By Alina Ostrovsky
When words fly like blazing bullets, they inevitably scorch our consciousness in a searing manner. However, in most likelihood, words also tend to enhance our understanding in a way that they build up our character through the medium of interaction – be it with a trusted person, friend, or organisation that provides services to further our life goals. The positive words, the substantial words, the pertinent words and the golden words advance your ambitious pursuit towards your life’s purpose that altogether fulfils you as a living person. As John Locke put it: “Language is the greatest bond that holds [a thriving] society together”, but the key condition to its ‘thriving’ is if the language is used and expressed appropriately.
Language, its importance and profanity’s part in it
If it is, Leslie Snyder explained that language provides us with a system of classifying and organising knowledge. She further articulated that it enables us to acquire knowledge on an unlimited scale and to keep order in our minds, which means, it allows us to think. Therefore, she believes, the principal consequence of language is communication, effective communication, not destructive, which language also can be. With all that said, how damaging or to what extent is profanity appropriate in our daily discourse with each other? Is it under no circumstances appropriate? Is it even moral? Well, that depends on who you ask.
As we all might know, society and culture influence the words that we speak, and the words that we speak influence society and culture. Essentially, it is a living cycle that is composed of two dependent factors—“society and culture” as one, and “words”, as the second. Profanity, on the other hand, affects this harmonious balance. James Herbeck explains this intrusive factor through his comprehensive metaphor as follows: “If everyday language is like earth’s crust and the soil we garden our lives in, strong language (profanity) is like volcanoes and geysers erupting through it from the mantle below. Our social traditions determine which parts of the crust are thin points.”
In other words, in this geological metaphor, “the soil we garden our lives with” are those words that liberate us from constrictions of thought that erupting volcanoes of profanity put us in, which help us thrive throughout our lives. This follows that the ‘erupting volcanoes’ erupt based on the socially agreed ‘thin points’, connoting to specific words that are socially agreed to be profane, which altogether destroys the fruition of the ‘gardens’ that we have been harvesting throughout our lifetime. In this sense, it shows that profanity is counter-productive in our lives. As speakers and listeners of profanity, it collectively punctures “the bond that holds society together”, which John Locke had spoken of. Therefore, John Locke continues to say that corruptive language “darkens[s] truth and unsettles people’s rights”.
Proponents and opponents of profanity
As such, one of the debaters answered a question that was posed online of whether or not swearing is bad in such a way that reaffirmed John Locke’s premise. This person states as follows: “Smart and intelligent people do not use profanity. When society craves the degraded, it shows that we have taken away our freedoms (as John Locke had said that it takes away our rights), because many people say that it is just the way I am or ‘it’s human nature’. With this, we are becoming objects instead of agents, because we do have the power not to swear. This is why swearing is bad”.
One of the proponents of swearing states as follows: “What’s wrong with swearing? Why are these words off limits when others aren’t? To the people who think that swearing is bad, what makes swearing bad?” then she continues, “AND for those of you who say it is wrong in the bible, I have yet to see a scripture that says profanity is wrong. I haven’t seen it say that cursing is wrong. I have seen where the bible says to be nice, but not where it says that cursing, or swearing, is bad.”
Right here, this person portrays utter ignorance. There are overwhelming parts of biblical scripture that address the immorality of foul language. One of them is in this scripture: “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell,” (James 3:6).
Types of profanity
To understand the concept of profanity, it is important to understand its definition. Paul Hiebert defines it to be a language that strikes to be so grossly offensive to members of the public who hear it as to amount to a nuisance. According to Eileen Feen of Concordia University, she compartmentalises profanity in five types:
1. Supernatural, to evoke awe and fear often connected with religion like “Goddamnit” or “Oh my f**king God”, using God’s name in vain in blasphemy, which is against the Second Commandment or even the phrase “What the hell?” and “Holy s**t”
2. Bodily effluvia and organs, to evoke disgust, like bodily excrements such as “s**t”, “piss” and others
3. Disease, death, and infirmity, to evoke a sense of dread
4. Sexuality, to evoke revulsion and depravity part of it being the notorious word “f**k”
5. Disfavored people and groups, to evoke hatred and contempt like racial slurs
Also, Eileen Feen continues in her classification of swearing by explaining that swearing can either be planned or completely spontaneous, which fall into two groups: ‘propositional’, the planned, and ‘non-propositional’, the unplanned. There are five types of ‘propositional swearing’ according to her: dysphemistic, euphemistic, abusive, idiomatic, and emphatic swearing.
Dysphemistic swearing is used when a taboo word is chosen rather than a neutral term, such as connoting to a mental institution as a loony bin or referring to a person struggling with mental health as “psycho”. Euphemistic swearing is a way of using words that replace unpleasantries, such as instead of saying “f**k”, you say “fudge”, which is more of an “innocent way” of swearing. Idiomatic swearing such as “pain in the ass” is used to gain attention or appear macho. Cathartic swearing, which is non-propositional, is used to relieve tension, increase one’s tolerance for pain, or even startle or intimidate an attacker. Abusive swearing is always considered rude when it is used to intimidate or humiliate someone. This type can be expressed in metaphors, such as “You dress like a slut”, advice, “Why don’t you go f**k yourself?!” and accusation, “You are being a real b**ch!” The end goal of this type of speech is to bully or gain power. Emphatic swearing such as “f**king cool” is utilized to emphasize something.
Profanity in the workforce, movies, and books
The problem in our society is that profanity became a casual conversational tool, which breached into the workforce, movies and young adult books. Dianne Gottsman stated that one of the reasons why ubiquitous profanity hurts us in a business setting are because we come across as not having command of our language. She continues to say that that’s why it’s very important to use our words for power, and we lose our power when we start substituting strong words with profanity. In fact, Eileen Feen added in that regard that with millennials now in the work-force and baby boomers retiring, there has been an overall normalization of swearing in the office.
As far as movies are concerned, Mellisa Henson stated as follows: “The volume of R-rated stuff that we’re seeing probably far outpaces what the market would support, while the G-rated movies stuff is hardly sufficient to meet market demands”.
In more simplistic terms, there are too many R-rated movies and not enough demand for it, while there is a lesser production of G-rated movies, but an overwhelming demand for it. To support her claim, Henson noted that according to research and surveys, a PG-13 movie floods the seats of the cinema more so than an R-rated; PG-rated movies outperform a PG-13, and a G-rated movie outperforms PG ones. The reason for it is because families tend to attend movies that are lower rated, which crowds the cinemas more so than selling tickets to a couple going out for a date night that is willing to watch higher rated movies.
When profanity is used in young adult novels, though, authors argue that there is more liberty in exercising their writing prowess simply because it encapsulates the bitter reality that those youngsters live in. An English Teacher Louise Pettigrew explained that those types of books give room for youth to discuss and reason why language is inappropriate in particular contexts or how it can empower or disempower. Brendan Ritchie expanded on that idea by saying that this allows youth to explore really important social issues such as sexuality, death and the extent of morality.
Librarian Joanna Andrew further advocates on behalf of those authors by saying that profanity in novels does not encourage youth to swear just as much as reading about violence does not encourage them to go out and hunt each-other out. This gives them more of a conducive environment to discern the impact of the profanity that’s used by the characters and against the characters, enabling young readers to see the bigger picture within the pace of their own reading. However, it is perceived differently in movies, because its perception is momentary, which is a lot more imposing onto an impressionable viewer than books containing profanity.
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