Why do Americans have such a major issue with swear-words?

[Martini_Enfield]

Whilst I don’t have a link to a peer-reviewed study or anything like that, it’s been my overwhelming experience (both online and through my travels) that American society has a curious problem with swear-words.

Often, the complaints levelled against popular movies and music include things like “There’s too much swearing/cussing in it”, and even here on the boards you see a lot of people (presumably adults) asterisking or blanking out letters of swear words, as if pretending that typing “F**k” isn’t the same thing as typing “Fuck” (Shocked gasps from the audience; A woman in the front row faints).

Now, as someone not from the US, I’ve always found this attitude a bit strange. Sure, nearly everyone agrees that swear words are best not thrown around in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury or kindly old Mr. Patel from the corner store, but most adults are familiar with swear-words and unless they’re living in Pleasantville c. 1954, really shouldn’t be that shocked by people using them.

Even if we take “Cunt” (Angry hubub from audience, parents cover their children’s ears, a Minister brandishes a Bible; someone else faints and their friends try to rouse them with smelling salts), in the UK and Australia (and NZ, to a slightly lesser extent) it’s not the Hydrogen Bomb of Swear Words. Again, it’s not a word you’d be advised to use incautiously around your grandparents, but calling your friends a “cunt” is (depending on context) usually meant in a jocular, friendly manner. In most cases, it’s harmless or only conveys a sense of mild annoyance even when applied to strangers (“Some cunt on a bike is holding up traffic all along the road”, for example).

Obviously, Australia and other countries have different attitudes towards swearing in general- swear-words are broadcast on free-to-air TV after about 8:30pm (The Pacific, for example, had all the "Fuck"s left in it), which doesn’t happen in the US.

What I’m interested in is why modern US society seems to have such an issue with swear-words when the UK, Australia, and New Zealand don’t.

[DanBlather]

@Martini_Enfield

What I’m interested in is why modern US society seems to have such an issue with swear-words when the UK, Australia, and New Zealand don’t.

We’re better?

[Hello_Again]

US: colonized by incredibly strict religious orders other countries considered giant sticks-in-the-mud.
Australia: colonized by criminals.

could there be a connection?

[Bryan_Ekers]

Oz, season 2:

Coushaine: I say we institute a no swearing rule.

Hernandez: Fuck you.

Hill: Suck my dick.

Wangler: Asswipe.

Ryan: Cocksucker.

Pancamo: You stupid cunt.

Hoyt: Putz.

McManus: If nobody has anything intelligent to say, this meeting is adjourned.

[DCnDC]

It’s all part of the illusion of “family values” and being good decent people I suppose. I too have long wondered and disparaged the prohibition of words that have for some reason been granted phantom magical powers to offend.

[Ludovic]

Oz, season 2:

Coushaine: I say we institute a no swearing rule.

Hernandez: Fuck you.

Hill: Suck my dick.

Wangler: Asswipe.

Ryan: Cocksucker.

Pancamo: You stupid cunt.

Hoyt: Putz.

McManus: If nobody has anything intelligent to say, this meeting is adjourned.

Ahhh, but that took place in Australia…what?

[Martini_Enfield]

@Hello_Again

US: colonized by incredibly strict religious orders other countries considered giant sticks-in-the-mud.
Australia: colonized by criminals.

could there be a connection?

Probably not, seeing as only something like 2% of Australia’s current population can trace their ancestry back to convicts (or the soldiers guarding them). Most Australians are descended from free settlers who arrived from the 1830s onwards, and in the emigration waves that arrived after WWII.

The Puritan thing was nearly 400 years ago. I’d like to think there’s a better answer to the OP than “Because 400 year old people in silly hats with wives called Goody Somethingorother didn’t like naughty words”.

[Kimmy_Gibbler]

@Martini_Enfield

Probably not, seeing as only something like 2% of Australia’s current population can trace their ancestry back to convicts (or the soldiers guarding them). Most Australians are descended from free settlers who arrived from the 1830s onwards, and in the emigration waves that arrived after WWII.

