By Meg Chu, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, and twat.
There you have it, folks. The lyrical genius of Blink-182. Of course, this is probably the best song that the band has ever created, and God, it’s a gem. The first time I heard that song, I was at the tender age of eleven, and I hadn’t heard approximately 30% of those words before – to be honest, I hadn’t even really spoken any of them, either.
(Oh, how I’ve changed over the years.)
Those terms used by Blink-182 in the excellently named “Family Reunion” make up a considerable portion of the average person’s vocabulary. This is not to say that every single person in the universe has a potty mouth; however, in my personal experiences, I rarely come across people who don’t drop an f-bomb at least once a day. Slate magazine’s podcast interview with Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, reports that according to a study by psychologist Timothy Jay, the most common swears – for example, “fuck” and “shit” – make up approximately 0.7% of the average English speaker’s daily vocabulary. In other words, swears are used almost as frequently per day as first person plural pronouns, which rank at 1.0%. And for those who aren’t spewing swear words left and right, movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street certainly pick up the slack, using the word “fuck” at a rate of 2.81 times per minute, as calculated in a recent Rolling Stone article by Kory Grow.
When considering swear words, one must call into mind several deeply analytic and complex lexiconic questions: What is it that makes swear words bad? How do swears originate? Why are they “worse” than other words? Why does profane language even exist? And last, but not least, should we censor profanity?
The use of curse words can be traced back to ancient civilizations (such as Pompeii, a city whose ruins are covered in graffiti bearing messages approximately translating to phrases such as “I fucked so-and-so here”), and before that, it is highly likely that our Cro-Magnon ancestors let out specific guttural sounds in place of actual curse words, similar to the way animals will often make certain noises when either threatened or in pain.
Generally, swears can be divided into two categories: those with religious connotations, and “bodily obscenities.”
Swears with religious elements were especially taboo during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance period due to the influence of Christianity. For example, using “God” in vain was considered blasphemous, and any mention of the Lord was thought to cause actual physical harm to the resurrected Christ in heaven. This led to the popularization of many minced oaths, or euphemistic terms with slightly altered spellings of the words they replaced, such as “gosh” for “God.”
As far as the history of swearing goes, my personal favorite time period is the Victorian Era, during which the aforementioned bodily obscenities were the most taboo terms. Even the word “legs” was considered inappropriate in polite conversation and was replaced with phrases such as “the lower limbs.” Terms such “shit” were replaced with Latin variations (defecate), and nearly all sexual acts were spoken of using French terms or invented terminology – for example, “titty fucking” was replaced with the completely unrelated-sounding word “larking.”
In replacing taboo words with euphemisms, those in the Victorian Era were missing out on a key social function of swears: their role as dysphemisms, or terms that very excellently communicate strong and unpleasant emotions or experiences. Sure, you could say that your minimum-wage job and tyrannical boss make you feel like a morsel of excrement, but why say that when you could say that your stupid fucking minimum-wage job and motherfucking jackass of a boss make you feel like your life is a fucking huge steaming pile of horse shit? Just look at all that pent-up emotion released in one profanity-laden sentence – with a string of words like that, there won’t be a single person in existence who won’t be able to truly understand how terrible your job makes you feel. This also provides an explanation for why it is necessary that there be words considered “worse” than others: to paraphrase YouTube user VSauce, if “shit” and “defecate” were at the same level of social acceptableness, there would be nothing in language that could as easily communicate such extremely unpleasant emotions and distinguish them from the more bland ones.
In addition to serving a social purpose, swearing also serves a psychological purpose. Researchers from Keele University concluded from a 2009 study that swearing actually has a hypoalgesic effect. In other words, if someone cuts off your pinky finger with a meat cleaver, screaming “FUCK” repeatedly at the top of your lungs will actually make the experience less painful, as swears are stored in a part of the brain separate from the rest of language. They are instead connected to the sympathetic nervous system and, when used, activate adrenaline secretions that make pain more tolerable. Unfortunately, screaming “fuck” won’t actually help you re-grow your finger, but alas, life’s not perfect.
This leaves us with one final question: to censor, or not to censor?
Given the social and psychological functions of swearing, use of profanity is not something that in any way should be considered as detracting from the intellectual depth or validity of what a person is saying. Of course, there is a time and place in which swearing may be considered inappropriate, such as in certain highly professional work environments, but in casual conversation, one’s use of profane language is not something that should lead others to look down upon them. Cursing is something that has been a largely positive element of lexicon throughout all of history, and to regard it with a critical eye is to rule out an integral facet of language and communication. So the next time someone warns you to watch your language or tells you not to swear so much when you write magazine articles, I encourage you to do the following:
Keep your chin up, wave your middle finger in front of their face, grin like a maniac, and, most importantly, tell them to go fuck themselves.
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, and twat.
