
The Evolution of Profanity - rglovejoy
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-dare-you-say-that-the-evolution-of-profanity-1437168515
======
pbiggar
Fascinating article.

In particular, I find the final point incredibly interesting: black men use
the N-word to mean "buddy" and that black culture is becoming much more
mainstream. As such others would like to use the vocabulary of black culture
without being black.

One would imagine that the increased use of the vocab of black culture would
lead to decreased racism. But, if it cannot be used because of the current
stigma of non-blacks using the N-word, perhaps this stigma actually increases
racism instead of decreasing it.

~~~
Denzel
I agree, it's an interesting point. "Black" culture isn't nearly as uniform as
some people would like to believe. As a mixed African-American raised around
multiple different ethnicities, my brother and I have had many heated debates
about the usage of the word. Even within our own community. In the end, it
really doesn't matter much to either of us. It's just interesting.

For us, there is no stigma attached to non-blacks using the word. The problem
is intent. Like any word, it can be used negatively or positively, and I
prefer not to have to second guess whether you meant it one way or another. So
I kindly ask people, that I don't know well, to refrain from using it around
me.

One night I was having dinner with my ex-girlfriend, who was full-blooded
Italian, and her family. Her mother absolutely loved me. Somehow we got around
to the topic of how much better I was than her ex-boyfriend, and her mom
blurted out, "He was such a n-er." When she realized what she said, she looked
at me and said, "But you're not a n-er. You know...there's just certain people
that are." I never directly responded, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it
at the time. But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to
define what the word means to different groups of people.

~~~
vacri
> _" Black" culture isn't nearly as uniform as some people would like to
> believe._

I spent a few months in the US a few years ago, and one of the things that
bothered me was that in the media, "black culture" and "gangsta culture" were
synonymous - nothing to suggest that a black person might be an engineer or a
manager or a wise elder or whatever. Whether it was talking heads on TV or a
comedy set in a park, someone riffing on "black culture" would be doing
gangsta stereotypes. The only time it seemed that blacks were allowed to be
something other than "gangsta" in public discourse were if the conversation
was specifically about race.

~~~
wutbrodo
> nothing to suggest that a black person might be an engineer or a manager or
> a wise elder or whatever. Whether it was talking heads on TV or a comedy set
> in a park, someone riffing on "black culture" would be doing gangsta
> stereotypes.

The "wise elder" is actually quite a prevalent trope.
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro)

~~~
vacri
In Hollywood movies perhaps, but not in day-to-day media. Probably not the
best example, agreed - I just lobbed it in there as an aspiration that wasn't
a job :)

------
ggreer
For more on this topic, I recommend Steven Pinker's 2007 talk at Google. In
the second part of it, Pinker tries to answer the question, "Why do people get
so upset over certain words?"[1] He falsifies some popular hypotheses and
finds interesting commonalities across languages. Obviously, the video
contains lots of swearing.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=1233](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=1233)

------
dalke
Just a reminder about history, Richard Pryor, whose comedy albums include
'That Nigger's Crazy' (1974), and "Bicentennial Nigger" (1976) then, and I
quote now from his Wikipedia entry:

> In 1979, at the height of his success, Pryor visited Africa. Upon returning
> to the United States, Pryor swore he would never use the word "nigger" in
> his stand-up comedy routine again.[36] However, his favorite epithet,
> "motherfucker", remains a term of endearment on his official website.

There's a lovely composite of Pryor's views vs. Carlin's at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZCS5I80X-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZCS5I80X-8)
, which is the [36] above. I empathize much more with Pryor in that sequence
than Carlin.

~~~
pravka
Empathize? Perhaps. But in Carlin's defense, the point he's making doesn't
require empathy; it demands attention and consideration.

~~~
dalke
Yes, "empathize", as in "remind me that we are humans and not emotionless
brains."

------
scoot
_' But do note that I have to euphemize the N-word here in print just as
someone would have once have felt compelled to say, “By Jove!”'_

But why? They're just words - a set of phonemes as @jasode points out. The
meaning is only inferred from the context in which the word is used - this is
made clear from the last few paragraphs about the use of the word nigger to
mean buddy.

My first (unconscious) response on reading 'N-word' or similar is to translate
that euphemism to the word itself, so nothing is spared in the mind of the
reader by "censoring".

Instead it seems the author is trying to expunge himself of having used
profanity, when in fact discussing a word in this context is surely not
profane?

~~~
Stratoscope
You may be underestimating how powerful a hold that word has on the American
subconscious. Heck, I even get a little queasy when I read Angular code with
ng-this and ng-that. Of course I know "ng" just stands for Angular, but I
still do a double-take, at least a minor one.

Regarding the use of the word among black men to mean "buddy", sure, my older
Italian relatives used to call each other "wop" as a in-group term of
affection. But woe to any non-Italians who called them that!

~~~
scoot
> But woe to any non-Italians who called them that!

I wouldn't question that - the point was that a discussion of the words
themselves in a clinical sense carries no pejorative meaning (and even their
intended meaning can vary according to context).

It's unfortunate for the purpose of this discussion that the author chose
"N-word" as his example. It would have simplified matters if he had chosen
"F-word" or "C-word" given that all modern profanity in the linked article has
been reduced to euphemism, as my question wasn't about racial labelling per
se, but rather about the need to reduce any (modern) profanity to 'X'-word
when discussing the words themselves, as distinct from using them for their
implicit meaning.

