In Western culture, it’s generally considered taboo to expose children to profanity before a certain age. I’ve never fully understood the logic and rationale behind this and I was wondering is this a trait that’s universal across all cultures or a very culturally specific practice?
The reason we try not to expose children to profanity is obvious. We have (sometimes quite subtle) social conventions about when and in what circumstances it’s appropriate to use various profanities, and various ways of reacting to people who infringe those conventions, including drawing adverse conclusions about their intelligence, social awareness, social standing, etc. Young children aren’t capable of grasping and applying the conventions, and we fear that if they use profanity (which they will do, if they are exposed to it) they may suffer adverse consequences.
I don’t know whether this is universal, but I expect that any culture which has a concept of profanity also has ways of discouraging children from using it inappropriately, and one of the obvious steps is to limit their exposure to it.
I would point out that in limiting their exposure we are not just, or not mainly, trying to keep them ignorant of its existence. Even when we are perfectly aware that our children have encountered profane language, we still don’t use it in front of them, because we don’t want to model its use.
Children break social conventions all the time and they don’t suffer adverse consequences for it (eg: calling people fat or ugly in the non-pejorative sense). It’s generally accepted that children will be socially inappropriate out of ignorance.
Uh, yea but when [del]my[/del] somebody’s children loudly ask why the lady behind us in the gorcery line is so fat, [del]I am[/del] they are horrified and mortified. Strong conversations with that child about the use of seemingly innocent words will usually follow.
People really don’t like those situations and want to keep them to a minimum.
Words aren’t very profane if it’s acceptable for children to use them.
Any factual answers for the OP? It’s an interesting question.
How is a word even profane? The F-bomb is just a series of syllables. It doesn’t even have a single meaning, and some of the meanings are ok. “damn” is just a term from religion and children shouldn’t be afraid of it because religion is bullshit.
How do you pronounce it where you get even two syllables?
Supposedly the Inuit language has no words that are considered offensive. Up shit’s creek would still be a nasty place to be, I imagine, but there’s nothing wrong with naming it.
Draw out and repeat the “uh” sound a few times and you can have as many syllables as you want.
Every culture that I’ve encountered has somewhat of a profanity level, something that they don’t want their youngsters to hear or experience.
It may be just different to what your culture classifies as profane, what is socially acceptable or age group.
Doesn’t answer the OP, but this BBC articlediscusses taboo/swear words in different cultures.
All words are just sounds and they mean whatever we use them to mean. A word is profane because we treat it that way. All meanings, including the idea of profanity are cultural.
Well, I can’t speak for all cultures, however in many cultures, like the USA, profanity is based on sexual terms. In Spain , it is mostly based upon religion, although some sexual terms come into play. Imagine trying to explain these sexual terms to small kids. As well, once they rear their heads through social play contacts, it’s a good idea to teach discernment about their use.
Here’s a pretty good example of that very thing, where a boy says “Hey, ladies” to a couple of girls riding by on bikes and they respond with “Fuck you” (and maybe “Your mom too” from the second girl according to some accounts I’ve read). In response the boy throws his basketball and hits the girl’s front tire, sending her over the handlebars into a face plant on the street. The girls shouldn’t have said ‘Fuck you’ and the boy shouldn’t have knocked the girl off her bike. If they’d all been older it’s likely neither would have acted like they did. Video here.