What the fuck?!

1. What the fuck?! Taboo words and cussing!

2. Shhh… don’t say the ‘F-word’: • Difficult area of research as many allow themselves to be affected by the ‘taboo’ and destructive notion of swearing: it makes you look bad, social ill, corrupts language • Cuss control Academy: run workshops to reduce vulgarity, profanity, and offensive slang: ‘The ten tips of taming the tongue’ • President of the Academy: we swear because we are lazy

3. ‘Sticks and stones…’ • Only until recently, publishers and lexicographers have been unwilling to include swear words for fear of offending the literate public • Oxford Dictionary: four letter words appeared in early 1970’s • Random House publisher agonised for decades: not until 1987

4. Federal Communications Commission • The Clean Airwaves bill

5. It’s a sickness to society! “We live… in an age defined by the smashing of taboos. It’s all part of the assault… on the suburban, the respectable. But as taboos get smashed, new ones emerge… so the frontiers of shockability get pushed ever outwards…” “…erosion of public values and consideration of others”

6. Attitudes in Australia • Softening social attitude towards swear words… a general symptom of lightening up • Swear words do not spell the end of civilisation …. That we all have at some point abused an uncooperative computer or printer or laughed at a raunchy joke • We laugh, almost on reflex. • Page 8

7. Why do we swear? P.g. 28- Catharsis: the almost instinctive BASTARD! Emitted when you stub your toe • Straightforward: bump your head, get caught going through a red light swearing. • David Crystal places this within the ‘expressive’/’emotional’ function of language, seeing as a means to release excessive nervous energy • Considered as ‘venom cleansing’, p.g 31

8. Why do we swear? P.g. 28-41 Abusive: requires a target audience, to inflict harm • Motive is nasty as your language use Social: you old bastard • In relaxed settings, where people are comfortable, their language comprises of high degrees of swearing (of course there are variations) ‘Fuck! You sure bought a lot of beer!’ ‘Put your shit over there and come and have a drink’ • Imbues their language with colour and emotion, p.g. 38 • Flattens the hierarchy

9. How do words change their meaning and social function over time? Attitudes towards swearing, as encoded in cultural constructs such as taboo or church rules, have the belief that certain words used in certain ways have symbolic power: a reflexive relationship The view that certain words have power invests these words with power: manifests and reinforces it Shift over time

10. Origins of F**K • Latin: Future • O.E- French: Foutre, physical violence, to hit • German: Fricken: to strike…. To engage in sexual acts • Blend between Latin (FU) and German (CK) • Shit, Turd, Arse and Fart: Anglo-Saxon origin • F***, Crap, bum, C** and Twat: uncertain • For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge • Fornicate Under Command of the King: During time of great plague • Wide spread in the 1800s but liberated in the 1960s

11. F***, pg. 17-27 It seems that it has lost its referential base, as an intensifier, it no longer intensifies. P.g. 59 It started as a taboo word because of its referential function: a sexual act but has now gravitated towards a more emotional outlet: • Displeasure: ‘What the fuck is going on?!’ • Intensifier: ‘It’s fucking hot in here!’ • Abuse: ‘You fucking fuckwit. Don’t fuck with me!’ • Go figure: ‘Oh fuck it’ • Lost: ‘Where the fuck are we?’ • Perplexed: ‘I know fuck all about it’ • Suspicious: ‘Who the fuck are you?’ • Disbelief: ‘how the fuck did that happen?’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UA578yQ5g

12. How to define it? • Oxford fails • Collins dictionary gives a variety of derivatives • Macquarie dictionary gives a variety of grammatical phrases, p.g. 19 Difficult because the word seems to grow legs and move about!, p.g. 21

13. Why is it still a ‘taboo word’? The taboo still lurks but not as strong as twenty years ago. YET institutions claim that it is ‘taboo in all sense’ even though admitting the word is rarely used referentially. • C. S. Lewis believes that we lack a language that can comfortably talk about sex • It is taboo so that it is difficult to raise such topics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnDUqof1KoM

14. Shit happens • Shit happens, but it’s hard to talk about it • Bowel motions, stool, waste product, pass wing, pass water • Shi….iivers: disgust is not natural or innate: Taught at an early age that faeces and vomit is offensive- a response to cultural values

15. Verbal equivalent of stamping your foot! • It is expressive, not over the top offensive • P.g.: 75-78, 81, 83: Over 60 combinations for ‘Shit’