7 ms·

The Evolution of Profanity

67 points by rglovejoy 11y ago

jasode 11y ago
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
- erbo 11y ago
  Indeed, cursing is considered a fine art among Klingons. One of their aphorisms, translated idiomatically as "Curse well!", literally translates as "Shoot curses forcefully!" They consider curses as weapons which must be propelled to their target, much like throwing knives. At least one Klingon epithet, petaQ, seems to be used to refer to "someone who has no honor." It was used of Worf by other Klingons during the period of his discommendation.
- javert 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    How is that not an equally arbitrary explanation?
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        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.
    - chongli 11y ago
      It's not even an explanation, it's a tautology: vulgar people are vulgar.
  - jasode 11y ago
    >A better explanation is that vulgar people will find ways to be vulgar I think you're not understanding my "conjecture." If profanity was purely something propagated by vulgar people, there should be a significant percentage of people where it doesn't trigger any negative emotions at all. Sort of like being "color blind" to shades of green or red, or deaf to hearing "15kHz" sounds such as cymbals. We humans don't seem to have a brain that treats all phonemes and spellings as equal & arbitrary with no emotions which would render any attempts to create vulgar swear words to be an impossible task. So far, every culture and every language (even new languages) has swear words so I think it is very debatable whether vulgar people create that taboo or our brains already carry a reserved space for offensive communication. If so, that space is receptive for certain words to serve the purpose of offending it. Even if the brain/person has no desire to utter offensive words and further propagate them, they are still offended.
- readymade 11y ago
  You bring up an interesting point. There's some neurolinguistic research that points to profanity being more the domain of the amygdala, the so-called "reptilian brain". This is supported by both neuroimaging and studies of patients with aphasia, which show that people with damage to brain regions governing conventional speech can still retain the capacity to swear. Another study suggests that swearing helps the utterer better withstand pain, by stimulating the fight or flight response mechanism centered there. http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/23/the-science-of-swearing/ http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/23/the-science-of-sw... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/
pbiggar 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    That line of reasoning the mother used isn't uncommon. I can date it back to at least '96 and know that line of reasoning existed well before then. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4
  - iamcurious 11y ago
    I prefer not to have to second guess whether you meant it one way or another. Yes. Communication is hard enough as it is, without having to second guess more things. But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to define what the word means to different groups of people. I don't know in italian, but in spanish we don't have a word for n-er, we just have a word for the color black. That word (negro) is syntactically similar to n-er in english, which produces lots of misunderstandings with english speakers. So again, communication is really hard.
ggreer 11y ago
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
scoot 11y ago
'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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    > 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.
fmaresca 11y ago
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...
dalke 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Empathize? Perhaps. But in Carlin's defense, the point he's making doesn't require empathy; it demands attention and consideration.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Yes, "empathize", as in "remind me that we are humans and not emotionless brains."
brightflash64 11y ago
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/
hellbanner 11y ago
"Humans, and the things they swear by! Sex, excrement & religion. I'll never understand them" - Tales from the mos eisly cantina
vonklaus 11y ago
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
ericdykstra 11y ago
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
NoGravitas 11y ago
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 11y ago
If you can locate a copy of it, Robert Graves's essay "Lars Porsena, or the Future of Swearing" is worth a read.

67 points by rglovejoy 11y ago

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

erbo 11y ago
Indeed, cursing is considered a fine art among Klingons. One of their aphorisms, translated idiomatically as "Curse well!", literally translates as "Shoot curses forcefully!" They consider curses as weapons which must be propelled to their target, much like throwing knives. At least one Klingon epithet, petaQ, seems to be used to refer to "someone who has no honor." It was used of Worf by other Klingons during the period of his discommendation.
javert 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  How is that not an equally arbitrary explanation?
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
  - chongli 11y ago
    It's not even an explanation, it's a tautology: vulgar people are vulgar.
- jasode 11y ago
  >A better explanation is that vulgar people will find ways to be vulgar I think you're not understanding my "conjecture." If profanity was purely something propagated by vulgar people, there should be a significant percentage of people where it doesn't trigger any negative emotions at all. Sort of like being "color blind" to shades of green or red, or deaf to hearing "15kHz" sounds such as cymbals. We humans don't seem to have a brain that treats all phonemes and spellings as equal & arbitrary with no emotions which would render any attempts to create vulgar swear words to be an impossible task. So far, every culture and every language (even new languages) has swear words so I think it is very debatable whether vulgar people create that taboo or our brains already carry a reserved space for offensive communication. If so, that space is receptive for certain words to serve the purpose of offending it. Even if the brain/person has no desire to utter offensive words and further propagate them, they are still offended.
readymade 11y ago
You bring up an interesting point. There's some neurolinguistic research that points to profanity being more the domain of the amygdala, the so-called "reptilian brain". This is supported by both neuroimaging and studies of patients with aphasia, which show that people with damage to brain regions governing conventional speech can still retain the capacity to swear. Another study suggests that swearing helps the utterer better withstand pain, by stimulating the fight or flight response mechanism centered there. http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/23/the-science-of-swearing/ http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/23/the-science-of-sw... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/

pbiggar 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- Nadya 11y ago
  That line of reasoning the mother used isn't uncommon. I can date it back to at least '96 and know that line of reasoning existed well before then. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4
- iamcurious 11y ago
  I prefer not to have to second guess whether you meant it one way or another. Yes. Communication is hard enough as it is, without having to second guess more things. But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to define what the word means to different groups of people. I don't know in italian, but in spanish we don't have a word for n-er, we just have a word for the color black. That word (negro) is syntactically similar to n-er in english, which produces lots of misunderstandings with english speakers. So again, communication is really hard.

ggreer 11y ago

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

scoot 11y ago

'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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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.

fmaresca 11y ago

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...

dalke 11y ago

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 11y ago
Empathize? Perhaps. But in Carlin's defense, the point he's making doesn't require empathy; it demands attention and consideration.
- dalke 11y ago
  Yes, "empathize", as in "remind me that we are humans and not emotionless brains."

brightflash64 11y ago

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/

hellbanner 11y ago

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

vonklaus 11y ago

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

ericdykstra 11y ago

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

NoGravitas 11y ago

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 11y ago

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