Seven dirty words--shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. A group of words that roll off your tongue a little better every time they are spoken. We can thank George Carlin’s monologue “Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television” for this catchy assortment of swear words that can be categorized under foul language. There are many different ways to classify the foul language and swearing used by majority of American society today. The novel Expletive Deleted: a good look at bad language, written by Ruth Wajnryb, takes a big step for a linguist to dive deeper into investigating the subject of swearing. Over the last few decades, there has been a lack of research dedicated to the topic. This is probably due to swearing …show more content…
In order to effectively communicate with those around us it’s important to understand the context of a given situation. We can usually recognize these connections right off the bat and when it comes to cathartic swearing this is especially so. These expletives are very straightforward and are frequently referred to as the ‘stub-your-toe’ class of swearing because with yelling, “FUCK!”, you unleash a healthy amount of pent-up emotion or anger that may have even been causing some stress. The only issue seen with this variety of swearing is the commonness in which it occurs. Toddlers and small children will often pick up the words and phrases that are being said around them. As Wajnryb states in chapter 3, “The fact is that kids swear because they copy the modeled behaviors around them, usually in the home. You stub a toe, you swear. Your child overhears and learns how to react in similar circumstances. It doesn’t matter what the phrase is, it becomes the language associated with the emotion of anger or frustration” (pg. 89). The most interesting thing about this is that when the child first repeats a …show more content…
In both of these categories of swearing, our emotions have a large role in what we say and what we do. Although cathartic swearing can emit a quick outburst of negative emotion, abusive swearing takes it a bit further. Wajnryb writes, “An abusive assault can achieve two ends for the swearer, a cathartic release as well as a venting of spleen on a chosen target” (pg. 34). The crucial difference between the two is that abusive swearing has aim at a victim compared to yelling at the inanimate object you ran into. Going back to bringing gender into play, linguists have found that the inequality between the genders goes further than who should and should not be swearing, but extends into the phrases used in abusive swearing. “There’s a limited range of words that women can use in swearing at a male, and most of them---make statements about the target’s irritating personality or, at worst, absence of moral fiber,” says Wajnryb (pg. 136). But this isn’t the case when it comes to words men can use to swear at women or even each other. If you take women out of the exchange completely and have a man directing an abusive swear at another man, women somehow are still involved, “‘Son of a bitch’ and ‘motherfucker’ both offer circuitously female pathways toward verbal violence. Why, one wonders, is it not offensive to curse a man via his father or
Since the 1930’s until now, studies show that about 64% of kids and teens have been using slang terms in their school work. It is amazing what some of them are. Slang is used all of the time by almost all people and has changed a lot over the past decades. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses a child’s perspective to show how slang has changed from the 1930’s until today.
Of Mice and Men should be banned because of its profanity. An example of this is on page 11 say “you crazy son of a bitch” (Steinbeck). We wouldn’t want our students or children saying that in school to other students or at home. Another example of profanity is on page 71 saying “This is ...
Swearing has the ability to get someone in a whole load of trouble at the dinner table with their mother but could also be their choice of words when they accidently stub their toe on the coffee table in the living room. Natalie Angier discusses this controversial topic of words that shouldn’t be said in her article feature in The New York Times, “Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore”. Provoked by a recently proposed bill to increase fines for using swear words on television, Angier analyzes not only the impact of swearing, but also where the desire to speak obscene words comes from. She references many credible studies and sources as she unfolds her argument. She uses a diverse slew of studies, experiments, and famous pieces of literature and
"TV's Most Offensive Words | Media | MediaGuardian." Latest News, Comment and Reviews from the Guardian | Guardian.co.uk. 25 Nov. 2005. Web. Dec. 2010. .
Swearing is just rude. When I hear someone swear, either at me, or someone else, or even at nothing, the respect I had for them before is lost. By blurting out words like that, they disrespect others. They might disrespect the person they talk to, or the people around them by saying offensive words. It also makes me wonder what kind of parents they grew up with. I realize that sometimes it just comes with the...
In Boondock Saints, Rocco swears up a storm by screaming the ‘f’ word in different ways. After Rocco finished yelling, Connor says, “Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.” In efforts to try to keep this essay clean as possible with such a dirty word, Rocco uses the word to describe the brothers, the situation, and his frustration. Overall, making it a diverse word by using the word as a verb, an adjective, and a noun.
David A. Fein and Milton Millhauser have both written articles pertaining to the topic of slang. Fein and Millhauser provide two different viewpoints, and they employ information and their opinions in different ways. David A. Fein’s article, “Vulgarity by Teaching Slang in the Classroom”, makes a good argument as to why slang should be utilized in teaching, while Milton Millhauser’s article, “The Case Against Slang”, explains that slang is to be avoided in teaching, but fails to provide a good argument for his claim.
