People like to dramatic, edgy, living on the edge you know. So if a word or phrase like person, piss, hell, damn, fart, fuck, ass rape, mother fuck, republican is taboo and offensive then you know what word they’re gonna use every chance they get?
In other words when you’re told not to do something that something is the one thing you wanna do.
In other words:
“anyone who tells me to fucking watch my language can go suck a herpes infested goat cock and eat their mother’s fishy menstruating cunt”.
That’d have a lot of shock value in some crowds wouldn’t it? Some people revile in that shock value. They’ll use the shocking words till everyone gets desensitized and starts using them too, then that crowd moves on to the next big thing.
Taboo words change. I was watching the old movie The Dam Busters in which one of the main characters has a dog named Nigger. Throughout the movie people would say “Look! It’s Nigger! Come here Boy!” or “I saw Nigger in the hallway.” Now you can’t say the word out loud, even when quoting someone or having an abstract discussion of the word itself. It’s always “the n-word.”
The irony is the really burning insults, the ones you remember, the ones that hurt aren’t the fuck you’s or the kiss my asses, it’s the creative ones that really hurt.
Two years ago someone in the Pit I’ve long forgotten prayed for another poster to get anally raped by a dozen syphilitic Haitian boat monkeys and I’m still bemused by it.
And when someone in Great Debates responded with “adjust your droll cup corkey, you’re leaking” I spit beer all over my keyboard.
I sure as hell don’t. To me, such language expresses hostility and/or contempt. Though there are, of course, exceptions.
In my younger days, I suppose I might possibly have experimented with things like this, like a little kid picking up a neat new swear word without really realizing what it means. But I’ve seen enough examples of how seemingly offhand comments like this can really hurt or offend people to throw them around lightly.
Language being uniquely human, words only mean what we say they mean. It’s all about context and the intent of the speaker. Fuck, shit, goddamn, cunt, and nigger are all just vibrations over my vocal chords that don’t have any meaning until meaning is applied by the listener’s brain. Anger can easily be expressed with or without these words, and so can any other emotion.
The use of offensive words has a physiological response as well as an intellectual one. Read: The Stuff of Thought
As for “fark” and “sheet” becoming debased - It goes the other way as well. See: The “c-word” (rhymes with punt) and the “n-word” (rhymes with bigger).
Both, as I understand it, were more or less socially acceptable in earlier times. Both have become enormously offensive today.
Language is fluid. Acceptability changes. But there will probably always be words (though the words may change) that are offensive.
OMG! Me too! I actually have been known to (affectionately), tell my kids to “bugger off” or “frak off”, and I have laughingly told the older (teenaged one) to “go fuck yourself, you son of a…lovely and talented mother!” I’ve never been once to spare the cussing, as all you bastards damn well know.
But earlier tonight when I nearly split my skull open on an open cabinet as I stood up in the wrong spot? Total silence, and then, “Oh…good…gravy!” Ya coulda heard a pin drop, and suddenly everyone rushed into the kitchen 'cause they knew it was something serious.
I’ve actually adopted a few text abbreviations in my verbal speech. “Doubleyew tee eff” is just so succinct and perfect, why not use it when talking, too?
Well I’m struggling with what the hell is going on with the crude and rude language these days.
As a teenager we never used words like “fuck” in front of adults, though we used it commonly enough amongst ourselves. The exception would be in the company of older males of rough living with no females present.
Teenagers would tell each other to “fuck off”, but as we settled into our twenties,(1970s) we seemed to mature beyond that. Those who continued to use the word were regarded with mild contempt for lack of vocabulary and self control. Today, in the real life circles I travel in I rarely hear the word or the expression “fuck off”.
So you can imagine my surprise when I was introduced to the pit where intelligent and educated people where expressing themselves in the most vile manner possible.
I have done so my self, though not often, yet I continue to wonder if many of the pitizens actually talk like they post in real life and if they get so really pissed off so frequently.
At least in my case, I can definitively answer: mercy, no. As far as I’m concerned, the Pit is a venue for exploring verbal obscenity, vituperation and invective as a literary genre. Kind of like the scurrilous Latin epigrams popular in ancient Rome, if we need a distinguished (?) ancestral model to hark back to. I certainly don’t talk like that in ordinary conversation, and I usually dislike meeting people who do.
In Germany, the word “Scheisse” is very commonplace.
The phrase “Ich habe Scheisse gebaut” (meaning not “I built shit”, but “I made a mess of things”, is very common.
What is not acceptable, is “Ich muss scheissen” (“I have to shit”).
There may be others as well which have come into usage there, but that’s the the one word I can think of right now.
To the question: “Have “fuck” and “shit” lost their sting as well?”, it’s my opinion that if they have we may need to resort to “stilted cursing” such as the Python-esque “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
The fact that “fuck” and “shit” are such harsh, sybillant words and can therefore be used as exclamations makes me believe that it will be a long time before we incorporate them into “polite” conversation.
As I see it, that aspect of language is not changing very much. In the Victorian era, profanity was taboo in polite society, but not all society was polite. I’d bet that in the factories, or among sailors, or in the military, or in prisons, profanity flowed just as readily as it does today.
What has changed is the social meaning of it. Then, it was understood that using profanity made you lower class. If you wanted to move up the social ladder, you had to drop those words and start using proper language. This lasted into the 20th century and was reflected by things like the Hollywood production code. (Rhett Butler’s famous closing line indicates that he’s unable to fully absorb traditional southern values.)
Now the situation has been turned on its head. Rich people, political and intellectual elites, and the major media use profanity nonstop and think that it makes them better than everyone else. Dirty words supposedly prove that one is genuine, while polite language supposedly indicates a phony or a loser.
I think the OP’s question really needs to be viewed in light of text-based communications. It’s interesting because I was thinking about this earlier, before reading this thread. What we have now in the Internet age is a world where people can communicate without looking at each other, with no real and meaningful fear of reprisal - no physical harm or potential negative consequences to their health or that of their loved ones. As Penny Arcade put it, anonymity plus an audience turns people into assholes. I sincerely doubt the tough, aggressive, vituperative remarks so common on message boards, in texts and otherwise in electronic communications are truly characteristic of the person writing them. We’ve become a culture of convenience in many ways, communication most particularly. So harsh words like ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ and so on become supposedly acceptable because we have no concern for the subtle social clues of human behaviour. We are lost in our own minds.
Sounds like you’re confusing personal experience with objective morality, and should probably try to meet more different kinds of people to broaden your knowledge and perspective.
The thing is, shit, piss and fuck aren’t exactly new words that were invented in 1968. They anglo-saxon have been in daily use since well before 1066. So if words like shit, piss and fuck are debasing the language it’s taking longer than we thought.
Sure, there was an upper-class fad during the Victorian age to not use such words in mixed company. But everyone knew these words, if the words weren’t widely used how could they be considered offensive? Those words were used all day every day during the Victorian era…just not at certain times and places. The comparison to “nigger” is very apt. I can curse the fucking shitty computers at work all day and no one will bat an eye. But if I start using the word “nigger”, I’ll get a visit from HR in about five seconds.
Most of my problems are with inanimate objects like this. I wonder what I would do if I were genuinely mad at a person. Thankfully life has ensured this has not happened for some time.
Off hand, I can’t think of a word used as a swear word - as opposed to socially unacceptable words such as nigger - that would cause more offense in the UK too.
