The filtering of obscene language came up in last weekend's chat (and is covered somewhat in the Community Section thread about chatting) but I'd like to start a separate thread on this subject.
First off, can we agree that in a discussion of this nature, seeing as how we are all not only adults but linguaphiles not in need of protection against the harsher elements our language occasionally has to offer, that we don't need to pepper the words we're specifically talking about with asterisks? No one's going to swoon if I write the word "fuck," are they? OK, good.
English is forever evolving as are its speakers. Clark Gable saying "Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn" raised eyebrows in the late 1930's in ways that seem laughable today. Some 25 years later, I distinctly remember my mother being shocked and dismayed that the Kingston Trio song "Greenback Dollar" was allowed on the radio with the line "And I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar." She really was upset.
Fast forward another 25 or 30 years an all hell's broken loose. I think we'd all be pretty much in agreement if I were to say the process has gone too far and that the pendulum needs to swing back a bit but are there specific aspects of this question you'd care to discuss?
I'll start it out with kids and how they learn. My grandson (the world's greatest and I'll accept no argument) once shocked my daughter when, at the age of about 3, he casually asked her, "Mom, what the hell is this?" Needless to say, his inflection was perfect seeing as how he was simply mimicking what he had heard from adults.
My daughter tried to explain to him that "hell" was a bad word (her term) but he was certain she was mistaken and corrected her, "No, Mommy. 'Shit' is a bad word and 'fuck' is a bad word" and then proceeded to go down the list of "bad" words as he understood them. It was hard not to laugh but he was speaking in all seriousness.
In my opinion, the point is that kids are more than willing to follow the rules as long as these rules are adequately explained to them. It's only after they turn into, say, pre-teens that they become the potty-mouthed wretches we all know and loathe.
Clark Gable saying "Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn" raised eyebrows in the late 1930's in ways that seem laughable today. I heard that the agency that oversees movies forbade the producers of "Gone with the Wind" to use "damn" and told them to use "darn." The producers decided to pay the $5,000 fine and to use the word "damn" anyway.
I wonder if the use of swear words is more common in the U.S. than across the pond? Somehow, I have a hard time imagining filthy words with an English accent!
[This message was edited by Kalleh on Tue Mar %83, 2004 at 20:45.]
Jimmie wrote and recorded "Big Bad John" in 1961 (http://www.ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/b/big_bad_john.txt). In the original version, the last sentence was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man". The censors didn't like it and subsequent versions read "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man".
[QUOTE]I wonder if the use of swear words is more common in the U.S. than across the pond? Somehow, I have a hard time imagining filthy words with an English accent!
Swear word always sound less offensive in other accents. We loved Eddie Murphy here becuse the way he said the MF word just sounded funny and not removely offensive. The Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly has started saying the F-word to rhyme with book: it just sounds ridiculous and no longer aggressive.
tinman: "Big Bad John": In the original version, the last sentence was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man". The censors didn't like it and subsequent versions read "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man".
I hadn't known that. It's particularly interesting in that one of the verses (in the popular hit-song version) begins "Through the dust and smoke of this man made hell / Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well".
The censors were drawing quite a careful distinction, weren't they? Or perhaps the lyric-writer was pushing their envelope?
quote: Somehow, I have a hard time imagining filthy words with an English accent!
John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, rake and atheist, wrote some great restoration pornographic plays and poems. Unquoteable in this forum, but I'm sure you can find them online if you wish. All the naughty words you can imagine. For extra credit and some fine cursing, rent and watch the movies: {i]Performance[/i] (1970), Withnail; and I (1987), Sexy Beast (200), or for Lalands cursing Trainspotting (1996).
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Graham Nice: The Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly has started saying the F-word ____________________________________________ The "F- word?" Oh, that IS a terribly low score, isn't it!
But seriously, folks, the overuse of obcentites eviscerates them. Nowadays, I hear "fuck" used as an exclamation, a noun, and a verb, all depending on its placement and inflection, but almost never in actual reference to sexual intercourse. Just tonight I watched a bit of a British drama on the satellite TV wherein a woman told a man to "fuck off." Has that expression replaced, "piss off" in Britain?
