When bad words go good
February 21st, 2005 @ 11:58 — LorelleI have a question that’s been bugging me for a long time. An American citizen, I’ve lived in Israel for five years and their attitude towards “swear words” is rather fascinating. Hebrew is a “new” language, revived in part from the ancient “dead” tongue, and so they have collected words from other languages to fill in the gaps. One of my personal favorites comes from Russia. “Ball-ah-gone” means “big, out-of-control mess” in the simpliest and nicest of terms. In Israel, as in much of the world today, things are either Bay-say-ter (fine, okay, everything is alright) or Ball-ah-gone (big mess). I haven’t found any such precise terms to sum up the situation in English.
Among the collection of foreign words found in Hebrew are the American swear words, exported through tourism, television and movies. While heads may turn and noses curl up at the s-word and f-word (among others) in the streets of small town America, they are day-to-day words you hear all the time in Israel.
One of my favorite stories is of a family who moved to Seattle from Israel so the husband, an aircraft engineer, could work for a while at Boeing. Within a few weeks, he and his wife were called to the school of their oldest, a six year old. They were told that their child would have to removed from school for using bad language.
Not speaking much English themselves, they haltingly kept inquiring as to what possible “bad” language could their young son use? They are “good, religous and orthodox Jews - we no speak bad words”. Finally the teacher relented, and with blushing face, explained to the distraught couple that their child was saying “shit”.
They were stunned - and confused. “We use this word every day in the house. This is not bad word. It is word for when you hit your foot or smash finger. Just a word.”
In Israel, it is “just a word”. I had this vision of young zionists and kibbutzniks coming to Israel around the turn of the century, helping to rebuild the “holy” land. One Brit or American hammers his finger and says “shit” and someone asks, “What is this word?” Embarrassed, the foriegner explains that this is the word used for when you smash your finger - an alternative to “opps”. Bingo - it’s in the language for “opps”.
Now that I’m back in the states (culture shock), I have to watch my language all the time, careful not to let slip words I’ve become accustomed to hearing and using. But these are just words, nothing more, and I’ve learned that the words carry import because of our cultural agenda rather than the words’ true meaning and intent.
How did this craziness with swear words develop? Why do some words carrying “bad” meanings and raise eyebrows? Has this always been the way with language, that some words are “okay” and others are banned? Or is this something new from puritan days? How do “bad” words become commonplace or commonplace words become “bad”?
March 1st, 2005 at 13:41
Certainly words, all words, reflect the “cultural agenda” of the speaker. They can hardly do anything else since they label cultural objects, attitudes, and actions. And certainly any given object may be valued differently in different cultures: witness the different associations, and thus meaning, of ‘cow’ in English (or its equivalent in Spanish, German, Hebrew, Swahili, etc.) as opposed to its associations in Hindu India. We need not go so far afield: ‘meat’ certainly conjures up different associations, etc., for the happy carnivore than it does for the level-five vegan. (That the vegan is probably equally happy only shows that ‘happiness’ merely reflects the “cultural agenda” of the speaker as well.)
Another factor we have to take into account is the need for all speakers, and hence all languages, to have a range of words to express surprise, disgust, ecstacy, etc. There are times when ‘oops’ or ‘how nice’ are not enough. There is, then, a need for words that are heavily charged with emotional content. The physics graduate student who finds the unmistakable trace of a new particle in his or her cloud chamber might be excuse, even expected, to respond with ‘holy shit’ rather than ‘how nice.’ (OK, this might not be the best example here because at Caltech this sort of thing happens too often to occasion much surprise, but if we transfer the example to another institution, say, Harvard, it would be true. [And, if the president of Harvard could crow more about newly discovered subatomic particles, he might not be so prone to hoof-in-mouth disease in other contexts.])
Of course, if some emotionally charged word is used “too much”, it tends to lose its power to carry or evoke the emotion it originally had and becomes more neutral. Likewise a word will become emotionally less charged if the object/activity it refers to becomes less charged: witness the history of ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ over the last thirty years or so. Neither the words nor the persons elicit the same frisson d’horreur they once did. (At least in New York, Toronto, Pasadena, or Moscow [ID] they don’t, though apparently they still do in Nigeria–see elsewhere in this blog. This discrepancy merely proves that linguistic or social change does not propagate instantly or even at a constant velocity.)
Finally we should note that the puritans’ cultural agenda, however controlling it might seek to be in certain arenas, was not particularly interested in matters of language. It’s the Victorians who gave birth, if you will, to Dr. Bowdler and his ilk.
March 1st, 2005 at 15:35
Take that Harvard.
For the curious, the “Nigerian elsewhere” is here.
November 13th, 2007 at 00:52
http://people.howstuffworks.com/swearing1.htm