Well, what do you think explains Australians then?

[Ataraxia]

I’ve noticed the same thing, especially on American television. Seems like the networks are very resistant to showing anything with swears. Maybe we can chalk it up to Americans just being more conservative in general than much of the English speaking world? shrug
That being said, I think “cunt” is considered much more offensive in North America than in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. I get the impression that in the Uk et al. “cunt” is kind of on the same level of offensiveness as “cock”; essentially just a dirty word for genitals, and so is frequently used in a sort of jocular way for both sexes. In North America though I think the term is considered much more offensive and is usually only used as an insult towards women, often with demeaning sexual overtones. (Much worse than calling someone a bitch or whore). In fact I don’t think I have ever heard anyone use that term in anything but an extremely insulting way and I think most women I know would consider it very coarse if a man were to say it in front of them. Reminds me of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where someone calls Larry a fuck during a poker game and everyone laughs but when he retaliates by calling the guy a cunt, everyone calls him a misogynist and leaves.

[Johnny_L.A]

Americans have an inferiority complex. By being offended by swear words, we can hold ourselves superior to the vulgar Others.

[Miller]

It’s 'cause we’re dicks.

[XT]

Why do Brits have bad teeth? Why do Japanese have hangups about tentacle sex? Why do the French drive so horribly, have attitudes and eat so much cheese? Why do the Germans all act like they have sticks up their asses, and why do the Russians and Irish drink like fish?

Why do we use so many stereotypes? The answer to the OP is that American’s, on the whole, don’t have ‘a major issue’ with swear-words, we just have…issues. In general. Most of which revolve around our latent tendencies to censor what is or isn’t fit for public consumption.

Also, it’s more a generational thing, and I think that it really has more to do with a certain age than it does with American’s in general. I’ve been to England (and Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well), and you talk to people of a certain age and use ‘cunt’, ‘fuck’ or even ‘bloody’ (which is pretty innocuous to American’s) and you are going to get a certain level of the English (or Welsh, Scots or Irish) version of outrage (granted…it will be more spectacular for some of those groups than others). Hell, I can remember being a hair (a red cunt hair, obviously) away from being mobbed once when I called a guy from up north a ‘Brit’, which he took to be an incredibly insulting ‘swear-word’.

Anyway, I think the hang up part is more an age thing, since I’ve seen it in a lot of other countries besides the US when talking to people of a certain age. Couple that with the US’s tendency to censor broadcast and public type programming (you don’t see much in the way of censoring of swear-words in cable or satellite type programming) and, well, there you go.

-XT

[Beware_of_Doug]

@Johnny_L.A

Americans have an inferiority complex. By being offended by swear words, we can hold ourselves superior to the vulgar Others.

Naw. Get more cynical. It’s competitive. Someone else shows a disadvantage, you pounce.

The difference with Americans is that we pursue such matters on instinct. Even if it makes us look stupid or distracts us from real issues, we gotta pounce.

[suranyi]

I’m not really sure the premise is entirely correct. Every society has some words that are considered very profane. It’s just that they are different in every society. I don’t know how bad the word “bloody” is considered in the UK nowadays, but in the U.S. it’s completely innocuous.

[Simplicio]

@Ataraxia

I’ve noticed the same thing, especially on American television. Seems like the networks are very resistant to showing anything with swears. Maybe we can chalk it up to Americans just being more conservative in general than much of the English speaking world? shrug

Does British or Aussie television have a lot of swearing? I certainly haven’t noticed the CBC being chalk full of expletives.

I’m kinda skeptical that other anglophone countries use a lot more profanity then the US does. People in the US swear pretty frequently in their personal lives, and while there’s less of it in professional settings or on broadcast TV, from my limited experience with Brits and more extensive experience with Canadians, that seems to be the case there as well.

Some quick googling turned up this article which suggests that their is a regulatory agency that makes sure there isn’t any swearing on British TV before 9pm (ironically, the complaints in the article appear to be partly about American celebrities swearing being captured on British TV).