I'm not excusing the overuse of obscenities, but have you listened to almost any conversations with or without vulgarities? They're all pretty dreary. I am reminded of what Theodore Sturgeon, a science fiction writer, once said in defence of science fiction. "Of course 90% of SF is crap. 90% of all writing is crap." My theory about why there's so much crap today, is that most have forgotten the loads of crap there was in the past. People are crap-producing machines, kind of like geese and chickens. History is a marvelous crap-filter.
Ref George Carlin - He never referred to his routine "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" as "Seven Dirty Words." That basically was newspaper shorthand especially when reporting the story of the radio station that played the record starting the case that eventually went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The point of the routine was that words themselves can't be "dirty."
(A sidenote: This was the only case in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court revolving around the work of a comedian. The radio station [and, by extension, Carlin] lost the case by a 5-4 vote.)
Ref "Sexy Beast" - Oh my God, yes! Some excellent British-accented swearing and with enough force to curl your toes backwards. I highly recommend this movie especially to anyone who liked Ben Kingsley in "Ghandi" since it is almost impossible to imagine a role so completely opposite to that one. Kingsley in "Sexy Beast" is clearly the Anti-Ghandi.
One other example of "dirty word" disparities - Shortly after I first moved away from New England, I saw a newspaper headline reporting that a local official had decried something or other as "goldurned crap." Right there in the headline! "Goldurned crap"! I nearly busted a gut laughing! Where I grew up, "goddamn" was rude but rather commonly heard but "crap" was not just a "dirty" word, it was downright filthy!
When I was a kid, you said the word "shit" and you received a harsh word from a parent or other elder. Utter the more or less synonymous "crap" and you were letting yourself open for a major beating. Everyone knew the definitions, of course. "Shit" was shit, plain and simple, but "crap" was shit that was extraordinarily foul or diseased. "Shit" included that stuff that you could mix into your garden to help the strawberries grow. But stir some "crap" into your stawberry patch? You'd have to be out of your mind!
I clipped that headline and mailed copies to friends back home to illustrate what yokels I was living amongst at that time. They can say "crap" but can't bring themselves to utter a simple "goddam." Whatta buncha rubes! I've since learned the backgrounds which brought about this difference and now well understand the feelings behind the use or non-use of these words but at the time it was pretty much the funniest thing I had ever heard.
quote:Originally posted by tinman: Jimmie wrote and recorded "Big Bad John" in 1961 (http://www.ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/b/big_bad_john.txt). In the original version, the last sentence was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man". The censors didn't like it and subsequent versions read "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man".
Where I teach (in Norway) the kids in my ninth grade regularly use profanity heard on cable TV programs from the USA. Hip-hop, rap and general usage has taught them that "fuck" is one of the milder terms they are "permitted" to use with each other. Others are much worse but familiar to anyone who has switched on MTV and seen a rap or hip-hop video or heard such lyrics.
Therefore I have a difficult time telling the kids that such language is not permitted in class. It's English class, right? But they lack the filter, so to speak. So what I have to do is to lecture them on the arenas where different types of language may be used - and my classroom is not one where I wish to hear language they have learned from some programs aired on American TV.
One case in point is when I e-mailed a Norwegian colleague in another town the following riddle: Two potatoes are standing on a corner. One is a prostitute. How do you know which one? Answer: the one that says "I DA HO."
My Norwegian colleague, though extremely proficient in English, did not understand it and replied that he had asked his colleagues at the same school, and they didn't understand it either. It was only when he presented it as a test case in his high-school class that he received an explanation. The KIDS understood it.
Now you know what kind of English is a main export to foreign countries!
Oh, great, and it has to be from U.S. television programs! If it makes you feel any better, that kind of language isn't allowed on the network stations.
I am very glad you've joined us, markmywords, because I think we Americans are going to have to convince you that we aren't all bad!
Of course, it isn't always easy to criticize Americans. After all, most Americans are quite an amalgam. For example, I am part Norwegian, as well as English, Scotch, Dutch, Irish, and German.
There are a lot of "teachers" on the board... I work in the Media Center of my elementary school.
And, like Kalleh, claim lots of ancestry... Dutch (we're thrifty), Irish (we like a bit of ale), Scotch (we watch our money), German (we are tidy), English (we're courageous), and a bit of Native American (watch your throat!)
No Scandinavian blood here.. but we like what you say.
Glad to have you... it is fun here... Around the World in 24 Hours!
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