There you have it, folks. The lyrical genius of Blink-182. Of course, this is probably the best song that the band has ever created, and God, it’s a gem. The first time I heard that song, I was at the tender age of eleven, and I hadn’t heard approximately 30% of those words before – to be honest, I hadn’t even really spoken any of them, either.
(Oh, how I’ve changed over the years.)
Those terms used by Blink-182 in the excellently named “Family Reunion” make up a considerable portion of the average person’s vocabulary. This is not to say that every single person in the universe has a potty mouth; however, in my personal experiences, I rarely come across people who don’t drop an f-bomb at least once a day. Slate magazine’s podcast interview with Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, reports that according to a study by psychologist Timothy Jay, the most common swears – for example, “fuck” and “shit” – make up approximately 0.7% of the average English speaker’s daily vocabulary. In other words, swears are used almost as frequently per day as first person plural pronouns, which rank at 1.0%. And for those who aren’t spewing swear words left and right, movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street certainly pick up the slack, using the word “fuck” at a rate of 2.81 times per minute, as calculated in a recent Rolling Stone article by Kory Grow.
When considering swear words, one must call into mind several deeply analytic and complex lexiconic questions: What is it that makes swear words bad? How do swears originate? Why are they “worse” than other words? Why does profane language even exist? And last, but not least, should we censor profanity?
The use of curse words can be traced back to ancient civilizations (such as Pompeii, a city whose ruins are covered in graffiti bearing messages approximately translating to phrases such as “I fucked so-and-so here”), and before that, it is highly likely that our Cro-Magnon ancestors let out specific guttural sounds in place of actual curse words, similar to the way animals will often make certain noises when either threatened or in pain.
Generally, swears can be divided into two categories: those with religious connotations, and “bodily obscenities.”
Swears with religious elements were especially taboo during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance period due to the influence of Christianity. For example, using “God” in vain was considered blasphemous, and any mention of the Lord was thought to cause actual physical harm to the resurrected Christ in heaven. This led to the popularization of many minced oaths, or euphemistic terms with slightly altered spellings of the words they replaced, such as “gosh” for “God.”
As far as the history of swearing goes, my personal favorite time period is the Victorian Era, during which the aforementioned bodily obscenities were the most taboo terms. Even the word “legs” was considered inappropriate in polite conversation and was replaced with phrases such as “the lower limbs.” Terms such “shit” were replaced with Latin variations (defecate), and nearly all sexual acts were spoken of using French terms or invented terminology – for example, “titty fucking” was replaced with the completely unrelated-sounding word “larking.”
In replacing taboo words with euphemisms, those in the Victorian Era were missing out on a key social function of swears: their role as dysphemisms, or terms that very excellently communicate strong and unpleasant emotions or experiences. Sure, you could say that your minimum-wage job and tyrannical boss make you feel like a morsel of excrement, but why say that when you could say that your stupid fucking minimum-wage job and motherfucking jackass of a boss make you feel like your life is a fucking huge steaming pile of horse shit? Just look at all that pent-up emotion released in one profanity-laden sentence – with a string of words like that, there won’t be a single person in existence who won’t be able to truly understand how terrible your job makes you feel. This also provides an explanation for why it is necessary that there be words considered “worse” than others: to paraphrase YouTube user VSauce, if “shit” and “defecate” were at the same level of social acceptableness, there would be nothing in language that could as easily communicate such extremely unpleasant emotions and distinguish them from the more bland ones.
In addition to serving a social purpose, swearing also serves a psychological purpose. Researchers from Keele University concluded from a 2009 study that swearing actually has a hypoalgesic effect. In other words, if someone cuts off your pinky finger with a meat cleaver, screaming “FUCK” repeatedly at the top of your lungs will actually make the experience less painful, as swears are stored in a part of the brain separate from the rest of language. They are instead connected to the sympathetic nervous system and, when used, activate adrenaline secretions that make pain more tolerable. Unfortunately, screaming “fuck” won’t actually help you re-grow your finger, but alas, life’s not perfect.
This leaves us with one final question: to censor, or not to censor?
Given the social and psychological functions of swearing, use of profanity is not something that in any way should be considered as detracting from the intellectual depth or validity of what a person is saying. Of course, there is a time and place in which swearing may be considered inappropriate, such as in certain highly professional work environments, but in casual conversation, one’s use of profane language is not something that should lead others to look down upon them. Cursing is something that has been a largely positive element of lexicon throughout all of history, and to regard it with a critical eye is to rule out an integral facet of language and communication. So the next time someone warns you to watch your language or tells you not to swear so much when you write magazine articles, I encourage you to do the following:
Keep your chin up, wave your middle finger in front of their face, grin like a maniac, and, most importantly, tell them to go fuck themselves.
- Meg Chu is a freshman WLP major from New York. She was born on the day the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed its Origins of Impressionism exhibit, and she enjoys wearing a variation of black and dark grey. In her spare time, she likes running, reading, eating tofu, and complaining about things on the Internet.