely utilizing phrases to explain one thing on this planet, you’re speaking feelings. So whenever 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 best way the phrase “I have a black truck” is concerning the black truck in my driveway. But generally swear phrases are similar to some other phrase, i.e., “There’s bird shit on my truck.”
Anyway, to your broader level, it looks as if context is the whole lot. If some phrases have extra energy than others, it’s not as a result of of 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 every day interactions with one another, which I assume is how tradition basically works.
Rebecca Roache
Yeah, I feel that’s precisely proper. One factor that actually brings this out, and that is the primary puzzle that obtained me into this matter, is considering how asterisks work. You see this on a regular basis in information tales, as an illustration, the place some of the letters in a swear phrase are obscured by asterisks. So you get f**ok 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 conceal the phrase in any variety of significant approach. But I feel the explanation it really works to scale 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 in the case of spoken swear phrases, that message of disrespect will get changed by a competing message, which is one thing like, “I really need to convey this word but I’m also worried about how you are going to feel about it, so I’m obscuring some of it because I care about your feelings.” So, you get this message of consideration whenever you censor swear phrases like that and I feel that story wouldn’t make sense except the offensiveness of swear phrases was concerning the attitudes that we convey once we use them fairly than that specific association of letters or sounds.
Sean Illing
Why are curse phrases so uniquely versatile? Why are you able to accomplish that rather more with a phrase like “Fuck” than you may virtually some other phrase within the language?
Rebecca Roache
There is a good 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 can speak about two individuals fucking, for instance, and then it behaves in the identical approach as a traditional verb. But you can even use it on this extra uncommon approach, which is “fuck two.” This is once we say “fuck you,” or “fuck off,” or we simply pepper our dialog with swear phrases. Anthony Burgess has a terrific 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 works as a result of we perceive that swearing is not only about conveying info, 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 someone within the eye and saying “fuck you” or “you fucking idiot,” one thing like that the place it’s directed at someone, you’re weaponizing the phrase, you’re utilizing it to accentuate your unfavourable perspective in the direction of one other individual.
I feel that that directedness performs an element in aggravating the shock worth of swearing. Quite a bit depends upon who we’re with and who we’re swearing in entrance of. Even people who find themselves very liberal about swearing are inclined to need to tread fastidiously round youngsters, particularly different individuals’s youngsters. If you’re simply letting off steam and someone’s obtained their child with them, then itÆs like, “Oh, God, sorry.”
I feel we additionally get a bit of cagey round energy imbalances. Swearing at a police officer, as an illustration, or a trainer, the kind of factor the place there’s one one that is free to do what they like and the opposite one that has to obey the principles or they get into bother. But extra typically talking, there are some contexts which might be extra casual than others, not simply with regard to the language we use, however issues like how we gown, how now we have to handle one another, whether or not you may name individuals by their first names, for instance. And I feel it’s useful to view swearing as simply half of this fairly wealthy and complicated community of norms. The extra formal a scenario is, the extra dangerous it’s going to be to swear in that scenario.
Sean Illing
Quite a bit of this boils all the way down to a social or emotional intelligence, or a primary capability to learn the room and know the place you might be, who you might be, who you’re with and choose appropriately. If you may’t try this, then you definately’re in all probability going to run into bother.
The level about parenting and youngsters is attention-grabbing. My spouse has needed to examine me loads at house 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, alternatively, why will we care? They’re simply phrases and loads of them, as we’ve demonstrated, are objectively nice and the one purpose for not wanting him to listen to them isn’t that they‘re inherently bad, 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. But is {that a} adequate purpose, actually?
Rebecca Roache
We need our youngsters to develop up understanding the way 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 identical perspective to different norms, then we’d have our children not say “mama” or “dada” and as an alternative say “mother” or “father,” or we’d make them handle all people tremendous formally simply to ensure they don’t slip up in some social scenario. We don’t actually try this, although.
I feel half of it’s in all probability that folks choose breaches of etiquette that must do with swearing extra harshly, and choose the mother and father extra harshly, than different breaches of etiquette. But it’s additionally bizarre that now we have this perspective that we have to defend our children from swearing however, on the identical time, in case you are to satisfy someone who took that to the intense and stated, “I’m taking steps to ensure that my kid never learns to swear, they’re going to have a chaperone with them at all times to make sure older kids don’t teach them rude words,” this type of factor, that will be actually sinister. Even these of us who’re involved with our children being well mannered, it’s not that we by no means need our children to study these phrases, possibly 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 individuals’s youngsters. There’s additionally the concept that it takes a village to lift a toddler and we expect, “Well, the parents might be really working hard to bring their kids up to be polite and yet here I am dropping F-bombs left, right, and center ,undoing all their good work.” So we simply need to be supportive of different individuals’s efforts to lift their youngsters.
Sean Illing
How do you stroll that line between avoiding swear phrases in order to not offend individuals on the one hand, and utilizing the phrases you need to use and merely not caring about offending people who find themselves offended by the flawed issues?
Rebecca Roache
If I feel persons are going to be offended by swearing, I don’t swear. Generally, we must always keep away from inflicting individuals to really feel offended if there’s no good purpose to do in any other case, and I feel generally there’s a good purpose to do in any other case. So, for instance, if in case you have a relative who’s offended by mixed-race relationships, in that circumstance, it’s the relative’s downside and you will have a great purpose to simply ignore what they discover offensive. But 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 fairly be good and have all people comfortable.
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