[Cazzle]

@suranyi

I’m not really sure the premise is entirely correct. Every society has some words that are considered very profane. It’s just that they are different in every society. I don’t know how bad the word “bloody” is considered in the UK nowadays, but in the U.S. it’s completely innocuous.

It comes down a lot to the circles you move in too - the c-word is pretty much off-limits around my family and most of my friends, and the f-word is only used by some and only under provocation. At other times with other people, the attitude has been a more casual one as described in the OP.

[Dissonance]

@Martini_Enfield

Even if we take “Cunt” (Angry hubub from audience, parents cover their children’s ears, a Minister brandishes a Bible; someone else faints and their friends try to rouse them with smelling salts), in the UK and Australia (and NZ, to a slightly lesser extent) it’s not the Hydrogen Bomb of Swear Words. Again, it’s not a word you’d be advised to use incautiously around your grandparents, but calling your friends a “cunt” is (depending on context) usually meant in a jocular, friendly manner. In most cases, it’s harmless or only conveys a sense of mild annoyance even when applied to strangers (“Some cunt on a bike is holding up traffic all along the road”, for example).

Cunt isn’t a very good word to do a comparison on, it has very different meanings between the US and you people who speak English with all those weird accents. Wiki speaks:

Reflecting different national usages, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines “cunt” as “an unpleasant or stupid person”, **whereas Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a disparaging term for a woman” and “a woman regarded as a sexual object”; **the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English defines it as “a despicable man”. When used as a slang term with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc) in countries such as Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person to which it refers.[4]

The bolded bit being the way the word is defined and used in the US, and what American English speakers mean when they use it, hence it’s ‘bombshell’ value. Fanny is a bit like this as well, in American English it means buttocks, in English English it means vulva.

[Martini_Enfield]

My point is- taking the nit-picking out of the equation- it certainly appears to me that people react more negatively to swear words in the US than they do elsewhere like the UK or Aust/NZ.

Take how many posters here on the boards (for example), when typing a swear-word, will asterisk or blank part of it out, despite the fact swear-words (with one notable exception) are permitted on the boards.

I used to be a prolific poster on a couple of well-known military firearms boards, and they all had 19th century “No Bad Words!” rules. Not that you’d want to use them often, but even relatively innocuous words like “Shit” were out. The boards were hosted in the US. The juxtaposition of seeing firearm enthusiasts talking about guns, hunting, and shooting things in manly ways, but then acting like delicate Victorian socialites when someone said “Shit” was… interesting, to say the least.

Now, I’m not asserting that everyone else in the Anglosphere swears a lot- try publicly calling someone a “Motherfucker” in Malaysia and you’d probably end up in jail or targeted by outraged community groups, for example- but out of the “Western” Anglophone countries, it does seem that US society (as a whole) does have more “issues” with swear words than the UK or Australia and I’m interested in finding out why that is, or why people on the boards think it is.

[Kimmy_Gibbler]

@xtisme

Why do Brits have bad teeth? Why do Japanese have hangups about tentacle sex? Why do the French drive so horribly, have attitudes and eat so much cheese? Why do the Germans all act like they have sticks up their asses, and why do the Russians and Irish drink like fish?

You forgot the big one: Why are non-Americans obsessed with how they’re different from Americans?

[shantih]

Excellent point, Dissonance, and interestingly, I had thought of the word ‘fanny’ as well as an example of a word that has two different meanings and two different levels of intensity in different English-speaking lands.

If I may make a point by expanding into a different language, I find that in German, the word ‘Scheisse’ is thrown around much more casually and frequently than the word ‘shit’ is in English. American adults use ‘shit’ quite a lot in their daily lives and in less formal settings, of course, but fairly small German kids throw ‘Scheisse’ around in front of each other and adults without any selfconsciousness. The words have the same meaning, but in terms of ‘heat’ or intensity, ‘Scheisse’ is on the level of ‘crap.’