Expletive Deleted

Although I am a lawyer today, I was an English major in college, so I have an affinity for words. I take it as a compliment when I'm told I don't sound (or write) like a lawyer. I like to think that I have an extensive vocabulary (and can pen an awesome, scathing letter to an opponent, as needed).

Many of my friends and colleagues find it surprising that part of my linguistic repertoire includes George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words (can you name them all?). See also updated Carlin skit above. Somehow a "few" of these words crept into my vocabulary. Long ago and far away, I attended an all-girls, Catholic college and can remember my mother chastising me for my "dirty mouth." She complained that she had wasted a lot of money sending me to finishing school for me to end up speaking like a drunken sailor. Of course, my mother is a lot like George Bush -- the reality doesn't always match the rhetoric: my school was a college, not a finishing school, and she wasn't paying for it. But lets not get lost in the details.

All of this is by way of background to note that the Philadelphia Inquirer has a piece discussing the paper's policy on "dirty words," Why are sex words our worst swearwords?. Seriously. Faye Flamm writes:

Several weeks ago Inquirer editors debated whether we should allow more dirty words in the paper. There was talk of loosening the restrictions on damn, which we've long placed in our category of lesser offenders though it implies something horrendous - condemnation to hell (a word we're also easing up on).

Topping our list of the worst possible words is the F-word, though in its literal sense it conveys something very nice. Writers are not specifically forbidden to use it but there are enough hoops to jump through that nobody has broken the F- barrier yet.

It's listed in our highest security class of obscenity, along with three synonyms for penis, two for vagina, two slang terms for oral sex, two variants on animal waste products and one expression that employs the F-word in an oedipal context.

What does this say about our society, and is there any scientific explanation for why people yell out a word for sex when they stub their toes?

Linguists tend to speak not of bad words but of linguistic taboos.

* * * *

Overall, the scientific evidence suggests swearing is good for you, says psycholinguist Timothy Jay of Massachusetts College of the Liberal Arts and author of Cursing in America.

We're the only animal that can curse, he says, which sometimes helps us avoid physical violence. "It allows us to express our emotions symbolically and at a distance." For example, Jay says, when a woman was weaving in front of him on the road that morning he was able to call her a "dumb ass" instead of getting out of his car and biting her.

* * * *

Americans, in contrast, rely heavily on our F-word.

In addition to helping Dick Cheney refrain from biting all the Democrats in Congress, it represents the most direct and concise English term for sexual intercourse.

Some commentators have warned that we're wearing out the poor word with gross overuse, draining it of its original cathartic power. But Jay says we have nothing to worry about. It's an old word, possibly stemming from German and not an acronym for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, as urban legend has it. It's been part of the English language for more than 1,000 years, he said, and it's still so taboo you can't say it on TV or in school. Or in our newspaper. (Emphasis added)

Next time my daughter raises her eyebrow when I emit an epithet, I can tell her it's healthy for me.

And, if this obsenity-laden discourse disgusts you, then I say 'Vaffanculo,'.

Finally, for a witty riff on the use of the word "fuck", check out the YouTube video, Strange Consequences. It starts out:

When Friedrich
Nietzsche declared
"God is dead"

F*CK became the most
important word in the
English language

(Via Language Log: God dead; "fuck" now the most important word in the language, who was cited in the Inquirer article)

Tags: Humor, Commentary, Language, Dirty Words