I'd also like to see some cross-linguistic analysis of swearing.
For example, English uses a nice mixture of profanity (religious references, like "goddammit") and obscenity (sexual words and bodily functions, like "fuck" and "shit"), but not much literal cursing. But not every language does that. Quebecois French, for example, uses profanity almost exclusively (where the worst single word you can say means "tabernacle"), and nobody pays much attention to obscenity. And then there's Dutch, which relies on literally cursing people (among the worst things you can say to someone are to tell them to "catch cholera" or "cancer off", and the worst thing you can call someone means "cancer patient"), while obscenities are minor insults, and while profanities are historically more serious, they're not nearly as common as the curses.
Would definitely be interesting to see a comparison of English/European swearing with other languages.
For instance, it's my understanding that in Cantonese, a grave expletive is a phrase that roughly translates to something like "dead chicken" (source: my wife). I'm sure there's an interesting linguistic story behind that phrase, and it's quite different from normal western cursing.
Yes, it is really funny to see our swearing translated to English, as well as the other way around.
I can say 'cunt' (kut) casually at work when something doesn't work as expected. However, saying 'cancer' (kanker) will raise eyebrows.
Along the lines of more traditional "cursing" like you mentioned, would you count more modern/internet-popularized examples like "die in a fire" or "get canceraids"?
Seems that sort of curse is still around on the English-centric parts of the web and now that I think about it, I wonder if it's just naturally emergent or if it's partially the result of US/UK English speakers coming into more contact with people from elsewhere where those sorts of curses never went "out of fashion".
Honestly, when you consider the etymology of "profanity" and "curse word", they all go back to religious roots. Even the use of deliberately misspelled and mispronounced curse words is called a "minced oath".
We don't really have a good word for swearing that's not a religious reference. The closest we have is "obscenity", but that traditionally only refers to sexual words. For example, "fuck" is obscenity, but "goddammit" is profanity.
In Finnish the origin for "curse word" comes from incantation / casting a spell. At least nowadays the root word means purely a hostile spell, or a hex. I'd say in modern use basically equivalent to "a curse" in English, as the magical aspect isn't really present in the society any more. I can't say if it has originally also included benevolent spells.
it's difficult to analyze the truth value of your thesis because you use words that all have dual meanings, "religious word" vs "naughty word" (swear, oath, profane) and we see from "don't take the Lord's name in vain" the ancient tendency to curse (another religious term) when we wish to indicate anger to the point of irreverence, or just irreverence.
I think a better way to look at it is, we humans have been the way we are for a long time, and we don't "think" in our language, we think in brain language (deep structure and deeper, and the proof is that brain damaged aphasics can forget all the words for emotions but they still can conceptualize them, i.e. thinking is not related to language; deaf people also may never learn language, but they can think)
Humans have a tendency to be religious for whatever reason, and humans have a tendency to get mad and spew a blue streak, and regardless of what your religio-culturo-background, you come from a culture that has ways to communicate what you want, to get the point across that you are at the moment as salty as a sailor.
In general cursing seems to be a matter of transgressing social norms to emphasize a mental/emotional state. Your point perfectly illustrates why a religious "curse" would so often do that, and maybe why they have been falling out of favor lately. Cursing god used to be something that would ruin your life, if it were overheard and still is in some parts of the world. Mostly though, it's prosaic.
Scatology, biology in all forms, and in much of the world (Med, Mid East, Africa, Lots of Asia, etc) sexuality. Family relations are pretty much a universal target as well.
> and in much of the world (Med, Mid East, Africa, Lots of Asia, etc) sexuality.
Include the US/England with "Fuck" here. "Ficken" doesn't work at all in German as a swear word. Words that associates uncleaniness, like "Scheiße" or "Arschloch", have much more shock value.
For example, English uses a nice mixture of profanity (religious references, like "goddammit") and obscenity (sexual words and bodily functions, like "fuck" and "shit"), but not much literal cursing. But not every language does that. Quebecois French, for example, uses profanity almost exclusively (where the worst single word you can say means "tabernacle"), and nobody pays much attention to obscenity. And then there's Dutch, which relies on literally cursing people (among the worst things you can say to someone are to tell them to "catch cholera" or "cancer off", and the worst thing you can call someone means "cancer patient"), while obscenities are minor insults, and while profanities are historically more serious, they're not nearly as common as the curses.