Once you hear somebody casually drop the phrase “fuck,” what’s your response? Offended? Stunned? Confused?
In any case, I’m pretty sure listening to somebody curse out of nowhere provokes some form of rapid response. We now have a taboo on this tradition in opposition to profanity and when somebody breaks that taboo, it will get your consideration.
However why is that, precisely? Swearing is all over the place. All of us do it. So why does it nonetheless have such energy? Regardless of the rationalization, 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, College of London, and the creator of a brand new e book known as For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Stunning, Impolite, and Enjoyable. This e book is as amusing because it sounds, nevertheless 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 elucidate why they’re in a position to 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 Grey Space to speak about all these puzzles and a number of other others. As all the time, there’s a lot extra within the full podcast, so pay attention and observe The Grey Space 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 suppose we must always begin with the fundamentals: What makes a swear phrase a swear phrase?
Rebecca Roache
They are usually phrases that concentrate on taboo matters — intercourse, defecation, faith, issues like that. And that’s fairly common. They’re phrases that we have a tendency to make use of to specific emotion, and the small quantity of philosophy that’s been accomplished on swearing has talked about that swear phrases are linked to expressing feelings. You need to use a swear phrase to vent with out essentially attempting to convey data the best way you usually would in a sentence. The linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has mentioned 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. Once you’re swearing, you’re probably not utilizing phrases to explain one thing on the earth, 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’ve a black truck” is concerning the black truck in my driveway. However generally swear phrases are similar to another phrase, i.e., “There’s hen shit on my truck.”
Anyway, to your broader level, it looks as if context is every part. If some phrases have extra energy than others, it’s not due to something inherent to the phrases themselves, it’s as a result of we’ve given them that energy and we preserve reinforcing it in our each day interactions with one another, which I suppose is how tradition on the whole works.
Rebecca Roache
Yeah, I feel that’s precisely proper. One factor that basically brings this out, and that is the primary puzzle that bought me into this matter, is considering how asterisks work. You see this on a regular basis in information tales, as an example, the place a few of the letters in a swear phrase are obscured by asterisks. So that you get f**ok as a substitute 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 cover the phrase in any form of significant approach. However I feel the explanation it really works to cut 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 terms of spoken swear phrases, that message of disrespect will get changed by a competing message, which is one thing like, “I actually need to convey this phrase however I’m additionally nervous about how you’ll really feel about it, so I’m obscuring a few of it as a result of I care about your emotions.” 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 far more with a phrase like “Fuck” than you possibly can virtually another phrase within the language?
Rebecca Roache
There’s a nice 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 standard verb or no matter that phrase is. It’s up for grabs, is it a verb or is it one thing else? You possibly can speak about two individuals fucking, for instance, after which it behaves in the identical approach as a standard verb. However you can even use it on this extra uncommon approach, which is “fuck two.” That is once we say “fuck you,” or “fuck off,” or we simply pepper our dialog with swear phrases. Anthony Burgess has an excellent 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 really works as a result of we perceive that swearing isn’t just about conveying data, 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 anyone within the eye and saying “fuck you” or “you fucking fool,” one thing like that the place it’s directed at anyone, you’re weaponizing the phrase, you’re utilizing it to accentuate your adverse angle in the direction of one other individual.
I feel that that directedness performs an element in aggravating the shock worth of swearing. Loads is determined by 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 kids, particularly different individuals’s kids. Should you’re simply letting off steam and anyone’s bought their child with them, then itÆs like, “Oh, God, sorry.”
I feel we additionally get a little bit cagey round energy imbalances. Swearing at a police officer, as an example, or a instructor, the form 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 foundations or they get into hassle. However extra typically talking, there are some contexts which are extra casual than others, not simply with regard to the language we use, however issues like how we costume, how we’ve got to handle one another, whether or not you possibly can name individuals by their first names, for instance. And I feel it’s useful to view swearing as simply a part 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
A number of this boils all the way down to a social or emotional intelligence, or a fundamental capability to learn the room and know the place you might be, who you might be, who you’re with and choose appropriately. Should you can’t do this, you then’re most likely going to run into hassle.
The purpose about parenting and children is fascinating. My spouse has needed to test me quite a bit at residence 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, then again, why can we care? They’re simply phrases and a variety of them, as we’ve demonstrated, are objectively nice and the one cause for not wanting him to listen to them isn’t that they‘re inherently dangerous, it’s that we don’t need him to make an ass of himself in well mannered society. And if we‘re being sincere, we most likely additionally fear about being judged by different individuals who hear our child. However is {that a} ok cause, actually?
Rebecca Roache
We wish our kids to develop up figuring out tips on how to navigate the norms of the tradition they’re in, however we do appear to take an extremely precautionary method right here. If we have been to take this similar angle to different norms, then we’d have our youngsters not say “mama” or “dada” and as a substitute say “mom” 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 do this, although.
I feel a part of it’s most likely that folks choose breaches of etiquette that should do with swearing extra harshly, and choose the dad and mom extra harshly, than different breaches of etiquette. But it surely’s additionally bizarre that we’ve got this angle that we have to shield our youngsters from swearing however, on the similar time, if you’re to satisfy anyone who took that to the acute and mentioned, “I’m taking steps to make sure that my child by no means learns to swear, they’re going to have a chaperone with them always to ensure older children don’t train them impolite phrases,” this form of factor, that might be actually sinister. Even these of us who’re involved with our youngsters being well mannered, it’s not that we by no means need our youngsters to study these phrases, perhaps it’s that we simply by no means need them to study them from us.
I feel this explains the squeamishness we’ve got about swearing in entrance of different individuals’s kids. There’s additionally the concept it takes a village to boost a toddler and we expect, “Nicely, the dad and mom is likely to be actually working onerous to carry their children as much as be well mannered and but right here I’m dropping F-bombs left, proper, and middle ,undoing all their good work.” So we simply need to be supportive of different individuals’s efforts to boost their kids.
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 easily not caring about offending people who find themselves offended by the incorrect issues?
Rebecca Roache
If I feel individuals are going to be offended by swearing, I don’t swear. Typically, we must always keep away from inflicting individuals to really feel offended if there’s no good cause to do in any other case, and I feel generally there’s a good cause 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 drawback and you’ve got a superb cause to simply ignore what they discover offensive. However I feel with swearing, normally 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 glad.
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