The novel has foul language. There are many swears words in the book. In the very first chapter the character V uses very offensive language. She is in the car on the way home from the airport and the narrator, Mara notices her hand. “I stole a peek at her hand. Down each finger, from her pinkie to her pointer, she'd scrawled f***, f***, f***, f***. On her thumb it said everyone. Yikes” (Mackler 9). Seeing this in the ...
Though it may seem like military talk, the profanity is really used to cover up how they are feeling. The use of the profane words helps solidify how difficult the times were during one. During a tunnel check Lee Strunk crawled out meeting his comrade’s words, “Right out of the grave. Fuckin’ zombie.” (274) While it seems they are joking around with death, shortly after Ted Lavender is shot and killed by a sniper while using the bathroom. Again described by “Oh shit, the guy’s dead” (275) Profanity is used today as an emphasis on description. In both the war and on paper it is easy to feel the tension of the men and the situation that they are in.
How can I ever forget a time when I said a swear word in front of my mom. I was at the grocery store shopping with my mom and cousin. I was already upset because I got in trouble at home already. My cousin just kept messing with me and making fun of me and I just told her to “shut the fuck up.” Don’t you just hate those nagging little cousins that laugh at everything? I tried to say it as low as possible but my mom has ears like a hawk. Man I swear I never got slapped so hard a day in my life. From that day forward I swore that I wouldn’t say any swear words ever. Do you ever wonder where swearing words originated from? Or even people views on how they feel about them? Barbara Lawrence has an issue with swearing words because people use different terminology such as: “Broad”, “chick”, “piece of tail” and other sorts of harmful words to downgrade women. Bill Bryson on the other hand says that swear words are merely considered bad because they are considered bad. A similarity that both Lawrence and Bryson have is when they mentioned the word “ficken”, which is a German or Latin word meaning f***. The difference between the two are that Bryson explains the different words the Romans created and used over 1,500 years ago and Lawrence explains that some
A third example is a waitress having a bad day, and taking it out on the customers the child in the booth next to the customers and the waitress is thinking that this is a proper way to communicate. All of these examples are using improper language for children to hear (Shoeder 72). Parents are then expected to explain and make excuses for the vocabulary being used by others. Profanity has become uncontrollable and has had a great role in the moral decay of our society.
Riggio, Ronald E., Ph.D. "Will Swearing Harm Your Child?" Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC, 18 May 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. .
When used on television programs that children watch, vulgar vernacular degrade society's standards; children use the words without thinking about the true meaning of the word possibly to show disrespect another person. A good example of this would be a clip of South Park, where the character named Randy has made it to the last round of Wheel of Fortune, and the category is “People that Annoy You.” Randy's puzzle reads “N_GGER,” and Randy's guess was “nigger,” instead of the answer “nagger.” This racial slur being used in this sense shows children how outraged people will get, but failed to show how the subtle consequences really happen. This is a far cry from when Opie would get a stern talking to by his “paw” for just saying the word “darn” or “gosh dangit.” Television has advanced “now to the new age of liberal enlightenment,” using words that were once taboo in the 1950s like “darn” and “shucks” to “damn” and “shit” in almost every line. It is this constant bombardment on the children everyday desensitizes them to the use of these words, and they begin using these words in defiance of their parents' wishes.
Have you ever wondered who taught you to talk the way you do? People learn to talk and express themselves everyday of their lives. Starting from the day you were born you used language or some form of it to communicate with those around you. As a baby you usually show your displeasure with your new surroundings by crying, and if you don’t the doctor will make sure you do. Everyday we express our point of view to others in some form of language. Whether it is through verbal communication, written discourse or through body language, you can tell if a person is upset, angry, or happy. We as human beings don’t realize how much language has to do with our lives. How can you determine if one of your friends is angry with you? Is there a different tone to their voice? Do they have a stern look on their face? Of course they do, your friend feels the need to express their anger to you by these different forms of language. Where do we learn to use these different forms of language? How are our uses of these languages shaped? The three main contributing factors to how we express ourselves through language come from our schooling, our friends, and most of all from our families.
Luis A. Galindo López, Ph.D. Has insulting become a habit? Nowadays, the use of swear-words has become a normal form of speech among the population, and probably even more extensive among teenagers. The reasons why insulting is so widespread in modern society may range substantially amongst the different social groups in which society is stratified. It is clear that nowadays insulting might seem more natural than some decades ago, but this fact becomes very clear once we take into account the evolution of freedom of speech.