One would absolutely refrain from using racial labels in a pejorative context.
However in a discussion of the meaning or history of the words themselves
(racially linked or not), their use is unambiguously not profane. One only has
to consult an authoritative dictionary to confirm that these words do in fact
exist, and can be used in an uncensored form without causing offence.

~~~
readymade
Meaning is kind of a tricky thing.

Who decides what a word means and when? Has a dictionary ever defined the
complex web of emotions tied to that or any other hateful slur? Can the OED
tell you what it feels like for a person of color to hear it, even in
supposedly clinical circumstances?

------
jasode
Instead of a history of evolving swear words (which implies a changing
society), it's much more interesting to me that there's possibly a
neurological or cognitive basis for swear words (which implies a stable source
that's built into our DNA.)

When I was a kid and filtered the world as facts in black & white, it was
baffling why certain words were "bad". Why is c_nt so bad? _That doesn 't make
sense -- It's just a word!_ If you were to let a foreigner who didn't
understand English listen to 100 random words with c_nt being one of them,
he/she would not be able to identify _which_ word was the nasty one. Listening
to the phoneme is not enough. With that mindset, I laughed along with the
George Carlin "7 Dirty Words" routine[1].

Later in life, I ran across across a thread discussing profanity and I saw an
interesting sentence that finally made it click. Basically it said, "if _c_nt_
wasn't the taboo word, it would be _another word_ that was equally taboo."

In other words, we seem to always create this "space" in language reserved for
taboo. It's not related to specific phonemes. If one says that humans have
built in brain wiring for "grammar" (Chomsky[2]) to understand nouns, verbs,
and recursive clauses... one might extend that to say we also have innate
brain wiring to _always_ create taboo swear words. It is unavoidable.

For example, the creator of Esperanto didn't put any cuss words in his
language because he thought it was unnecessary. (It was a language designed to
foster harmony so that's understandable.) Nevertheless, Esperanto evolved to
eventually have swear words.

I notice that manufactured languages such as Klingon also has swear
words/phrases. However, I'm not a trekkie so I don't know if they elicit any
negative emotions or they are there simply as an exercise in "universe
building".

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZhpf3sQxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZhpf3sQxQ)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar)

~~~
javert
> one might extend that to say we also have innate brain wiring to always
> create taboo swear words

That's arbitrary conjecture at best.

A better explanation is that vulgar people will find ways to be vulgar in
whatever language they're using, and it will catch on among other vulgar
people.

~~~
someone7x
How is that not an equally arbitrary explanation?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Because we observe directly that many of our humans are distressingly vulgar,
and seem to enjoy it. We do _not_ observe, directly or indirectly, "innate
brain wiring to always create taboo swear words".

Of course, that leaves unexplained _why_ many (all?) humans enjoy being
vulgar...

~~~
coldtea
Because we are not rule-machines, and we enjoy breaking the rules, including
"social decorum" and "taboo" from time to time?

That's also how comedy works, even without using any vulgar words.

------
ericdykstra
Lenny Bruce covered this topic back in in his day*, and wasn't afraid to use
the actual words instead of euphemisms like in this article. The people trying
to censor 'profanity' are the ones who give the words power.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfNhiRGQ-
js](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfNhiRGQ-js)

------
brightflash64
Reinhold Aman did incredibly deep research on verbal aggression through the
1980s and 1990s and was a bit infamous for his radio interviews. Check out the
Maledicta website and journal:

[http://aman.members.sonic.net/](http://aman.members.sonic.net/)

------
fmaresca
Thousands of years ago humans must have discovered that profanity is the
universal lubricant -you've got WD40 and you keep your best hammer at hand,
but at the very end you know that it will not do without some cursing...

------
NoGravitas
I love the fact that in the picture, the robot's profanity is MXLPLX.
Presumably a reference to Mister Mxyzptlk[0]?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mxyzptlk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mxyzptlk)

------
cafard
If you can locate a copy of it, Robert Graves's essay "Lars Porsena, or the
Future of Swearing" is worth a read.

------
hellbanner
"Humans, and the things they swear by! Sex, excrement & religion. I'll never
understand them" \- Tales from the mos eisly cantina

------
vonklaus
In the year 2015(35 years ago now) anthropologists are still trying to work
out why there was such a reduction in profanity. The great indecency purge of
2020 had lead to the systematic removal of any site deemed "backward",
"profane", "explicit" or "not politically correct". This was before people
willingly checked their privelege. People used the internet, not as a tool of
information as we do today, but to debate different points of view and
exchange insults on the internet.

As we know, tumblr lead the crusade against these heathens who subjugated
minorities and women with their jokes about things like the r-word. As we know
this spilled out IRL and lead to a 3000% increase in sexual assualt and
violence which was underhandedly covered up by the patriarchy.

With the age of goodthink, we are free from such horrid viewpoints and
equality has been spread to accross the globe. Silicon Valley was relocated to
Arkansas to rebalance housing prices in the region. Hiring procedures were
moved to blanced and equal demographic system, finally, people were judged not
as engineers but as numbers filling a quota.

Everything has become ++good, and we may never know why or how profanity was
eradicated, but it has lead to the stable society we know and love.

Alex Alexis

tumblrbuzzfeed9gagblogger media

non-binary, pan-sexual, pronouns: xe/xem/xyr/xemself/co/cos/cos/coself

